Audio Blips During Capture on VideoStudio Ultimate X9

[MovieMaker]

I have converted analog movies from my old 8mm tapes by feeding them into my Sony DCR-TRV900 camera, saving the recordings on MiniDV tapes. I have played the digital tapes from the Sony directly to my TV and everything seems fine. (Please note that I connected the single audio output from my Sony to a splitter cable to feed both the left and right audio inputs on my receiver.) However, when I capture the digital recording into VideoStudio Ultimate X9 by way of a PCI-e firewire card on my computer, the audio has fairly frequent "blips", as if the audio is missing for a few frames every once in a while. There is no obvious pattern to the missing audio.

When capturing the video, the capture is set up as DV format. (I am not offered any other alternatives.) I have tried both DV Type 1 and DV Type 2, but the problem appears on both.

I have also noticed that when playing the captured clips on my computer, the audio is almost exclusively being played from the left speaker, with occasional but infrequent hints of sound from the other speaker. I don't know if this is related to the dropped audio or not.

I would appreciate some input on trying to address this audio problem.

[RobertOZ]

Importing Mini DV direct into VS is not always the best method, try using external capture programs of which there are many free versions available on the internet. I use Exsate DV Capture Live which does an excellent job, try something like that and see if that corrects your audio issue, if the problem remains, then it is your source video that is causing the issue

[Ken Berry]

The first thing I would try would be to capture a small part of the DV tape *without* the audio splitter cable i.e. just capture the one channel of audio. Then, once captured, in VS click on the Sound Mixer icon above the timeline, and select the Attribute tab. Then in that you will see "Duplicate Audio Channel" which you can use to copy the single audio channel into the other. See if that makes a difference.

Regarding Robert's suggestion of a third party capture program, a free option would be WinDV which you can download at windv.mourek.cz It also does a very good job and allows you to allocate your own names to the incoming captures.

[MovieMaker]

Thanks so much for the suggestions. I will give them a try.

[RobertOZ]

One of the best MiniDV capture programs is Scenalyzer Live 4.0 which I purchased back in 2008 and is now available free, this program can just about do anything you want, tape index creation, create time lapse shots, view frame by frame so you can delete portions of unwanted video, the list goes on and on.
Just found it on one of my portable drives and reinstalled it
The program may not be suitable for HD format MiniDV, but it may be worth a try

The program can be downloaded from

http://scenalyzer.com/

[MovieMaker]

Thanks very much for your responses and suggestions. Based on your input, I have tried the following:
1. Installed WinDV. A test capture showed the same defect, although perhaps not as blatant as the VideoStudio capture.
2. Installed Exsate DV Capture Live. A test capture also showed the same defect, again perhaps not as blatant as the VideoStudio capture.
3. Installed Scenalyzer Live. Could not get it to run, getting an error saying my drive was full when it really has over 2 TB of free space.

I also tried the suggestion about using the duplicate audio channel. Copying the left channel onto the right channel seemed to help a little, making the overall audio a bit more acceptable.

After all of this, I am concluding that I either have a hardware problem with my capture, or more likely, the audio defect is built into my analog to digital transfer and I just can't notice it as much when playing the movie directly from the digital camcorder to my TV.

At the moment, I don't have any alternative hardware for digitizing the original analog movies, so I may be stuck with the audio problem unless I can come up with an alternate method of getting the analog movies into my computer.

Thanks again for the help.

[RobertOZ]

3. Installed Scenalyzer Live. Could not get it to run, getting an error saying my drive was full when it really has over 2 TB of free space.

Thanks again for the help.

Remember, this is an old program and whilst it installs on Win 7 without a problem, you may need to install in Win 7 compatibility mode for Win 10, if such an option is available on Win 10, or more likely it just won't work with Win 10

[lata]

Hi

How are you feeding the 8 mm analogue movies to the Sony DCR?

If you are connecting 8 mm camera to sony using a cable via AV-in.
Try also connecting DV-Out via firewire to pc.
Remove the tape.

If your camera supports “throughput” aka “passthrough” then you should be able to transfer the footage directly to pc.
My camera requires a tweak in the DV-OUT menu settings.
I also agree with Ken in not using the audio splitter, do that in Video Studio.

The camera is now acting as an Analogue to Digital converter.
Worth looking to see if this option will work, a quick google search seemed to indicate the camera is capable of this function.

