It seems no matter what version of Vegas or Movie studio I use, they all use the same old Sony capture program. I am trying to live capture from a USB camera and separate USB microphone, but the audio is not synching properly. In fact, when I drag the captured file onto my timeline, the audio is longer than the video.
Any thoughts on why this may be happening and any solutions?
Vegas will not capture successfully from a USB device. It is designed for Firewire transfer or device transfer such as an AVCHD device. You need to use the software that came with our USB camera or other software to capture from USB.
The problems are with audio sampling rate, and video framerate.
With cheap devices both are inaccurate.
Say audio has a sampling rate of 44106 Hz instead of 44100 Hz.
And/or video fps is say 25.05 instead of 25.00.
Both inaccuracies are way below the limit that you could notice by eye or your ears.
But the editor (Vegas) interprets them as exatctly 25 fps / 44100 Hz and that causes noticeable audio sync drift.
The solution is capture in short pieces, so that the drift is not noticeable.
Other way could be to ctrl-drag audio to make it the same length as video, preferably with pitch lock to stretch.
This second way works only, if the inaccuracy of framerate/sampling rate is constant.
Say if it's about a jammed VHS capture, the framrate without using a TBC will be extremely varying over time. And if you can involve a TBC, then it's not a cheap device 😉