Fixing a troublesome video file

Sometimes Video Studio will give an error message that says "Failed to upload" for a video file – and sometimes a video file refuses to upload into Video Studio and then there are occasions when an uploaded video file seems to be correct and actually even plays correctly when you view it in the Asset Browser but when you do a preview or generate the sound jumps and is out of sync with the video.

More often than not this is because the file has some format error, we do extensive checks on uploaded files to ensure that they will be able to render correctly.

A problem with this is that a lot of these files look correct and displays as they should on your computer's desktop – since the operating systems take care of a lot of these issues for the user.

When a file fails to upload there isn't anything you as a user can do within Video Studio to remedy the problem. You will have to fix the file itself – and for doing that, we suggest you use the free software Handbrake. With HandBrake, you can convert a file to a new file quite quickly and get a "fresh" version of the file, a version that hopefully will pass the format check in Video Studio.

Many of these issues arises from the use of certain smartphone video apps – primarily the popular Filmic Pro – and most likely has something to do with a thing called Variable Frame Rate, which causes these files to be misinterpreted by the Video Studio backend. We are working on a fix for this issue in the system, but in the meantime, if you run into this problem you could most likely mitigate it on your own by doing a Handbrake conversion with these specific settings that hopefully will purge the issues and let you upload the converted video file and use that with greater success.

NOTE!

This problem can also occur using the built-in camera app on iPhones when shooting in 1080p 30 frames/second – so we strongely urge you to change your camera settings to 1080p 60 frames/second. This setting can be found under "Camera" in your iPhone settings. 

Fix the problem

1. Download and install Handbrake. And here's the thing. The latest version of Handbrake, 1.2.0 has an error doing the encoding. So you will have to download the previous version, 1.1.2. This download page you can find here. Or direct download links for Windows here – and MacOS here.  Do not update your Handbrake version without reverting to this support article to see it is OK to use the newer versions.

2. Download this preset, from this link. (This preset will be called "Video Studio 1080p Error Conversion (YYmm)" and the last part of that will ensure that you have the latest version. The latest version at this moment is called "1901".

3. Import the preset into Handbrake and convert the file – instructions below in the image. Once the preset is imported you will find it in your list and do not have to import it again. In the small preset menu visible in the image below you will also find the option of making a certain preset "Default", which can be convenient.

4. Upload the converted file to the Asset Browser.
5. Use "Change Asset" on each slide it's used to drop it into place with all settings intact.
6. Do a preview to see if the problem is mitigated.