Audio Anomaly with Vegas 10D and Sony HDR--TD10

Back to post

Comments

ChristoC wrote on 5/20/2011, 5:01 PM
For sure there is a big problem!

At first I thought it may be camera AGC going nuts clamping a loud signal, but I downloaded your example - In vegasPro10d the problem is a galloping stream of glitches across all channels, and very obvious discontinuities in the waveform, not just at peaks (which is what I suspected and would be expected with an AGC problem) but throughout the timeline - your levels are quite conservative, and there's close to 6dB headroom - that distortion would be more than bleeding obvious if it were present on any other playback method, which you are reporting as being clean; therefore the problem has to be Vegas.


tnw2933 wrote on 5/20/2011, 7:31 PM
Yes, I thought it might be an AGC problem as well. However, I and several others have listened to this same clip fed by the camera via HDMI to my Sony AV receiver in our home theater system and it is clean audio on all channels. I wish the camera allowed manual control of the mic gain, but it does not. I did use the low sensitivity setting on the camera for the mic but that didn't have any real impact on the audio glitches.

I do hope that SCS will look into this.

Tom
Steve Mann wrote on 5/20/2011, 7:32 PM
Let's see, how do I begin?... Holy Crap!

Is this clip directly from the camera or a trimmed export from Vegas? If it's the latter, then you introduced another variable into the chain.

I was expecting clipping or AGC clamping, but this is something new. I wouldn't describe it as a click, (grunge maybe?) But, it *is* periodic. Not random. and the anomolies occur mid-frame. I could only zoom onto them with Quantize turned off.

Because it's periodic, I am going to suspect a timing problem. Possibly a bit-rate error? (The camera specs don't say what the audio bitrate is).

Can the camera record in two-track (stereo) audio?
ChristoC wrote on 5/21/2011, 12:28 AM

That same example file dragged into VegasPro9e exhibits NO audio problems, either aurally or visually. (Just one picture though.)

Did you submit a Bug Report?
tnw2933 wrote on 5/21/2011, 5:34 AM
This clip was brought from the camera to my computer's HD via a USB connection using Sony's PMB software and then imported into Vegas10d but it is not altered in any way from the file as it exists on the camera's flash memory.

The TD10 records 48 kHz audio but I don't know the bit rate. The camera can record DD 2-channel and this shows no problem in Vegas 10d. The Vegas issues is only with 5.1 audio recorded by the 10D.

I have submitted a bug report.

Tom
SuperG wrote on 5/21/2011, 10:31 AM
It's definitely hosing up the audio. The only workaround, I can think of is to open the file in SoundForge and export as multitrack - that seems to be able to export the audio just fine.

However, there is one more issue that I see, that I'm not sure if any one else does.

The track meters peak immediately upon pressing play, although you can clear them in a looped playback mode and they will not peak again (which you would expect if it were the material causing this). With this in mind, I note that the meters in the mixing console do not peak at all (as you would expect them to be identical).

There are some bad things happening behing the scenes with surround audio in Vegas - I'd expect a release in the not too distant future.



john_dennis wrote on 5/21/2011, 2:59 PM
Using tsMuxer, I removed the Presentation Graphics Stream from the piano.m2ts file that you submitted and the audio played without artifacts in Vegas Pro 10.0d. That probably isn't going to help your project any, but I hope it narrows the search for a solution. The original file was OK in Vegas Pro 9.0e, but only one video track was present.

I burned a Blu-ray from DVD Architect. The audio was fine, but DVD Architect forced a recompress of the audio. The bitrate of the Blu-ray indicated on my Sony S-550 was around 15 mbps.

I burned a Blu-ray from tsMuxer. The audio was fine, with no recompression just remuxing of the streams. The bitrate of the Blu-ray indicated on my Sony S-550 was around 15 mbps.

I also ungrouped the video from the audio on the Vegas Pro 10.0d timeline and deleted both video tracks and all audio tracks one at a time. The audio artifacts were still there.

This is a Vegas Pro 10 bug in the way it handles this media and I doubt there will be a workaround. Enter SCS stage left.

farss wrote on 5/21/2011, 3:56 PM
Have you tried changing the project's audio resample quality to Best?

I'm inclined to doubt it'll fix the problem but it's simple enough to try and it might get you up and running pending a fix from SCS.

Bob.
Steve Mann wrote on 5/21/2011, 7:47 PM
"This clip was brought from the camera to my computer's HD via a USB connection using Sony's PMB software and then imported into Vegas10d but it is not altered in any way from the file as it exists on the camera's flash memory."

But, did you use Vegas to make a subclip that we downloaded?

But, here's a workaround that you aren't going to like.
Record in stereo.

Most people who record in 5.1 are doing it on consumer cameras- because it's a cool buzzword. And, I've heard some awfully bad 5.1 mixes. You won't find an on-camera 5.1 microphone pattern on a pro camera - because on-camera is not how it's recorded.

Steve Mann
jpenn wrote on 5/21/2011, 9:11 PM
Hello

I am not an expert with Vegas and I haven’t done anything with 3D yet but I did some testing on your clip.

