voice over stopped working VS X4

[phnxrsngbr]

Hi everyone,

I hope someone can help! I've been doing a simple voice-over for a project I'm working on. I've used the same mic for all 3 versions of VS I've owned, X2 through X4. X3 didn't work at all and now, in the middle of my project the recording sound for X4 has stopped working. So, during my voice over the sound has decreased steadily until you can't hear my voice at all. I've remained at the same distance from my hand-held mic but when I test it in VS there is now no movement on the bar, at all. However, I can hear the mic through the speakers, just as I could before. This is very frustrating. I've gone back to the RealTec dialog box and it's all the same as it was before so I don't know what's happened, but I can't finish anything and I'm nearly at the end.

Any ideas? I'm using Win7 and went to check the levels in the volumn mixer, but there's no mic level that I can find in Win7 control panel, only speakers, system sounds, Realtek HD Audio Manager, and a firefox plugin.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I need to finish the project today.

Thanks very much!

[mrbobbell]

Based on the fact that you are racing to meet a deadline and you "... can hear the mic through the speakers," I would use a free audio application such as Audacity to record your voice track separately from VideoStudio.

Then, I would export the track with Audacity as a .wav file (if you have a PC) and drop the .wav file into your project's VideoStudio timeline as one of the audio tracks. (Alternatively, you could export the track with Audacity as a .mp3 file, but there are good reasons why that is tricky for a first-time Audacity user.)

Once the track is in place on your project's VS timeline, you could adjust the synchronization of the track by snipping it into smaller sections and making the necessary changes.

Audacity can be obtained free-of-charge from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

If you should discover that Audacity also fails to "hear" your mic (just like VideoStudio is doing), then your issue is not strictly a VideoStudio issue.

Hope that helps.

[phnxrsngbr]

Thanks very much, it helped a lot. I've discovered that my computer recognizes my mic but Audacity isn't recording properly with it, either. So I'm out of luck. At least I know it's not VS.

[mrbobbell]

Don't give up. I think your problem is only driver/codec related and CAN be resolved by reinstalling the correct drivers.

I'm more acquainted with previous versions of Windows. If your PC had Win XP or ME installed on it, I wouldn't hesitate to suggest that you go to the Device Handler in the Windows Control Panel and uninstall the Realtek AC97 driver... then reboot... upon which time Windows Plug & Play would rediscover the sound device and (hopefully) reinstall the Realtek AC97 on its own. That cured the problem for me 99% of the time.

However, despite the fact that I have Win 7/64-bit installed on my PC, I'm not sure exactly how to go through the process to uninstall/reinstall Realtek AC97 under the new operating system.

Perhaps someone on this forum is braver than I!

[Ken Berry]

Done exactly the same way via Device Manager...

[phnxrsngbr]

Thank you very much. Device/codec related is interesting. I recently installed Xvid codec to run an animation software and since then am getting strange notices when I open programs. I'm wondering if that has anything to do with this.

[Ken Berry]

What do the notices say? I have had XVid on a variety of computers for years and never got any related messages...

[phnxrsngbr]

It was something about an ffdshow video encoder and did I want to use it. I'd never seen that until installing Xvid. I've stopped seeing it today because I finally checked "never" and have stopped seeing it in the last two days. But Paint Shop Pro X3 has also stopped working at the same time, continually crashing.

I purchased a new mic and it isn't working either so something is wrong with my system. I wasn't able to finish the project, unfortunately. So I'm asking the guys who built my PC for their help.

Thanks very much!

[phnxrsngbr]

Mr. Bobbell and Ken were right. It seems to have been my RealTek drivers. After reading more online, I discovered that many people have had this same problem with their microphones in Win 7, including RealTek. The new mic I purchased didn't work either. I worked out some of the fixes posted online and my mic worked again, but with a lot of reverb in it. So, I went to RealTek and downloaded their newest driver and, at least in the Audacity test, it works with no reverb. Thanks again for all your help!

[Trevor Andrew]

I would also suggest that you switch off the speakers during recording, it is possible that the mic will pickup some sound from the speakers causing feedback.
If you need to hear the playback then use earphones.