Anyone ever run into this?
We just did a :30 commercial spot and delivered it to several outlets for regional broadcast. Most of them accepted our compressed output just fine (an H.264 QT, 1080 @ 29.97, PCM audio) but one outlet kept rejecting the file for being TOO LONG. We measured the file in several programs on the Mac (AE, FCP, QT 7, QT X) and it always came up as exactly 30 seconds every time. Even AE pegged it at 899 frames, so we definitely weren't over.
Today we finally got someone on the phone and he said it was the AUDIO that was running long, not the video. He sent us a screenshot from Vegas Pro (I guess their system is all PC-based) and it showed the video stream at :30.00 and the audio stream at 00:30:29 -- nearly a full second longer than the video! How could this happen? I always thought the length of each stream was identical, so why woudl the audio come out slightly longer?
One clue: the actual AIFF file used in the output comp is itself 00:31 long. I shortened it in the composition to fit within the time, and every setting for 'Duration' that I know of was set for 00:30, but it's like it just ignored the duration on output of the audio and exported the entire length of the track into the audio stream.
Here's my workflow -- I did use other programs to make the file so maybe something else is the culprit:
Finish in AECS6, render out to ProRes 4444 Master @ 23.98; re-import the file and drop into 29.97 comp to correct the frame rate for broadcast, render out to another 4444 Master file @ 29.97; dropped that into Apple Compressor to make H.264 file with PCM audio.
TIA, JVK
