Visual and audio not in sync and driving me bonkers.

[Marji]

I use Reaper to edit a podcast, and I rely on the visual appearance of the sound on a track to match what I'm hearing so that I can remove things that need to be removed, like long intervals of silence as well as the "ummms" and the "uhhhs" and the other detritus that's just gotta go. I've been using Reaper for this for several weeks now and all has been going VERY well...until today.

Today, for some reason I cannot fathom, the sound and the visual of the sound on the track are not in sync. There have been no changes that I am aware of. Same recording protocol (raw material). Same procedure importing the audio onto the track. Same everything. Except now it's not reliably showing me what I'm hearing.

I've restarted the program a few times. And, I've restarted the computer. All to no avail.

PLEASE HELP ME. I need to get this done today, and I am loath to keep pulling out locks of my hair since I don't want to go bald (and, I need this thing completed by the end of the day).

Thank you for reading this and for any help you can give me.

Marji

[Marji]

anyone??????? I've been at this for NINE HOURS and I can't even get started because of this brand-new problem. PLEASE. I would be SOOOO grateful for some guidance!

[martifingers]

Sounds stressful marji! I don't use Reaper for video but perhaps until someone better comes along I could ask a few things.

1. Do you mean the audio synch is off when you simply add a clip to Reaper and try and play it or does the loss of synch happen at some point in the editing?

2. Is the lag consistent (in time and direction)? Is it possible to just move the audio into synch? (This has happened to me with some video captured from tape.)

3. Is the lag still present if you render the project?

My thinking here is to see if it's just a failure of your system to keep up with the demands on it. I reckon this should be solved when you render "off line" so to speak.
4. Desperate I guess but what about converting to a different format first before editing? Are all your codecs up to date? (I know you said things worked before so maybe this is not helpful.)


Like I say I am no expert but that's all I can think of just off the top of my head. Hopefully someone will come along with better ideas soon.

[Marji]

Originally Posted by martifingers

Sounds stressful marji! I don't use Reaper for video but perhaps until someone better comes along I could ask a few things.

1. Do you mean the audio synch is off when you simply add a clip to Reaper and try and play it or does the loss of synch happen at some point in the editing?

2. Is the lag consistent (in time and direction)? Is it possible to just move the audio into synch? (This has happened to me with some video captured from tape.)

3. Is the lag still present if you render the project?

My thinking here is to see if it's just a failure of your system to keep up with the demands on it. I reckon this should be solved when you render "off line" so to speak.
4. Desperate I guess but what about converting to a different format first before editing? Are all your codecs up to date? (I know you said things worked before so maybe this is not helpful.)


Like I say I am no expert but that's all I can think of just off the top of my head. Hopefully someone will come along with better ideas soon.

Hi Martifingers!! Thank you SO much for responding!!!

I'm not actually editing video. What's out of synch is what I'm hearing in my headphones versus what I'm seeing on the waveform track. In other words, where there should be silence (as indicated by no waveform--just a line indicating nothing) there's sound. And, where there is a waveform, it's not what I'm hearing. Like, laughter appears as a staccato waveform, but I can see that it's way off. This is making it really hard for me to edit things out that need to be removed (like extraneous sounds, prolonged silences, verbal tics, etc.).

It seems to me that it's a performance issue, because what I'm hearing doesn't sound smooth and right. I just don't know how to fix it! Or, even *what* to fix.

I don't know enough about sample rates or that kind of thing.

I wonder: Could it be that my sound card is failing? Could it be that I'm asking an old computer to do too much? Ugh.

I don't know what a "codec" is, so I can't say whether they're up to date or not. Of course, given that I don't know what a codec is, it's very likely that it's not up to date. I'll see what I can learn about that.

Thank you again, Martifingers, for your kind and helpful response!!!! I deeply appreciate the time you took!!!!!

[martifingers]

OK, sorry I misunderstood - it was me not reading your post carefully enough (I was thrown by the bit about "the sound and the visual of the sound".)
I agree it seems like a performance issue. So that should be fixable.

1. First as you are not recording just now you can afford to set a larger "buffer" size. This is very clearly explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-07hWqBmc

2. You can improve performance more generally by optimising your system for audio.
This is very good - https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-...-on-Windows-10

3. You could check if your sound card is failing by using another program (Audacity, even a media player etc.) I think it's probably OK though.

4. Forget about codecs at least for now - they are video specific!

5. Nearly forgot - sample rates. Yes, best to make sure your sample rate is set to the rate of your source files (although I have an idea that Reaper can convert on the fly).
Check here on the Reaper Quick Start guide P9: https://www.reaper.fm/files/0.x/WIP_...ck_Start_Guide

It also seems that you say you can't see some waveforms clearly enough to edit. Are you familiar with how to expand and zoom into the tracks to see what they lokk like?