Audio lags in video unless played one time through.

[dilbert3000]

We have created a number of video clips in Final Cut that play normally in Quicktime.

However, the audio in the same videos lag nearly a second behind the video during the first time played through Propresenter. After we play the clip, completely through one time, all subsequent plays have video and audio in synch.

If we pause during any point of the first play before the ending, the audio still lags. If we close the video or move to another slide, the same scenario, we have an audio lag until we play through the clip completely once and pause.

The same scenario occurs on our Propresenter 4 running on the Windows XP machine and the Mac Pro system. Seems like a buffering issue, but does not occur in Quicktime or other applications, only PP4. Both machines are built well beyond the minimum requirements.

Other commercially obtained videos play normally the first time through. Are we doing something in Final Cut we need to do different, or setup in PP4 to support the Final Cut clips created?

[prochlea]

whats the file type and codec? I think that i read somewhere that Propresenter preferred videos in .mov with h.264 encoding...

[petereit]

From the ProPresenter FAQ:

Recommended compression settings:
H.264, Frame Rate (Current), Key Frames (Automatic), Quality (High, 75%), Encoding (Faster encode/Single-pass)

-or-

Photo JPEG (Photo - JPG), Frame Rate (Current) Compressor Depth (Color), Compressor Quality (Medium, 50%)

[dilbert3000]

We are creating Quicktime movies according to the specs. I was mistaken in my earlier post, the movies play normally on the Apple, the issue occurs only on the PC.

Renewed Vision support plans to review the structure and see if they can figure out the issue. They initally believe we may need to add a 1-2 second slug of black video at the beginning, rather start together. Additional time for synching the audio before rendering the video?

Just odd that the video works great once "loaded up" . The initial playing while loading into RAM appears to be the issue, if that is the method used by the software. An incentive to make time to set up the sound on the Mac.

Does anyone run the Black Magic audio and Tascam US-144 on the same machine together simulcasting? I understand the BMD can only capture audio, but not work as the audio feed for streaming. The BMD audio was not that great in the PC, so we went back to the Tascam. I will need to read the other forums or start a thread in the appropriate forum.

[petereit]

What it sounds like to me is that the codec you're using is putting too much demand on the CPU to decode. However, once it has played through the video the first time, the decoded video is cached, so it doesn't have any problem playing it correctly the second time.

I would say your answer would be to encode using a Windows-native codec so the CPU doesn't have to crunch so hard during decode.

(Of course, my ultimate suggestion would be to just switch to running ProPresenter in your service on a Mac and be done with it.)

[dilbert3000]

Thanks Mark, appreciate your comments on threads,

I received a response from RenewedVisions, acknowleging issues with .mov files on the Propresenter Windows Platform, suggesting either .avi or .mp4 until those issues are addressed. In the meantime, I have played the .mov videos and accompainments in Quicktime out to the projectors without an issue.

I agree the codec is probably the issue. I have to run the manycam application for Skype to work properly on our missionary interviews over the Windows system.

We should have the Mac PP4 system interfaced to the sound board this week and start playing all the multimedia through that system. Although, the video quality from the Mac Pro is not as good as the video board installed in the PC. (however much better than the Mini we were given before.) If we have any BlackMagic Design sound broadcasting issues, I suppose we will mount up a TASCAM.

As you can see, we are definitely "armatures" in video, struggling to reach amatuer...

[petereit]

LOL!! It's a process. Too much to learn before you do it so you just need to jump in, make mistakes, learn from them as you go and pray that the Holy Spirit covers you during your services. I'm continually amazed at what God does through our media team every week!