that kinda what i was wondering, were all clips captured with the same hardware at the same time and only when brought into Vega they exhibit the noise?
or if not, I know youve changed cables on you equipt but im wondering if there isnt a interference or ground loop issue?

I have Vegas Video 6... One annoying thing I have noticed is that when you create a new audio track, (either by using a "create track" command or by importing audio by itself or any video with an audio track) is that the software automatically adds three plug-ins to the track - a noise gate, and EQ, and a compressor. And they are all enabled.

It's possible that these effects are on your audio track(s), even if you did not put them there yourself intentionally. Have you checked this, and/or gone into your audio track plug-ins and disabled or removed those plug-ins?

I don't know if all versions of Vegas do that to audio tracks or if there is some way to set a preference to turn that off.

JB

Jasper,
You are saying what I said almost a week ago, but perhaps you are saying it better.

However, to select your own default audio track effects: select/deselect the right ones. Rightclick the track head and choose Set default track properties. Next time you create an audio track it will have the effects you selected. BUT they will be enabled at their default setting. Any settings you made are simply not there. (This is true for Vegas 5.)

There are at least two ways to save FX settings. You can make presets of them. Give it a descriptive name and click on the floppy disc icon.

Or, save a group of FXs as a - well - group. Click on the icon for the plug-in chain. Select Save as and go through the motions. When you call upon the group later, the FXs will replace whatever FXs were on your track already, and they will have the same settings they had when you saved the group.

I thought there might be some strange effects accidentally on tvgirl's tracks. The reply was negative: (I haven't used any audio effects.).
Tor

[Thinking aloud: They say I'm gullible, but no one's ever fooled me]

I need to post a clip. Is there a way to do it without having a website?

Lots of Internet sites allow this. Here's a thread about a generic one that somebody setup for users of this forum.

In this thread, Jonathon Neal said that he allows up to 24 MB. attachments on his site. You have to be registered to post them but not to view them.

Mike

Okay. I posted about 4 seconds in the Vegas group in youtube. It's titled "audio." See if this works.

Sounds more like a high pitched whine here than a bzzz.





If the above link doesn't work, try going to youtube.com/group/vegasvideo.

Thanks.

I've digitally captured the signal from my laptop and transferred it onto my machine with SoundForge; hopefully this copying hasn't corrupted it. That signal is mostly general noise (though not random) with a 1mS spike at 60Hz. The spike isn't square and looks like it could have been picked up from a device power supply. Are you in 60Hz electrical mains territory? This is the sort of thing that starts me checking cable connections. I think you can rule out Vegas as the source because of the analogue nature of the signal. Since you have determined that the noise isn't on the original tape and isn't heard on your Avid system, I would be checking how it can have got into your Vegas system. I presume these are on separate computers, so how did you get the clips into Vegas?

Edit: listening separately to the portions between the spikes it sounds like connector/cable problems. What I described as noise is far from white, so isn't just normal electronic hiss. I'd suspect a high impedance contact somewhere, maybe a dry joint, but this is only a guess.

Not sure it's an audio cable, unless there's a certain kind of cable I'm supposed to be using that I'm not. The reason I say this is because I've captured video in multiple places -- some of it I had done at a production shop. I don't hear the buzzing on that video, but it's certainly there in the edited sequence. The clip I sent to you all I did myself.

As I am capturing for the first time myself, the electrical mains and high impedance contact issues are foreign to me. Forgive me for asking basic questions, but what does all this mean, and what would I need to do to correct it?

Fixing this sort of problem is a process of elimination. You change things one at a time, each time checking whether the noise has changed. If you suspect a cable, try another. If you suspect your software, try it with different source material (that's why I suggested that you test your suspicion of Vegas by setting up a new audio track with doing some processing; if caused by Vegas then you find that buzz on whatever you do). To check the tape you might capture a new clip taken specially without external connections to the camera. On so on; can be tedious.

Or you can get advice from farss, who knows a lot more about electronics than I.

Things like dry joints (inadequately soldered) are difficult to find and generally it takes painstaking examination of connections with a magnifying glass. But that might be a red-herring, anyway.

Thanks, Serena. Can Soundforge clean up a problem like this at all?

The damaging part of the noise is the spike, so in SoundForge you could painstakingly work your way through silencing each occurrence. But might be difficult to locate during speech etc. Is it only noticable during pauses in speech? If that's the case you could silence the track during those pauses (rather easier to do). Those silent portions will then need to be covered by inserted "room" ambience (separate track) because truly silent pauses will be obvious. A notch filter at 1KHz might give useful attenuation, but I expect this to noticably affect your audio and unfortunately software notches are less notchy than you'd need to minimise colateral audio damage. In any case the spike is a mix of frequencies (not a sine wave), so I think the only way to remove it is by cutting.
I guess, from what has gone before, that recapturing isn't possible. Or you've gone too far in post to want to go back. If you have buzz only in dialogue pauses, I'd be looking at putting an audio envelope on the dialogue track (Vegas) and muting in those pauses. If you haven't got a room ambience recording you might be able to find a matching environment and make one (add foley effects to your credits).

