Audacity Forum

Howdy,

I'm using 1.3.14 with Win7. It was running fine... until I changed some of my sound settings on my sound card. Before that, Audacity was using "What U Hear" for the microphone recording... since the sound card changes, it's now using Microphone (USB Audio).

The problem is that my recorded length is 33:08, but when I export it to an mp3 and import it into Corel VideoStudio X3... it's running at 33:34. Audacity, iTunes, and WMP all show it as 33:08.

The file is an mp3, 128kbps, 44100 Hz, stereo.

I cross-posted this on the VideoStudio forum as well, but figured it couldn't hurt to post here also.

My guess is that Audacity, iTunes, and WMP are right.
Does Corel VideoStudio X3 require that you use MP3 format, or can you use WAV format?

I should be able to use any conventional audio format. I use mp3 because of the small file size; not too concerned about the potential quality loss.

However, I deleted the raw recording before figuring all this out... so I can't try exporting to wav. That was pretty dumb of me.

I would guess that Corel VideoStudio X3 re-encodes the audio when it renders the final video. If it does this then it would be better to use uncompressed WAV format during the production. Your "source" files can be safely deleted when the final video is complete and safely backed up.

Tasselfoot wrote:However, I deleted the raw recording before figuring all this out... so I can't try exporting to wav. That was pretty dumb of me.

That's a shame, but I bet we've all done that at some time

To check if the problem is with how VideoStudio handles MP3s, try generating a 10 minute sine tone in Audacity (generate menu). Export two copies - one as a WAV file and one as a 128 kbps CBR MP3. Import these into VideoStudio. Are they the right length?

Hmmmmmm.

Very interesting! The WAV is 10:00.00, but the MP3 is 10:00.18

So I guess if I just use wav, I shouldn't have an issue moving forward. Thanks.

Still doesn't solve the issue is why, all of a sudden, this started happening... I've been doing the exact same procedures for years, across multiple PCs. Tweaking a few settings on my soundcard shouldn't cause the issue in X3, and none of my settings there were changed.

Regardless, guess I'm using wav from now on.

MP3 is a video sound format. It's full family name is MPEG1, Layer 3, a video format. It will genetically always try to land on specific video frame boundaries, frequently making music longer than you think it should be.

Koz