Windows 7-pro
Vegas 10a 64 bit … audio sounds fine
Vegas 10c 32 bit … audio sounds fine

Windows XP-pro
Vegas 10d 32 bit … audio broken

The only difference I can see is when I drag the clip to VP10d, I see two video tracks whereas with VP10a and VP10c I only see one video track.

I hope this helps.

John
ALawson wrote on 5/22/2011, 1:15 AM
Hi

Using tsMuxer, I removed the Presentation Graphics Stream from the piano.m2ts file that you submitted and the audio played without artifacts in Vegas Pro 10.0d. That probably isn't going to help your project any, but I hope it narrows the search for a solution. The original file was OK in Vegas Pro 9.0e, but only one video track was present.

Just was going to post the same, playing fine here without the PGS stream after going through tsMuxer, but txMuxer excludes the second video stream so you lose 3D.

I think this is the cause of my issues with DD5.1 posted elsewhere here so now in the process of remuxing the files and removing the PGS and will update that thread.

When I had no issues in MovieStudio I was using Panasonic camcorder files with 5.1 but from an older model which on checking doesn't include a PGS stream, and those projects when opened in Vegas 10 are indeed all okay.

It's a bit disappointing that Sony hasn't seemingly tested many file formats, as this problem I spotted within the first few minutes of adding them into a project, the audio issues of the Sony sample file posted here is also immediately obvious there is an issue. It's taken me a couple of days messing around trying to find a solution, hopefully this is it.
tnw2933 wrote on 5/22/2011, 9:58 AM
farss,

Sorry for the delay in responding, but I have had a devil of a time with the Sony Forums today.

Yes, I did change the audio resample quality to "Best" and it made no difference.

Tom
tnw2933 wrote on 5/22/2011, 10:02 AM
John Dennis,

I apologize for my ignorance of tsMuxer, but can you tell me what it means that you "removed the Presentation Graphics stream from my file". I don't have Vegas 9 as I went directly from Vegas 8 to Vegas 10d.

Thanks for all your efforts in looking at this file. Amazing that the audio artifacts were still there after removing the video and audio tracks one at a time, although I think somewhere in my nightmare of working on this file I did that and came to the same conclusion.

Tom
tnw2933 wrote on 5/22/2011, 10:07 AM
Steve,

<But, did you use Vegas to make a subclip that we downloaded?>

The clip that I uploaded and gave the link to was not a subclip from Vegas. It was taken directly off the HD of my computer after transferring it from the HDR-TD10's internal flash memory to my HD using Sony's PMB software just for the purpose of relocating the file from my camera to my computer's HD. PMB was supplied by Sony with the camera for this purpose.

Just to be sure that PMB was not making any changes in the clip that might have caused the audio problem in Vegas. I actually used Windows Explorer and accessed my camera's internal flash memory via USB 2.0 and transferred the clip from the camera's flash memory to my HD directly. It made no difference in the audio distortion when this clip was taken into Vegas 10d.

Tom
tnw2933 wrote on 5/22/2011, 10:13 AM
John,

<The only difference I can see is when I drag the clip to VP10d, I see two video tracks whereas with VP10a and VP10c I only see one video track.>

I believe that this indicates that Vegas 10a and 10c (not surprisingly) are seeing the TD10 clips as a 2D video rather than a 3D MVC video stream. The ability to ingest the Sony HDR-10D's was a new feature added by Sony in Vegas 10d. I suspect that the reason the audio is fine in 10a and 10c is because it is being seen as DD stereo rather than the 5.1 DD that is being seen in Vegas 10d, but that is a guess on my part since I don't have those versions of Vegas to try.

Thank you for taking the time to look in detail at this problem.

Tom
john_dennis wrote on 5/22/2011, 12:36 PM
"I apologize for my ignorance of tsMuxer"

tsMuxer can be a useful tool when working with transport streams. Transport Streams are a form of "wrapper" where one or more program streams are multiplexed into a single well-defined stream. Generally, it is a "reliable" transmission method.

I removed the Presentation Graphics Stream as a diagnostic step since the minimum streams that you need is video (.avc) and audio (.ac3). tsMuxer complained that it didn't recognise one of the streams when it opened the file. I am uncertain whether it didn't recognise the Presentation Graphics Stream of if there is yet another stream in the .m2ts file from this particular camera.

Since this camera is so new, I would also look for a firmware update for the camera. It's possible the camera is creating a file that Vegas Pro can't handle. It would also be interesting to know if other editing programs can handle the files.

There are a number of utilities such as MediaInfo, tsMuxer, VideoReDo, etc. that can make your life easier. As you read the forum, you'll see references to these and others.

If you're wondering why I'm spending so much time on this; working on this is a break for me compared to my other weekend activities such as mowing the grass or cleaning the evaporator coil of my second floor air conditioner.
ChristoC wrote on 5/22/2011, 3:10 PM
Tom > I suspect that the reason the audio is fine in 10a and 10c is because it is being seen as DD stereo rather than the 5.1 DD that is being seen in Vegas 10d, but that is a guess on my part since I don't have those versions of Vegas to try.

