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I have video clips from two cameras. They were recorded in AVCHD, which I've imported as .MTS in Adobe Premiere Pro.

The clips taken from one camera works fine. The others don't play audio.

I've investigated into the complimenting .xmp files, and realized the following string was missing from those without audio:

 xmpDM:audioSampleType="Compressed"

When I open these AVCHD videos in Quicktime, they work perfectly fine with audio.

How do I fix this and make audios from the video clips play in Premiere Pro?

Edit: Here's what I got from MediaInfo.

From the video clip that plays audio:

General
ID : 0 (0x0)
Complete name : /Volumes/LACIE 3TB/Film Projects/Anime Salon/001_clannadas/footage/front/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM/00000.MTS
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 73.4 MiB
Duration : 25s 491ms
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 24.1 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 24.0 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=2, N=15
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 25s 459ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 21.6 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 22.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.348
Stream size : 65.5 MiB (89%)

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Format settings, Sign : Signed
Muxing mode : Blu-ray
Codec ID : 128
Duration : 25s 525ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 4.67 MiB (6%)

Text
ID : 4608 (0x1200)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PGS
Codec ID : 144
Duration : 24s 960ms

From the video clip that doesn’t play audio:

General
ID : 0 (0x0)
Complete name : /Volumes/LACIE 3TB/Film Projects/Anime Salon/001_clannadas/footage/closeup/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM/00001.MTS
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 131 MiB
Duration : 48s 967ms
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 22.5 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 24.0 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=2, N=15
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 48s 982ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 21.3 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 22.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.343
Stream size : 124 MiB (95%)

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 49s 56ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 256 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 1.50 MiB (1%)

Text
ID : 4608 (0x1200)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : PGS
Codec ID : 144
Duration : 48s 483ms

It appears that recording format is different, PCM (playing) vs AC-3 (not playing).

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2
  • Have a look at the tool "Mediainfo" its available for all plattforms and tells you a lot about the internals of a media file. It would help the debugging if you could post the output of the text view from that tool.
    – timonsku
    Commented Jun 27, 2014 at 17:59
  • 1
    @ProfessorFartSparkle Added output text in new edit.
    – ric.row
    Commented Jun 27, 2014 at 18:26

2 Answers 2

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2

It sounds like there is a problem with your Dolby Decoder for the AC3 audio stream. If you are on a trial or pirated copy then you may not have been able to activate the AC3 decoder that normally comes with Premiere. (Adobe has to pay Dolby for each copy used.) If you are on a legit copy, something may have become corrupt with the Dolby decoder. Try doing a deactivation of Premiere (Help...Deactivate) on your system and reactivate and see if it manages to activate the Dolby Decoder.

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3
  • If the problem persists I would completely uninstall premiere and install it again. I had similar issues in the past with the royalty codecs.
    – timonsku
    Commented Jun 27, 2014 at 19:46
  • Well, I do use a trial version... Is there any workaround? The video clips are viewable on VLC and Quicktime, and how come not on PP?
    – ric.row
    Commented Jun 28, 2014 at 1:57
  • 1
    @ric.row - unfortunately, Dolby is a licensed audio format. That means that anyone who uses the decoder has to pay Dolby royalties to use it. Quicktime uses just a decoder and Apple picked up the tab. Premiere on the other hand uses the encoder/decoder which costs more (retail price is like $10 or $15 a seat). Due to the way that Dolby licenses it, they can't give it out with the trial without footing that bill, so they only activate the Dolby codec on purchased copies. It might work to buy your own copy of the Dolby codec (it used to not be included) but I'm not sure. Probably not.
    – AJ Henderson ♦
    Commented Jun 28, 2014 at 5:25
2

As AJ Henderson already said you can not use the Dolby codec in a trial version of Premiere due to licensing costs on Adobe's side. What you can do to circumvent this is trancode the audio with a different tool like FFmpeg. With ffmpeg you can use this command below to transcode the audio to PCM but leave the video untouched. I chose avi for the container instead as its a more generic container that isn't so picky and usually well taken by premiere.

To specify the TS format instead, encode with -f mpegts.

ffmpeg -i input.mts -c:v copy -c:a pcm_s16le -f avi output.avi
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4
  • Does FFMPEG have a dolby decoder?
    – AJ Henderson ♦
    Commented Jun 28, 2014 at 16:52
  • Well of course not the Dolby decoder/encoder but the OSS implementation of an AC3 decoder/encoder which is fully compatible with AC3 that was encoded with the Dolby encoder.
    – timonsku
    Commented Jun 28, 2014 at 17:21
  • Just like x264 and h264, usually you would need to pay for an h264 encoder as well.
    – timonsku
    Commented Jun 28, 2014 at 17:22
  • Ah, makes sense. I didn't realize there was an open source capable implementation since I thought Dolby was patent encumbered, but good to hear it isn't.
    – AJ Henderson ♦
    Commented Jun 28, 2014 at 18:50

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