I have separate video and audio files of various projects that are ready to go within Encore without transcoding. The audio files are in stereo wav format.
I thought I would save disk space by converting all the wav files to m4a files using a little program called Max. Works well. Space saving can be up to 75%. However, when I import the m4a files into Encore, they are very slightly shorter than the original wav files and do not match the video files -- the video files last longer than the audio. Typical difference is a fraction of a frame (at 24 fps), and is not noticeable when only one video/audio pair are imported.
However, when I recently tried importing 20 video/audio pairs, for a total Encore Timeline of about 40 minutes, the small difference already mentioned added up to a noticeable audio-sync problem towards the end of the Timeline.
When I used Max to convert the m4a files back to wav and then imported the same series of video-audio pairs into Encore, the problem disappeared. So, it looks to me like Encore is incorrectly handling m4a files.
I have uploaded three test files to: http://www.mediafire.com/download/9bsf984hwqidkke/m4a%20Encore%20Test. zip. Inside the 200 kB zip are three 8-minute, blank audio files: the original wav file, the m4a, and the m4a converted back to wav. If anyone would like to confirm the problem, download the zip, import into Encore, and drag the three files into a timeline. The m4a on my system is slightly shorter than the other two.
Any suggested workaround, other than converting back to wav?
Is there a lossless audio format that Encore recognises other than m4a?