I can't try your clip in 10a or 10c because I already have 10d update installed, but the audio appeared correctly assigned as 5.1 tracks in 9e.... albeit with 2D vision, as expected.

I think SCS simply broke the audio when they added the 3D vision part in 10d; maybe they saw the audio tracks all apear on the timeline, but never listened to them?
tnw2933 wrote on 5/22/2011, 4:13 PM
John,

Many thanks for the very clear explanation of tsMuxer and the suggestion of other useful tools. I shall certainly look into acquiring some if not all of these tools. And thanks again for taking the time to look in detail at my file from the TD10 and posting your analysis.

Now you have so many other interesting things to do that I shall not trouble you with further questions :).

Tom
tnw2933 wrote on 5/22/2011, 4:21 PM
ChristoC,

I can well understand how SCS could have missed the audio problem in Vegas 10d that only occurs with certain clips recorded in 5.1 DD from the Sony HDR-TD10. I edited a 20 minute project in Vegas 10d that is now rendering on my Mac Pro running Windows 7 64 bit, and only one of the many clips in this project all taken in 3D with 5.1 DD exhibited the audio problem. In this clip an airplane was flying overhead as I recorded a scene in a park and you can hear a rhythmic rumble in the background that should not be there. Recording a piano with the TD10 always shows the problem clearly but under any recording circumstances it is more difficult if not impossible to hear the problem. And if you use the HDR-TD10 in the DD 2.0 stereo mode, there are audio problems at all.

I believe that if SC takes a close look at my clip or if they have an HDR-TD10 to test, they will be able to get to the bottom of the problem.

Tom
Rob Franks wrote on 5/24/2011, 4:46 AM
deleted by me
Rob Franks wrote on 5/24/2011, 7:35 PM
Noise distortion work-around (also posted this on AVS):
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I used TSmuxer to demux the Ac3 stream from the M2TS file. I then imported that to Adobe Audition and outputted 6 mono wav files (left front... right front...left rear....etc)

Go to Vegas and import the original MVC clip (with the AC3). Ungroup the audio tracks and delete them so you now have nothing but the 2 video streams on the time line. Import your 6 mono wav files and set the panning properly to reflect each respective track.

The original 5.1 sound now plays without distortion.

If you don't have Adobe Audition (with ac3 plugin) then you will need some sort of program capable of breaking a AC3 file into its respective mono wav tracks. I know there are a few freebies out there such as BESWEET or EAC3to
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tnw2933 wrote on 5/25/2011, 8:58 AM
Rob,

Many thanks for putting in the effort and finding this work-around to problem 5.1 audio files in Vegas 10d. I look forward to trying your method as I now have all the necessary tools to do so.

I hope your solution will also give SCS some ideas on how to address this issue within Vegas 10.

Tom
DonLandis wrote on 5/27/2011, 6:50 AM
Update-
Just wanted to reply that, thanks to Joseph_lin, at AVS Forum, a satisfactory work around to the 5.1 / 3D file audio distortion bug has been confirmed.

He suggested using Vegas Movie Studio Platinum v10 to extract the 5.1 audio from the 3D / 5.1 file created by the HDR TD10 camcorder.
Simply place the file on the timeline and the clip will display in 2D only along with a clean, distortion free, 5.1 audio. Then render as a wav file PCM 5.1 or 6 channels.
Next in Vegas 10d put the same 3D 5.1 clip on the Vegas Pro 10d timeline. This audio in Vegas plays distorted. Just ungroup and delete the audio tracks leaving the 3D video. Now go to where you saved the pcm 5.1 rendered wav file and drag it into the Vegas Pro timeline syncing it up with the video. Now the clip has distortion free 5.1 audio. Group them if you want.

Until Sony Creative Software development team gets a handle on this and fixes it in Vegas 10d it seems to me this is the easiest and fastest of several suggested work arounds we have for editing 3D 5.1 video clips from the HDR TD10 and possibly other sources.

Thanks to all who offered suggestions and testing to nail this down.
john_dennis wrote on 5/28/2011, 12:15 AM
The same procedure can be accomplished in Vegas Pro 9.0e for those of us without Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 10.

If you find mapping wav channels to the correct part of the sound stage tedious and don't mind a generation loss, you can also render using the 5.1 Surround template from Vegas Pro 9.0e with the ac3 Pro codec, render a separate empty elementery video track at the lowest quality and bit rate. Combine the ac3 and m2v in tsMuxer and mux to m2ts. This can be used in the Vegas 10 project to replace the defective audio.

Or you can do as Steve Mann suggested: shoot in stereo or render to stereo wav from Vegas 9. I honestly didn't hear a lot of surround information in the sample video. When I shot my son's ball game in 5.1 a motorcycle passed on the street behind the camera. At first, I thought it was waaaay cool but after a while I realized that all the street noise was a distraction from the subject, the ball game.