Samsung SC-MX20 Audio Sync Problem

I continue to monitor the traffic that comes to this blog, always on the lookout for problems that people are having with their Samsung Sc-Mx20. One that keeps coming up that I wasn't sure what to do with is "audio sync". I wasn't really sure what the seeker meant. Is it because they are trying to convert the video and then it's out of sync on the new video? I had that issue and thus I added the option to re-sync the audio to my converter program "The Fix".

But today I was cataloging my videos from 2009, preparing to create DVDs to give to family members when I came across the problem that I think others may be having.

The very first video I recorded with my Samsung SC-MX20 was my three-year-old son's birthday back in March. I had just gotten the camera and I hadn't even had a chance to play with any of the settings or anything. So, I just pointed it and shot. I didn't have any desire to put it on YouTube or anything, so I archived the file to disk and just forgot about it.

Now, not quite a year later, I dug out the file to prepare it for editing and I found the issue.

The clip is about 3 minutes long. At the beginning, the sound is ahead of the video. At the end, the sound is behind the video, and for a little bit in the middle, it seems in sync. This is on the original video that came right out of the camera, no converting, no editing. I thought "that's odd", since I have not had this issue on any other videos. Then I started looking at the other original files and found that the ALL have this issue. Had I not noticed it before?

Being a geek, I have several computers at my house. Being a POOR geek, none of them are the newest latest greatest screaming fast thing, they're all off the shelf, Wal-Mart, Craigslist specials. My desktop computer, the one with the big monitor that I like to use for video, was one of the first to run Vista. I hate it, but it works for most things. It was on this computer that I noticed the sync problem.

I took the birthday party file and tried viewing it on my much older Windows XP laptop. And guess what? It works perfectly (in terms of audio, the original files still have the interlacing and the aspect ratio issues).

So. If you have problems with the video from your Samsung SC-MX20 seeming to be out of sync, and you are using Vista, the problem is probably not with your camera. It's Vista. If you have access to another computer, try playing it on there. The file is fine, it's the way your computer is playing it back.

I'm seriously thinking of getting rid of Vista and going with Linux on that machine. The only issue is, I have yet to find a video editing program that is as simple as Windows Movie Maker.