Premiere Pro - Audio issues

**Sephirex** · 05-05-2012, 02:58 AM

I've been using Premiere Pro for some time now and in the past little while I've noticed some strange things, all of them having to do with audio. (I'm using CS5 on Mac)

1. Sometimes the audio waveforms are not present on the timeline. It just shows a flat line with very rare small bumps in the wave. This makes editing audio a pain. This happens on various files, but is especially apparent when it comes to vocals.

2. There's a static noise that is often present when my vocals are playing sometimes. I know how to optimize and remove noise in my audio and I always do so in Audacity to make sure all noise is removed. The noise is not present when I examine it in audacity and re-doing the noise removal doesn't seem to affect how Premiere Pro plays the audio either. Why is it adding noise to the audio?

3. For some reason, upon exporting and rendering the video file, the audio levels are completely different. I'm very careful with making sure all the audio is level and hearable within Premiere Pro and while it sounds perfectly fine while I'm editing, what it renders out is a different story. Sometimes it renders the sound to be what sounds like 5x what's intended, which causes awkward and terrible sounding audio and peaking. It's maddening since optimizing the audio for the final render is more like trial and error to get it right since the rendering is majorly screwing it up.

I can't figure any of these problems out. I've been editing for a long time and this is the first time an editor has caused me so much audio trouble. Can anyone please help me figure this out?

**spido** · 05-07-2012, 10:32 AM

when did you start using premiere on mac? i mean you used mac before and you didnt have any problem?
i'm not sure about this but some programs that are not made by Apple but has been optimized for mac work badly. Final cut pro is a editing program for mac made by Apple itself and its very similar to premiere and easy to use(ofcourse sometimes!)
I hope it helps.

**Bpotter908** · 05-07-2012, 12:01 PM

Originally Posted by Sephirex

1. Sometimes the audio waveforms are not present on the timeline. It just shows a flat line with very rare small bumps in the wave. This makes editing audio a pain. This happens on various files, but is especially apparent when it comes to vocals.

Have you been able to identify if the file format produces the difference ( It should not, but then again it's a computer :P ) between showing the wave-form or not? Are the bitrate settings of the audio file matching the bit-rate of the project file settings?

Originally Posted by Sephirex

2. There's a static noise that is often present when my vocals are playing sometimes. I know how to optimize and remove noise in my audio and I always do so in Audacity to make sure all noise is removed. The noise is not present when I examine it in audacity and re-doing the noise removal doesn't seem to affect how Premiere Pro plays the audio either. Why is it adding noise to the audio?

Strange, I don't suppose you have a decent external sound card lying around that you could test with premier?

Originally Posted by Sephirex

3. For some reason, upon exporting and rendering the video file, the audio levels are completely different. I'm very careful with making sure all the audio is level and hearable within Premiere Pro and while it sounds perfectly fine while I'm editing, what it renders out is a different story. Sometimes it renders the sound to be what sounds like 5x what's intended, which causes awkward and terrible sounding audio and peaking. It's maddening since optimizing the audio for the final render is more like trial and error to get it right since the rendering is majorly screwing it up.

Are you using Adobe Audition in your project or any third party plugins for the audio editing? How do you handle your final export? Do you send to media encoder or do you handle it in Premier?

Sorry that I can't be more help, I've not come across these issues before.

Originally Posted by spido

i'm not sure about this but some programs that are not made by Apple but has been optimized for mac work badly.

...Adobe are one of the biggest software companies in the world, A huge amount of their target market uses macs, I myself have used their software on mac systems and have suffered no issue.

Originally Posted by spido

Final cut pro is a editing program for mac made by Apple itself and its very similar to premiere and easy to use

Final Cut Pro is indeed easy to use, but the OP owns Premier :P not Final Cut.

**Sephirex** · 05-07-2012, 04:54 PM

Originally Posted by spido

Final cut pro is a editing program for mac made by Apple itself and its very similar to premiere and easy to use(ofcourse sometimes!)

I know what Final Cut is. I don't like it. I cannot work with a program that forces me to waste my time and re-render the entire project if I so much as move something a milisecond over. I've been using Premiere Pro for around a year now, though I started noticing these problems since last summer. Not sure if they just popped up out of nowhere, that's just when I really started to notice.

Originally Posted by Bpotter908

Have you been able to identify if the file format produces the difference ( It should not, but then again it's a computer :P ) between showing the wave-form or not? Are the bitrate settings of the audio file matching the bit-rate of the project file settings?

I normally only use WAVs (mostly) or MP3s. Using vocals of either format rarely does anything for the waveform within premiere. I just tested it again to make sure. You make an interesting point though. The bitrate settings are certainly something to look into. I can't seem to find where the settings for where that is though. Do you know where?

Strange, I don't suppose you have a decent external sound card lying around that you could test with premier?

Unfortunately no. I have no idea where I'd get one, especially for Mac.

Are you using Adobe Audition in your project or any third party plugins for the audio editing? How do you handle your final export? Do you send to media encoder or do you handle it in Premier?

I've tried rendering in both Premiere Pro and Media Encoder and the result is the same. Is there something I should be looking at when I configure my render settings?