‘Audio to video synchronization‘ is an extremely important aspect of a multimedia file, because when playing, multimedia players rely on it for properly synchronizing the audio and the video tracks. If the synchronization value is incorrect, then the audio (or the video) is going to be played early or with a delay, compared to the other, which is commonly known as ‘lip-sync’ errors, and it jeopardizes all the excitement, obviously.
For instance, while watching a movie, if you have ever come across situations like gunshot firing sounds coming out before its video scene is displayed, then that is due to an improper audio to video sync. This is a pretty common issue in multimedia files and there are many reasons behind its existence, but for keeping the article clear and simple so that anyone can understand its context without having to go through boring technical details, I will not mention them. Sometimes syncing issues are also caused by audio hardware devices (sound cards, amplifiers or even buggy headphones etc). But this method that I’m going to show you, only works if the sync problem lies with the multimedia file. If it’s hardware based, you should be looking elsewhere.
In any case, the good news is, depending on the OS platform that you are using, there are powerful software multimedia players (VLC, KMPlayer, MPLayer etc) that give you the ability to manually adjust the sync (video or audio) setting, thus you can enjoy the multimedia files without such issues.
The problem with that method however is that it only saves the sync setting temporarily, and it will be lost the next time you play it. Therefore, the most ideal solution is to use a video syncing (synchronization) software to fix it. And the good news is that you don’t have to buy a premium software utility, because thanks to a great (and free) open-source tool called ‘Avidemux’, you can save the audio & video out of sync setting permanently for a lots of video & audio codecs (HD, Blu-ray or even 4K videos!) and container formats (MP4, MKV, FLV, MPEG, AVI etc). ‘Avidemu’ is actually one of the best free audio and video synchronization software that you can use (it’s originally intended purpose is actually to act as a simple video editing & encoding software which comes with in-built filters etc).
‘Avidemux’ also supports multiple operating systems, therefore you don’t have to be only a Windows user to use it either. So if you’re having lip-sync errors in one of your multimedia files, then you can try the below ‘Steps’ for a possible fix. While the results are not always guaranteed, ‘Avidemux’ has a good track record. If this method fails, then I’ve added another method that guarantees results in most situations at the end of the article as well.
Update (2017-07-25): Yes it’s been more than four years since I originally wrote this post (yes, even so, I update it from time to time), but the instructions still work. I just added this ‘update’ just to give some confidence to the readers.
Step 1:
First of all, go to this page, download the package and install it (it has pre-built packages for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux).
Step 2:
Now open ‘Avidemux’ program and load the ‘troublesome’ multimedia file into it.
Step 3:
Before continuing, under the ‘Video Output‘ and ‘Audio Output‘ options, make sure it says ‘Copy’. Also make sure to enable the option called ‘Shift’ (disabled by default), as it is the option that lets you change the audio/video sync setting (shown below).
Any value that you enter here (‘Shift’) should be in milliseconds (1000 milliseconds = 1 second).
Step 4:
Now, if you know what the correct audio/video sync value is then you can skip this and go directly into the end of ‘Step 5‘. If not, click on the ‘Play’ button on ‘Avidemux’ window, so we can observe and see whether the audio comes before or after the video scenes.
How to Sync Audio and Video Correctly?
If the audio comes ‘before’ …
The rule of the thumb is that, if the audio is played before the video, then that means we have to ‘add time’ to it (thus delaying it), so the video track can ‘catch up’ with the audio track. This is done by entering a positive sync value (say 200 milliseconds) into the ‘Shift’ box.
If the audio comes ‘after’ …
If it comes few seconds (or milliseconds) after the video scene is displayed, then it is already delayed, therefore, we have to ‘remove time’ from it, thus making it being played early.
One cannot give you the exact audio/video sync value that is needed as it is something that you will have to guess by observing the video playback. However, in my experience, the usual range is 200 milliseconds to 2000 milliseconds (2 seconds). But there can be occasions where it requires one to enter higher values.
