Audio sync becoming unsynced
Hello, I am currently trying to edit a short film in Premiere. I typically edit in Davinci Resolve, but for this project, I am being forced to edit in Premiere. So ultimately, I hope this is just a user error problem, and I am doing something incorrectly.
After I imported my footage and location-sound audio files into the timeline, I am now trying to sync them up and for the life of me, I can't figure out how to sync the video to the audio properly. First, I select my video file & my audio file, then I use the automatic sync option to sync the two, and it does ALMOST sync the files well, but the sync is off by about half of a frame. Not usually a big deal, I often have to manually adjust the audio clip a little bit anyway. So, since the sync difference is less than a frame, I turn on the show audio time units timeline setting so that I can more finely sync up the audio to the video, and then they are synced up. Next, I want to attach the video and audio clips together so that I can move them around and edit with them, but whenever I move or nudge the clips at all, the audio becomes out of sync and jumps to the nearest frame.
I've tried grouping, merging, & linking the clips together, and I get the same effect. I've tried only linking the one video clip to one audio clip, and it's the same. I've looked at many tutorials, and I couldn't find any that talk about this issue. They show syncing up the two, but I can't move it without it becoming unsynced? I'm really confused. Is this really just a workflow problem? Does everyone just sync their audio at the end of the whole process after editing?? Am I doing something wrong?
-I am using a Windows 11 computer running Premiere 2026 (26.2)
-My Footage is in .MTS format, 23.976 fps
-My audio is in .wav, mono, 48.000 kHz, 24 bit
-My sequence is in 23.976 fps