Sound Sync Bug - Help

[the_safireeye]

I use windows 11, Pencil 2d 64x

When I import sound, even thought it’s playing the audio won’t play for a few seconds, and the end part of the audio gets cut off. And then after exporting when I play the video the animation appears to be off sync despite being synced in the pencil 2d file.

[JoseMoreno]

@the_safireeye Hi, sorry to hear about your issue.

Please do the following to help us review the problem:

1. Download the latest development build that is appropriate for your operating system from the following site

Nightly Builds

2. Create a new file and reimport the sound (it won’t work if you don’t import it again since the sound loading functionality is different in recent versions) If doing that works better let us know.
3. Now open your actual animation file, delete the previous sound and reimport the sound again with this new build.
4. If the latter works better as well please let us know.

Be aware that for these development builds, you should not scrub over a sound first before trying to troubleshoot if the file is being cutoff incorrectly.

I personally found a bug on the nightly build a few days ago. If you move the timeline cursor partially over a sound and then go back to the start and press the play button you will only hear the “rest” of the sound.

On the other hand the sound sync perception is not exactly a bug, but is also not an ideal situation.

For a tutorial on how to import sounds, and do proper lip sync / sound sync with theaudio scrubbing feature please check out this unlisted tutorial I made for another user.

Pencil2D sound sync explanation + troubleshooting

Lip sync explanation up until minute 08:00, the next section is for troubleshooting tips on sound issues related to scrubbing. Hopefully you won’t need those.

Please read the known issues section on this thread for a simple explanation:

[Guide] How to import sound into Pencil2D

Pencil2D’s sound import options A. Go to the topbar menu File > Import > Sound B. Go to menu Layer > New Sound Layer C. Press CTRL + ALT + W D. Press the Layers Plus button on the left part of the timeline widget. Option A will create a sound layer and skip to step and automatically. Other options will only create the layer so you have to follow the steps in…

For more in-depth explanation please read the reply below:

Regarding audio delay on playback

Playback in Pencil2D works by caching about 1024mb (default) worth of images constructed by the layering of each image track, and then plays it back as smoothly as it cans.

This process however often takes a bit to populate the RAM with the cached images, so you often need to play it 2 or 3 times before it plays smoothly (though I don’t know why it takes a few tries tho )

Pencil2D audio is not currently going to sync during playback regardless of what you do. This happens with every other software as well.

That said other apps work around this by implementing an intermediate “preview” window with pre-rendering techniques that shows a real-time, but low-res version of the animation.

Some apps call this intermediate file or process: playblast, proxy preview or cached pre-render. There are unfortunate yet deep tech reasons for this but it all boils down to:

The more layers and frames you have, the less synced the audio will be. Period.

If you want you hear your synced audio, you currently have to use the audio scrubbing feture (i.e moving the playhead / timeline cursor over the timeline where a sound is laid out) or export a low resolution video from the app for more involved workflows

Note: Pencil2D has a command console access to enable headless rendering. This could be used along scripting features in other apps to automate previews.

[the_safireeye]

thank you! i’ve found that while using the new build doesnt exactly work (audio still starting late and cutting off at the end) the scrubbing works :)

[JoseMoreno]

@the_safireeye Hi! sorry for the late reply. If you are able to would you mind sending us a copy of the audio file that gives you this issue along a PCLX file with the actual file loaded? You can load PCLX files here and AFAIK you can also upload *.mp3 and *.wav files in this forum

it can be an empty file with only the audio file in it as long as it doesn’t work for you so we can investigate.

Thank you for your patience and if you have any other question let us know.

[the_safireeye]

unfortunately i am a new user so i can not add attachments :( if you would like, i can upload it to a gdrive and send the link here?

[JoseMoreno]

@the_safireeye Ah sorry! it is a measure to prevent spammers which we have always had a rough time with.

If uploading to GDrive is easy for you, that be great. If possible I’d only ask you share us the link and set it so anyone with the link can view the files. That way the devs would not be required to use email accounts to ask for access.

If for some reason it’s not possible you can also use https://wetransfer.com and their anonymous link setting, it’s easy and it will auto delete the content in 7 days AFAIK.

Thanks in advance!

[the_safireeye]

sound sync problem.pclx - Google Drive here it is