Anyhow, unlike above, this time we have to add a negative value as the sync value, in order to make it load earlier (if you enter ‘-200’, then that means the audio will be loaded 200 milliseconds early).
Step 5:
Let’s assume that the file you loaded had an audio track that was being played with a delay. Then to make it play early, we have to enter a negative value. And unless the sync was so big that you could easily tell that the audio came few seconds after the video, I recommend that you start by entering a small negative (say a ‘-100’ milliseconds) value first.
If it fixes the lip-sync a little, then add another -100 (altogether ‘-200’ milliseconds). Then carry it on until you arrive at the optimal audio/video sync value.
However, before every time you apply a different sync setting, first make sure to ‘Pause’ the playback, then add the new value and resume playback. Otherwise ‘Avidemux’ will not apply that setting to the playback.
Note: This is just an example (of course) and depending on your multimedia file, you will have to figure out whether to use a negative or a positive value, but the procedure is just the same.
Step 6:
Once you are satisfied with your new audio/video sync, now all you have to do is to save the changes. But before doing so, just make sure that under the ‘Output Format’ option, you have selected the proper output format.
For example, if the source file was an AVI file, then make sure to select ‘AVI Muxer’. If it was FLV, then choose ‘FLV Muxer’ etc.
‘Avidemux’ doesn’t have like a huge list there, but it supports saving into AVI, FLV, MP4, MPEG-TS, MKV etc. If your input file has a different format than listed there, then you can choose ‘MKV Muxer’ as it supports storing a huge number of different audio and video codecs.
Note: Please be aware that, if you put audio/video that were previously stored in an AVI file into a MKV container, then sure MKV will store them without any issues. But most commercial hardware devices (iPad for example) will struggle to play it afterwards. This does not concern the computer users as most popular players support playing the awesome MKV format.
Update: Sometimes while trying to fix a MP4 file, though you might be able to successfully fix it and play it in ‘Avidemux’, the corrected sync value might simply be lost, after saving it into a new MP4. If this occurs, then I advice you to try selecting ‘MP4v2 Muxer‘ rather than using the ‘MP4 Muxer‘ (under ‘Output Format‘). I have been able to successfully save the corrected sync settings of certain MP4 files, by simply making that change alone!.
Update 2: If that doesn’t work, then try changing the audio output from ‘copy’ to ‘MP3 Lame’. Yes this will re-encode the audio file, but it shouldn’t take a long time since encoding an audio track isn’t as difficult or time consuming as encoding a video file. I haven’t tried this, but someone called ‘John’ in the comment section let me know of this which has worked for him under Windows XP. I just have a gut feeling that this might work for all those of you who doesn’t seem to get an audio track in the output file after fixing the lip sync issue.
Step 7:
Once all is done, from its menu click on: ‘File’ -> ‘Save’ to save the changes permanently.
Depending on the length of the video, the time it takes will differ, but it should not take much longer (pretty much like copying that file over to somewhere else) since nothing gets re-encoded.
When it is finished saving, you can open that file using any media player, and if the sync value you entered was correct, then it should be playable without any sync issues. Well, that is it!.
Update: Some readers have complained that ‘Avidemux’ software is not always working for them when correcting the audio and video synchronization. So I wrote another method that uses another software tool (it involves two tools actually), which is known to work most of the time for correctly syncing the audio and the video. However, that method only supports saving your input files (you can input almost anything into it AVI, MPEG, MP4, FLV …) into ‘MKV’, which as briefly mentioned above, is not playable on certain hardware based multimedia players.
You can read about it from here.
255 Comments
Saved my life lol Thank You!!!
You’re welcome 🙂 .
God bless you.
Thank you Ozon 🙂 .
Thanks for this great tip with avidemux.
You’re welcome.
This works great still, thanks maye
You’re welcome.
Somehow, a band video taken with a Samsung phone got the audio and video out of sync by about 1/2 sec. Avidemux worked as you described. I had to use the MP4v2 muxer to get it to work. Thanks very much for posting this!
