I have determined that this is related to the different ways each camera records the audio.
One clip is from my old but trusty Canon HG21 camcorder, which records audio in stereo at 48 kHz, compressed with Dolby Digital with a 256 kbps data rate.
Another clip is from my new Pentax K-30 DSLR, which records records audio in 16-bit mono at 32 kHz in uncompressed PCM - with a 512 kbps data rate.
If I re-render the Pentax clip with PowerDirector, the new file has audio at 48 kHz. I have also attached that re-rendered file.
At that point, I am able to synchronize it with the Canon clip in the multicam mode.
I feel that this bug seriously reduces the usability of the multicam mode. Essentially, I am forced to re-render every clip from my Pentax camera for no good reason. I'm never going to use the low quality 32 kHz audio anyway for production, I rely on it only for synchronizing in multicam mode.
The bug doesn't just affect cameras with different audio sampling rates, but also one camera with an audio file as well. I usually record audio separately, and use a 96 kHz sampling rate in the original recording. I didn't record separate audio for this test, though. But if I mix my separate audio to a 96 kHz WAV file, PowerDirector cannot synchronize it with any video clip in the multicam mode, as none of my cameras use a 96 kHz sampling rate for their audio.
As I have found, PowerDirector currently requires the audio sampling rate to match between all video and audio clips in the multicam mode. Surely this is not an intended limitation of multicam mode. If so, it would be documented somewhere, and the program would also warn the user that the clips can't be synchronized instead of trying to do an audio analysis that has no hope of ever completing.
IMO, the audio analysis algorithm that PowerDirector uses for synchronizing is faulty, and should be sampling-rate independent. Please fix it !
Filename | pentax-redo.m2ts |
|
Description | Clip from Pentax K-30 DSLR, re-rendered with PD for 48 kHz audio |
|
Filesize |
35003 Kbytes
|
|
Downloaded: | 377 time(s) |
Filename | 00045.MTS |
|
Description | Clip from Canon HG21 camcorder |
|
Filesize |
31512 Kbytes
|
|
Downloaded: | 346 time(s) |
Filename | IMGP6185.MOV |
|
Description | Clip from Pentax K-30 DSLR |
|
Filesize |
16145 Kbytes
|
|
Downloaded: | 354 time(s) |
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jan 13. 2014 07:31
Intel i7-5820k @ 4.4 GHz
32GB DDR4 RAM
Gigabyte nVidia GTX 960 4GB
480 GB Patriot Ignite SSD (boot)
2 x 480 GB Sandisk Ultra II SSD (striped)
6 x 1 TB Samsung 860 SSD (striped)
2 x LG 32UD59-B 32" 4K
Asus PB238 23" HD (portrait)