Audio-dubbing in Premiere Pro - please help me reduce lag!

[Taustin Powers]

My admittedly old but still very functional setup:

- Mac Pro early 2008 8 Core
- 12 GB Ram
- ATI Radeon HD 4870
- Apps running on SSD drive
- Presonus Firebox interface connected via Firewire
- Adobe Premiere Pro CS4

For my project, I need to record new audio dialogue for a movie sequence. My mic is plugged into the Firebox, and I record directly into the audio tracks section in Premiere Pro. Technically, it works, but there is a slight lag. I always need to move the recorded audio section about 1/4 second back so it will be in synch with the video.

Any idea what is causing this lag in my setup? Will a simple hardware upgrade help (ram, video card, interface)? Should I use an entirely different setup to achieve my goal? Is the CPU simply too old/slow for this?

 

[kohlson]

These things can be hard to diagnose, but my hunch is the Presonus FW interface. In my experience, I would start there. You can test this with a mic through a different interface. Other questions: are you running other apps (is there enough free memory)? What OS? What's the boot drive? I noticed you state that the apps are located on an SSD, but the FW drivers are running through the OS, so if this is on HDD then there could be latency there.

 

[Taustin Powers]

Thanks for your feedback.

Boot drive is the aforementioned SSD. It's almost full, so I need to do some clean-up. OS is Yosemite. I close all other apps, so I doubt memory is the issue.

 

[Ritsuka]

I don't know how much Premiere is optimised for that kind of thing. A audio editor optimised for live recording should perform better.

 

[Taustin Powers]

I don't know how much Premiere is optimised for that kind of thing. A audio editor optimised for live recording should perform better.

Do you have any specific suggestions I should look at?

 

[tjwilliams25]

Adobe has Audition, which ties very closely with the rest of their products, especially Premiere.

 

[Taustin Powers]

Thanks. I'll have to check if that was part of my CS4 package.

 

[mBox]

Premiere is not the best for this as well as other NLEs.

You need something that will handle real time and is made for that.

Sadly Pro Tools is my choice but its not cheap.

I would check into Audition.

Last ADR I had to deal with was done in Pro Tools and it was over 90% of the full feature

I cant imagine trying to do that in an NLE.

 

[Taustin Powers]

I just checked, and my CS4 package doesn't have Audition, but Soundbooth. Would that be a good tool to do this?

 

[mBox]

I just checked, and my CS4 package doesn't have Audition, but Soundbooth. Would that be a good tool to do this?

Yes I would give that a shot.

 

[MarkMoran]

Soundbooth became Audition somewhere around CS6 I believe, and yes - I'd agree that you'll get way better performance from a dedicated audio application than Premiere. Make sure your sampling and bitrate aren't unnecessarily high, too, as that can hamper performance. If there are settings in your audio intervace, make sure that they correspond to what you're recording in software.

If the performance is still lagging, try using an even lighter (on resources, not necessaarily features) program like Audacity. It's great, enormously functional, and free!

Thanks!