The pleasure is all mine Vince 🙂 .
After quite a few hours over several days running down a bunch of blind alleys, I found this post and I was finally able to fix my audio sync issue. Thanks so much for turning me on to Avidemux! I documented your fix on my own little blog that I use to record solutions that I don’t want to forget. I linked back to this post twice in my own article (on techstrations.blogspot.com), just in case anyone gets to mine before yours. Thanks again!
Thank you Seth.
Hello, thank you for the tutorial but I am looking for a program that will tell ‘ME’ what setting to use to adjust in ms. Do you know of any program that will read the video playing and tell me how much the audio is out of sysnc so I’m not doing it manually? I have one video that I have to adjust -1100 ms but is it better to use -1200 or -1000? not exactly sure, looks too close to me but as a perfectionist, I would like a program to check it for me and tell me exactly how much I have to adjust eg: -1150 ms. Thanks
Hi James,
I don’t think there exists such software utilities as far as I know. Maybe we might see such tool in the future with the development of machine learning, but as of now, as far as I know, there are no such tools.
This seemed so perfect. I fixed the sync in the programme. but apparently my original file had 2 audio tracks and when saved, the new file has two audio tracks at one so it plays the audio both in sync and at its out of sync time together. ;'(
OMG thank you so much. All I needed was to make my video audio sync with my gameplay I recorded. All I found on the internet/YouTube was that HandBrake that doesn’t seem to help. After spending like 3 hours to find solution for it, this actually does the job!
You’re welcome 🙂 .
I get :
Avidemux “too short” error
I changed audio output to (MP3) lame and it fixed my “too short” error and it saved great.
Hello
My audio is 85 min. The movie I want to put it is 90 min. How can I resync the mp3 from 85 to 90 mins?
In SubtitleEdit is in cases like this the Synchronisation/Change Framerate And there: From FrameRate 23 to Frame rate 25 and that is all with subs! But how is it at the audio?
Thx in advance!!!
Never actually felt compelled to leave a feedback to any post like this. Thank you soo much. Lol. Will say…. YOU ARE THE MAN!!!!!!!
You’re welcome Ben.
What if the start of the A/V is out of sync but it’s syncing well towards the end of the file? If I were to use this technique, it will unsync the parts that our syncing well. What do you do if you have my issue?
Hi.
I loaded the media on the Avidemux 2.7.1
When i play the file, i can see the video but cannot hear the audio.
Is there a setting i need to access to set it right.
I am using an iMac with OS 10.9.5.
Is there a problem with this platform ?
Looking forward to any assistance to sort out the problem.
regards,
uMa
Not that I know of, perhaps the file that loaded contains an audio track that is not compatible with Avidemux.
There is a situation AviDemux does not address. Nonlinear audio pairing with a video. Extract a variable bit rate audio and pair the audio with a video file and the sync will be lost. Example, Tke a film such as “Night of the Living Dead”, public domain. Take the same film, dubbed in Russian, in a better resolution and extract the video. Take a lower resolution version and extract the audio. If the audio has a constant bit rate, the pair will match. If the audio has a variable bit rate, AviDemux will not be able to match and the audio in the completed video will be nonlinearly synced to the video segment.
There may be a way, but I haven’t discovered the method yet.
Your steps work correctly when running the video in Avidemux, but they don’t save. In order to get it to save, you have to switch Audio from Copy to some encoding (e.g. AAC (FDK)). Then it will save correctly.
Worked for me saving the MP4 as MP4v2. Thank you!
Sure thing Brett!
Mine saved perfectly as described in the article, it was an MP4 file, saved it as an MP4muxer and everything plays perfectly. Super simple!! Thank you SO much for this!
The pleasure is all my Ely 🙂 .
Thank you so much, it’s really worked. Easy and simple to sync my mkv file. (Tips: REMEMBER 1 second = 1000 ms).
You’re welcome 🙂 .
This worked for me. Thank you so much!