Hello,

I am using Maya 2012 x64 on Windows 7 x64. I have issues with audio playback. Sound file is loaded into the timeline, and everything seems fine. However, when I press play, the audio is delayed by about a half-second relative to the waveform display.

For example, a peak on the waveform display appears at frame 100. When I play the timeline, the peak is audible at about frame 110 or so.

When scrubbing, the waveform and the audible sound are perfectly in sync. It’s only an issue in real-time playback.

Needless to say, this makes it quite difficult to synchronize any animation to audio. All audio is heard about a half-second late.

I have two types of audio hardware on my system: cheapo motherboard audio and an M-Audio external FW410 interface. Changing the default audio playback device in Windows does not solve the Maya problem.

Adjusting the offset values in the audio node does not solve the problem, it appears that the issue is internal to Maya’s audio playback engine.

Aaron

So I guess no one else is experiencing this issue?

I did some more testing and the audio delay is more like five frames rather than ten. But it’s quite noticeable and problematic for animating to existing audio.

im sure you would have already checked, but you are playblasting the same fps your animating yeah?

Lee Dunham | Character TD
ldunham.blogspot.com

Well… Half a sec is a lot. Nevertheless,

(some) autodesk developers are not able to simply sync an audiotrack on a image sequence/avi/mov.

Audio gets out of sync on the moment a preview/playblast is made.
(We tested the problem thoroughly using click tracks etc.)

If you export an avi without audio and manually paste the audiotrack afterwards (eg in quicktime) everything syncs well.

Because FCheck does paste the audio onto a pre-rendered image seq it seems to work well
...at first sight… Aaaaarrrgggghhhh!
If your sequence doesn’t start at frame 0, eg Fr050-Fr100 the audio will start at Fr000 instead of Fr050 when the sequence loops… (very smart!)

Audio sync is a simple but `ultra important feature` for Animation soft !!! (has anyone ever heard of that thing called lip sync ?)
We would advise `some` autodesk developers to do `just a little more in depth testing`. Its obvious that some are satisfied too easily.
Such ‘dumb’ bugs make an otherwise great soft look ridiculous. (and their colleagues who are doing a wonderful job)

As it is now, out of the box playblasts are useless for lipsync… Shame on you AD.
We think the problem originated in Maya 2008 and has been there ever since. FCheck and audio never worked well with sequences that do not start from Fr000 or Fr001.

A solution is to sync the audio manually using eg. quicktime pro.
Try explaining that to your average animator… Because we (the TD’s) feel vicarious shame we dove into the quicktime sdk to automate this task and make it seamless for the animators.

Excuse my sarcasm but the problem is so ridiculous that it’s better to laugh with it than to cry about it. Reporting bugs to AD rarely resolves anything so maybe mocking them… (though we don’t believe so)

My advice is not to use Maya for your audio/animation compiling.

At the risk of looking like someone with a tremendous bias, try Adobe AfterEffects. Yes, it is a lot of extra work when you have to make a change, but it does work. If there is a general lag problem, you can adjust it quickly. (specific timing issues have to be done the long, slow, clumsy way).
It is fairly simple to use (you don’t actually need to take a class to get the basics working), a common program, available on both major platforms, and it can be bought for cheap if you are a current student at any school.