Rhythmic popping when 2 audio sources mixed

Steve-Southwell wrote on 2/6/2021, 12:17 PM

I have a short mp4 video where I recorded myself playing some music. I can listen to this recording, and the levels all sound fine. There is no clipping, and it's very clean.

I take that same video and lay it down into a Movie Edit track, and play it by itself, and it still sounds fine in the previewer.

Now, I take a clip from that same video and place it in the track beneath that and sync up the audio to get a multi-part harmony.

Keep in mind, both clips sound just fine separately.

When put together, there is a periodic rhythmic clicking or popping noise that ruins the audio. It doesn't seem to correspond at all to the rhythm of the music or the audio level in the previewer.

Even when it is exported out, the clicking is still there, but worse. https://www.magix.info/us/media/odd-clicking-noise-in-audio-when-2-tracks-together--1266789/

The odd thing is that I had downloaded the trial version of MEP and did the same thing just fine numerous times. Then I paid for it and installed the real license code, and now it's doing this. I don't know if it's related.

I've tried fiddling with frame rates and re-recording. At this point, everything seems hosed, and I'm not sure what to try next.

Movie Edit Pro v20.0.1.73 (UDP3)

Windows 10 Pro, 64 bit, 16GB Ram, Intel i7 @1.9GHz

Audio on this ThinkPad is the built-in Realtek High Definition Audio.

Comments

PATIENT-X wrote on 2/6/2021, 1:57 PM

Audio popping/clicking can occur when putting two clips next to each other without any audio transition because the last sample of the first clip might be very different from the first sample of the second clip - which causes a pop. If this applies to you, try adding audio fade in/out filters to the clips. Or apply a transition.

Have you tried to adjust volume level on each clip as you are doubling up on clips, what about normalize?

I see you are a new member, welcome.👍

Steve-Southwell wrote on 2/6/2021, 2:22 PM

To clarify, the clips are not next to each other, they're separate tracks playing together. Not sequential, but simultaneous.

I did try the "normalize" feature, but I'm not sure I totally understand what that's supposed to do, other than cranking the volume all the way up.

CubeAce wrote on 2/6/2021, 2:38 PM

@Steve-Southwell

Looking at your provided clip, this is not audio clipping but an audio buffer under-run problem. The sound is being delivered in small blocks or 'packets' of sound rather than a constant stream of data.

Read page 72 of the user manual for how this works. You need to alter the buffer size up to about 16384 but I would suggest not running more than 2 buffers. I would not use the DirectSound option but the Wav driver for this.

Ray.