Edit: it's a while since I read through the whole thread and you've already answered some of my queries here. Let's see what farss has to say.

You play the analogue tapes into some good audio gear, wind the levels up to 11 and hear no buzz.
You capture the tapes through the ADS box and perhaps on some tapes you get this buzz? You capture the tapes through a different device in a different place, no buzz?

Converting analogue video and audio to digital is not a trivial task, the two are more interwined nore than I used to think they were. I've had a dodgy (think Dazzle) converter turn audio into a garbled mess. The first part of the capture went just fine, until the old tape caused the Dazzle to loose sync. When it regained sync the vision was fine but the audio sounded a little 'Darth Vader'. Each subsequent time the tape glitched and sync was lost the vision recovered but the audio got worse, Darth Veda became Dalek underwater!

So two thinks come to mind.

The ADS box is only plastic, keep it well away from monitors, power supplies, TV transmitters, power lines etc. The problem may be as simple as that.

Alternatively as this seems to be happening mostly with dodgy tapes it could be the tape, this is really a guess as I don't have that much experience with SP, however when the vision is bad on some systems (VHS) you can get leakage into the audio, they are only linear tracks. The other possibility on this path is the ADS Box is having an issue when the sync gets confused.

Another possible issue.

SP decks feed balanced audio, the ADS box only has consummer RCA connections, this too could be adding to the grief. We always run out SP deck's audio through balanced to unbalanced converters.

When trying to diagnose these kinds of problems I always use headphones, best tool for finding nasties in audio.

Bob.

I've heard that sound many times in production. I believe that your buzz or noise is being caused by local (nearby) video signal interference. If you listen closely, you can almost here the "sweep" within the buzz. Here's your choices of where it's coming from:

1. From a nearby video monitor or regular television
2. Cable television lines or feeds

To eliminate 90% of these problems, either re-position your dubbing cable and/or buy a new better shielded cable. Many cables that are used are inexpensive and poorly sheilded. Use the shortest dubbed cable that you can get away with. A longer cable is worse. Turn off any unnecessary monitors or televisions. Position the dubbing cable and deck or camera which you are playing back from away from the monitor. For instance, a dubbing cable within a foot from a monitor will pick up the monitor HV (high voltage section) and screen noise.

Cable television feeds (coax round black cable) can be a real problem. Many cable installations use poorly shielded cable and cable connections. Make sure your dubbing cable is not lying on top of or around these. If you happen to have a cable television feed into your computer or some device hooked into your computer, you may have to disconnect it.

Other problems and solutions:

4. Local nearby interference from power lines.

To eliminate powerline interference, again try the above solution, making sure not to follow nearby AC cords that plug in the wall. Do not run your dubbing cable along side or follow the path of an AC cord. Always cross any AC cord at a right angle. Another simple method is to unplug any unnecessary AC devices (clocks, lights, and any wall tranformers).

5. Interference caused by ground loops.

Ground loops are caused when two or more external devices (computer and deck) or (computer and stereo) or (cable TV box and stereo and computer).....etc are hooked together with a dubbing cable or other audio/video line AND are plugged in to the same AC wall outlets. To eliminate this type of interference, the easy method (if possible) is to run the camera on battery only (not AC). If that isn't possible, try plugging the AC cords into different AC outlets---------one in another room using an extension cord might work. Also unplug anything you don't need.

6. From a nearby television broadcasting station (antenna's nearby)

This is the worst possible case. In this case, sometimes a better dubbing cable may do the trick but usually the power of the transmitting station is just too high. Another solution is to use RF shields around the dubbing cables. These are small clamp on iron cores that may block the interference. Radio Shack has a couple of types. These also work for AC and Video interference sometimes.

7. Audio buzz caused by video signals that are too high. The classic example of this is when you play back the finished tape on a regular television you hear a buzz sound when either graphics are used or the video is too "hot" or bright. The reason is that the video is actually over deviating into the audio portion of the signal. The solution is to clamp and set limits for broadcast colors and levels---or manually bring down your video levels to no more than 90 IRE especially for graphics and titles.


Finally, if there is any way to dub your source material without using a analog feed you'll eliminate sometimes all of the noise issues since most noise is analog based and is "picked" up by the dubbing cable or playback devices. For instance, using a Firewire/1394 or USB feed will almost always eliminate the noise.


Eliminating already dubbed audio buzz won't be easy. Usually, the frequency response or range of the buzz is too broad and trying to filter it would eliminate too many good parts of the same audio. But, playing around with a "notch" audio filter might be worth a try. Also, if you can isolate just part of the buzz only----without any other audio-----build a separate audio track of that and then invert the phase of this separate buzz track. Next play back both the full audio track and the inverted buzz track at the same time. Adjust the track volume level as necessary. That may or may not work.

"invert the phase of this separate buzz track"

That is a good idea. The sample provided is very regular (as least the spike) and well worth trying.

EDIT: in fact I've tried that in Vegas 7 and worked very well on the sample. Only white noise (or something like that) remaining. Of course it would, wouldn't it? Will it work as well on a long example?

On another thread Tors provided a link that might be useful on this. Probably you know about balanced/unbalanced cables, but this link carries a nice explanation.