Why is my audio distorted?

[Jozef]

I’m a new user to Shotcut. But I’ve done lots of work with Audacity for audio and Nero for video. I have a video recorded with a Canon cam corder. It plays fine on VLC media player, no audio distortion. It plays fine on Nero video. When I load it into ShotCut the audio sounds like maybe there is some kind of timing thing or dropped bits or just plain distorted. I’ve looked in the settings to see if I could find a reason, but no luck so far. Help.

[brian]

It would be good if we had more information about the files create by your Canon camcorder. What is the file format, codec and framerate? Is the frame rate “variable”? We can see most of this if you can share a screenshot of the video and audio tabs of the properties panel.

You might want to try to convert the file and see if it behaves better for editing. Here is a relevant post about that:

Dolby Digital AC-3 Crackling at start

Can you please post a screenshot of your “About” screen? (Help->About Shotcut) .ts files are difficult for frame seeking and can be prone to error. Perhaps the crackling is caused by poor seeking. Does the problem persist if you perform “Convert To Edit Friendly” on the source file and then export the converted file? [image]

[Jozef]

Okay. Here’s a screen shot of that. When I tried the link it said it was private.

[shotcut]

More than likely you are experiencing an unsatisfactory playback (preview) problem that Shotcut is notorious for especially with high frame rate (>30 fps). You should make a test export and play that outside Shotcut to let us know if it is an in-app preview problem or in the export result.

[Jozef]

Here is a shot of the About screen

[Jozef]

Is there any plan to fix the preview audio problem??

[brian]

If preview is distorted, but export is good, it is due to performance. Either your computer is underpowered, or your project is too complex. As a solution, Shotcut has Preview Scaling and Proxy Editing

[Jozef]

I am working on a Dell Precision 3530 workstation. It is not underpowered.
My video project is dead simple. The audio sounds good in Nero Video, VLC media player, and OpenShot video editor.
The problem is in ShotCut which is a shame because it has some cool video editing features that the others don’t which is why I wanted to try it.
I just tried Preview Scaling and Proxy editing. No difference. Audio is still very bad.

[brian]

You could also try changing the display method or converting your source files to an edit friendly format (“convert” button in the properties panel).

You should not compare Shotcut playback to simple media players. As a video editor, Shotcut necessarily has a more complex processing pipeline.

Many other users (including myself) experience smooth editing for simple projects and we use proxy and preview scaling for complex projects. Maybe there is just something about your computer that is incompatible with Shotcut.