VideoStudio 11 video/audio problem

[KatieLM]

Hi - thanks in advance for any help!

I'm a new user so I hope my question doesn't turn out to be completely ridiculous. I am trying to create a project that includes video clips. WHen I play as individual clips, I have sound. WHen I play as a project, I have no sound.

I have tried to split the audio - I only get a fraction of a second of sound in the voice track.

I have played around with mutes, system volume, program volume, clip volume.
I've looked all over the web, in the manual, in the help files...

Any ideas? Am I overlooking something really obvious???
Katie

[Ken Berry]

Hi Katie and welcome to the forums!

I am afraid, though, that you haven't provided much useful information for us to go on. We don't know anything about your video, its properties or where it came from. We know nothing about your computer set-up. Heck, we don't even know which version of Video Studio you are using. So please look at the top sticky post on this forum "Please Read This Before Posting", and get back with the information sought, and I am sure someone will jump in to help.

[KatieLM]

Ok... hopefully I'll do better this time.
VideoStudio 11 (in the subject line )

Can't tell you much about the camera the clips came from as I didn't take the video - Pretty sure it was a Hard Disk Camera and a good one at that. The files for the clips are .dv and range from 200Mb to 3Gb, and I know they do have audio as they play fine on QuickTime or similar.

Using Vista on a very new (3 days) Toshiba Intel Core2 Duo 2.40GHz, 2GB memory, over 200GB free space. 512Mb Graphics

At this stage, the clips are all that I have in the project - there is nothing else added to it yet.

Let me know if there's anything else that is needed for a diagnosis.
Katie

[lancecarr]

Hi Katie,
Ken is probably asleep now so I'll chip in a little here at least.
If the files have the .dv extension that means they are DV AVI files but have been processed at some point on a Mac. Macs use that extension whereas Windows use the .avi extension.
This is probably why Quicktime eats them up no problem!
Just take one of the clips and copy it to play with. Change the extension from .dv to .avi
Load it into an empty timeline and see if that works.
If not load the .dv clip into an empty timeline and go to Share and Create video file. Choose to output to avi and select dv type 1. Load the new file and see if that works.
If not hang tight cos' help is on the way! Most likely from someone else!

[Ken Berry]

Thanks Lance. And of course you are quite right about them having been captured by a Mac. Sadly, though, my own hands-on experience with .dv files is that it is NOT just a simple matter of changing the extension to .avi. In fact, I had to use QT Pro to convert them to DV/AVI playable on a PC. But note you require the Pro version of QT... There may be other programs out there which can do the conversion, but I don't know offhand what they might be...

I didn't try your second suggested work-around, so cannot comment, apart from saying it is at least worth a try...

[lancecarr]

Yikes Ken, I didn't realize the difference was that proprietary.
I was wondering for the sake of the OP whether you still have access to those original .dv files?
Perhaps running them through SUPER might do the trick?

[Ken Berry]

Sadly, I no longer have them, and I only wiped them about two weeks ago. They were only old P4 which is now being used for other purposes. So I went through it and wiped all unnecessary files. The .dv ones unfortunately were among them. And my sole source of Mac-processed .dv files is currently in Switzerland, no doubt taking more!

I am also unaccountably having problems opening SUPER, just to be able to see if .dv is a listed format. It appears among my Processes in Task Manager but never actually starts. First time that has happened...

Looking at the SUPER website, I don't see .dv listed, but then again I don't see the PC version of DV/AVI listed either, yet I know it does that! So all I can suggest is that Katie give it a try if she doesn't have QT Pro...

[Ken Berry]

Just downloaded the latest version of Super. But, like the website, it does not specifically mention .dv as an acceptable format. But it makes the point that its list is not definitive.

[KatieLM]

To add to the description of my problem - I can see that (in properties) the video track is 385.4 seconds while the audio is only 0.201seconds.

I have no idea why this would be the case - the original clip is certainly full of audio.

Does this help with a diagnosis anyone?

Katie

[Ken Berry]

Katie -- sadly, no. The problem is that Video Studio cannot read the files correctly in their current format as they are made for editing in a Mac computer. So you have to convert them to PC-readable DV/AVI format which will have the .avi extension. You can definitely convert them if you have Quick Time Pro version. But you might want to download a free conversion program called SUPER from http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html and see if that will also do the job...

[KatieLM]

Ken - thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it.
I've downloaded Super but it just mystifies me... I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it. I tried to convert it to a .avi file but 1. I'm not sure that I've done it correctly, and 2. the converted file would not open in videostudio. I'm really confused... any help?

Katie

[Ken Berry]

As it explains on the face of the program, you simply drag a .dv file into the space lower down on the interface where it says DRAG A VALID MULTIMEDIA FILE HERE. And up top LEFT you select, first, DV as the output container, then in the next little window, 'DV Digital Video' under 'Select an output video codec'.

[cterlich]

My computer - Dell Pentium 4, 3 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HDD

Hi, just to throw a spanner in the works - it sounds like I have the exact same problem except my video files actually do have the avi extension already. When I play a file in clip mode I can hear the audio no worries, but as soon as I try to adjust the volume or play it in project mode I cant hear anything. I have the same problem in Video Studio 7 and a trial version of Video Studio 11 PLUS which I recently downloaded. Sometimes when I am trying it in Video Studio 7 it comes up with this message: "Unable to access the audio codec driver" (I have video studio 7 on a much older, slower computer - dont know if that could be to do with it?), but most of the time it just plays the video clip without any sound.

If any of this is helpful these are the audio properties:
compression: MPEG Audio Layer 2
attributes: 22050 Hz, 64kbps, mono.

and the video properties:
compression: xvid MPEG-4 Codec

Windows Movie Maker has no problems dealing with it. If I put a clip in Windows movie maker and save it as a movie so that it changes format it then works in Video Studio no worries. But obviously I dont want to have to do this for all my clips everytime.

Any ideas? I hope the information I've supplied is useful. I appreciate your help. Thanks,
Chris.

[Ken Berry]

Welcome to the forum!

Unfortunately there are over 800 different types of video which use the extension .avi and yours happens to use the highly compressed XVid codec, which is an mpeg-4 type format virtually identical to DivX. So your problem is not at all similar to Katie's, I am afraid.

But it is, obviously, still a question of having the right codec. So the best starting point is to ask whether you have installed the latest version of the XVid codec on your computer? It is freeware and a simple google search will find it for you...

[cterlich]

Thanks Ken. I tried downloading the latest xvid codec but unfortunately it doesnt seem to have made any difference. I also tried downloading some of the other audio codecs as suggested on the Xvid website but no luck so far.