avi file playback & sound problem

[taxpup]

I captured files to avi. When I play back the clip it plays fine...audio & video is good. When I "mute" the clip or adjust the volume to anything but 100, my clip goes crazy with jerking motion where it stops and starts or just freezes up, however the sound continues. MPEG plays fine and I can mute with no problems.

I have Athalon 1.4
125 gig hd
512mb ram
vs 9.0

Any suggestions?

[GeorgeW]

what was your video source, how did you connect the video source to your computer, and what type of .avi did you capture

[taxpup]

George:

You are a wealth of information for this program. You are my VS guardian angel.

My source is a Sony Hi8-Digital TRV 250. I used the composite through my capture card (ATI Rage). I also tried capturing using USB and S-Video but was not very happy with the quality of the capture in MPEG or AVI. Sound was o.k., but lots of distortion in the clip during playback and burning.

Type of AVI? Beats the stuffing out of me. Whatever the one is that comes with VS9.

I also tried defragging my hard drive and freeing up space by deleting old files. Same old story.

What could be causing the distortion in my MPEG files? I don't expect studio quality but not this stuff.

I tried converting my AVI files to MPEG and they played O.K. but the quality still sucks. AVI is the only thing I seem to get any decent quality images with.

Thanks for your reply. I am going to get my Jack Daniels now and think about this some more.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Taxpup
Phoenix, Arizona USA

P.S Please keep Louisiana and Mississippi in your thoughts and prayers. It's unbelievable. New Orleans, 1.5 million has to be abandoned for an unknown time.

[taxpup]

George:

Haven't figured out the avi problem yet, but I did figure out the distortion problem with the MPEG. I TURNED OFF THE USB STREAMING on my Sony TRV 250 and I captured in DVD format. Once I turned it off the distortion problem went away.

Thought you might like to know.

Taxpup
Phoenix, Arizona USA

[Ken Berry]

I think one simple answer might be that you are not capturing using the Firewire port, which in the case of a Sony camera will probably be called an i-link port. It is a mini 4-pin port which looks a bit like the mini USB port, and I understand that on your camera it is located on the left side of the camcorder (looking at the lens), towards the front at the bottom. If you are capturing from the camera itself, this is the port you MUST use to capture digital quality video. The problem usually is that these cameras don't come with the Firewire cable, so you have to buy one. And a lot of computers still don't come with a Firewire card unless the motherboard has one built in. So you have to get one of those too and install it yourself or get it installed. But I repeat that you won't capture digital quality DV/AVIs until you do.

Once you have your Firewire up and running, I would suggest that you capture to DV/AVI using the Type 1 Encoder. You will find that option in the capture screen of VS 9, under the little cog wheel icon. Good luck.