Does unlocked audio explain why my audio loses sync in Adobe Premiere (or Final Cut Pro, or…)?
Well, yes and no. Adobe Premiere 4.2 and earlier versions had a historical problem with synchronous audio playback from the timeline. Premiere 4.2 audio can drift regardless of whether the source was locked or unlocked. This particular problem is variously attributed to the difference between 30 Hz and the 29.97 Hz that NTSC runs at; the inability of an AVI or QuickTime file to maintain synchronous audio; the weakness of the Windows VFW subsystem at really keeping things in sync, and the phases of the moon (if anyone knows what’s really going on, this author would appreciate being appropriately enlightened). Premiere 5.1 fixed 4.2’s audio sync problems. Certainly I had no problems with Premiere 5.1 on Windows editing clips up to 9:30 in length (the 2 Gig limit of that early AVI-based system), nor have I heard of any such problems in discussions with other people. If, however, you’re capturing longer takes, or entire tapes, to disk in one pass, you can run into unlocked audio sync drift