[BrianCee]

I have played the digital tapes from the Sony directly to my TV and everything seems fine. (Please note that I connected the single audio output from my Sony to a splitter cable to feed both the left and right audio inputs on my receiver.)

first question in my mind was "WHY ?" - - - the Sony DCR-TRV900 is a stereo miniDV camcorder with a stereo audio output - no need for splitters

so as Trevor has asked - what did you use and how was it connected - to transfer the Hi8 tapes to miniDV

did you only use a single audio cable and therefore transferred the audio to the Sony on only one of the stereo tracks - that is where the splitter was required - to transfer from Hi-8 to miniDV - so at least you had two mono tracks playing as one

if that is the case the firewire is now having a problem with only half a sound track - don't know how it handles that never having transferred a single track audio miniDV by firewire - I guess that at best it will give you a left channel only - maybe with occasional "break throughs" to the empty right track - giving blips

however you do it - by straight transfer to the Sony on tape - or by pass-through - you must make sure that the Sony has two sound tracks - and to do that it sounds as though you need your splitter between whatever is playing the Hi-8 tapes and the input to the Sony.

first step is to get the tapes to play to your TV in the Sony - using two sound cables and no splitter (plus of course one video cable)


...

[MovieMaker]

Again, thanks for all of the input.

I obviously wasn't clear about how I used the splitter cable, which had no role in getting the movie from my analog source into my computer. It was only used when I played the miniDV tape from my digital camcorder directly to my TV to see if the audio blip was on the source tape.

However, your questioning the splitter forced me to step back and ask why I needed to use the splitter in the first place when I hooked up to the TV. My digital camcorder has stereo audio, so why was a splitter necessary to connect the audio to both channels of the TV? I am embarrassed to admit that after a complete search through all of my old video equipment, I came across another cable that is of similar configuration as the one that I used between the analog 8mm player and my digital camcorder, but it has an additional audio connector on the end that connects to the player. I now realize that years ago when I last converted analog movies, this is the cable that I used, and I used a splitter at the player to take the single audio channel and feed it to both the left and right audio inputs to the digital camcorder.

This will definitely fix the missing right audio from my captures, but I don't know yet if it has anything to do with the audio blip problem. I am in the process of rerunning the analog to digital conversion and then recapturing the movie to my computer. I will update on the results when available.

Also, for reference, my digital camcorder will NOT pass through the analog conversion. I must record to the camera, and then later transmit via firewire to capture.

Again, thanks for the support.

[MovieMaker]

After more extensive testing, my conclusion is that the majority of the audio defects are occurring in the analog to digital conversion.

- When playing the analog 8mm directly to the TV, there are no apparent audio blips.
- When playing the miniDV tape with the converted analog movie directly to the TV, there are many noticeable audio blips. (My earlier testing did not identify this, but a more thorough review concluded that the defects are present.)
- When playing the captured movie on the computer, the number and severity of audio blips increases. I believe that the capture is exaggerating audio defects that are on the miniDV tape, some which may not be noticeable when playing the tape directly to the TV. My guess is that the capture is not actually creating defects, just making them more apparent.

Instead of using my digital camcorder to do analog to digital conversion, might any of you have suggestions regarding the best hardware that I might purchase to accomplish this? The captured format would obviously need to be something that I can easily edit in VideoStudio while hopefully minimizing any further degradation from the 8mm analog source.

Thanks.

[lata]

Hi
My personal preference to transfer analogue to the pc would be using a Passthrough camcorder.
I have used that option and know it works well. Do you have a relative or friend that has such a camcorder you could borrow to test.

There are Analogue Digital converters available, as I have not use them I cannot comment on which is the best. Others on the forum will be using some, hopefully may comment.

I do have an Ezcap device, that connects to the pc vis usb, captures to Mpeg2, but I think a dedicated A/V to D/V converter using DV-Out via firewire would be the better option.

As for the audio blips, my thoughts turned to the speed of the analog 8mm player compared to the Sony camcorder.
Maybe if they are different, the analog being faster than the sony may cause problems, I don’t know, just thinking out loud???

[MovieMaker]

I have found another Sony camcorder (DCR-HC90) that will do pass-through analog to digital. My first two test tapes have done very well, without any audio blips seen previously from the same analog source tapes and analog player. It looks like my analog to digital conversion with my other Sony was in fact creating audio defects that were then exaggerated by the VideoStudio capture.

I am now using VideoStudio to capture the pass-through conversions very successfully.

Thanks again to all who provided responses to my issue.