Capturing an audio cassette through vidcap

goshep wrote on 11/30/2008, 9:09 AM
Hi all,

I've done this once before but it has been a while and now I've forgotten how I accomplished it. I want to capture an old audio cassette by passing the audio through a digital8 camcorder via firewire. When I attempt to do this in vidcap I can hear my cassette playing through the firewire but when I attempt to capture, vidcap wants to start rolling the 8mm tape in the camcorder and capture that. If I take the tape out, it won't do anything except prompt me to insert a tape. Is there a setting in vidcap I'm missing? Or did I do something else to make this work last time.

Thanks as always.

Comments

rs170a wrote on 11/30/2008, 9:27 AM
In VidCap, go Options - Prefs - General and disable "Enable DV Device Control".
You could also feed the cassette deck's output into your sound card's line input.

Mike
goshep wrote on 11/30/2008, 9:37 AM
Awesome thanks. I think I tried the line input last time and was having some clipping issues. Dunno but I'll try both. Thanks again!


johnmeyer wrote on 11/30/2008, 11:41 AM
I just captured 72 audio cassettes. I opted to use the line input rather than Firewire and I would strongly suggest you re-consider that option.

The reason?

AGC.

If you have a video camera which has manual audio control, then this isn't a problem and you can ignore my advice. However, if your camera doesn't let you manually set the audio level, then you will be applying AGC to all your audio. This is probably not what you want to do.

Also, I wanted to create chapter marks and/or create individual MP3 files for each "chapter" on the cassette tape. Unfortunately, my version of Sound Forge (and maybe the latest versions as well) doesn't have any way to find the usual silent portions between "tracks" on an audio cassette. After some searching, I found a really nifty shareware utility called "Wave Repair." This utility has a "Find Tracks" feature which does a really good job of finding where to insert the marker for a track. You can then save a text file that has all the marker times, which are saved as time. You then set the ruler in Vegas to display in Time, and then, after a little manipulation of the text file created by Wave Repair, you can just cut and then paste into the Markers view in Edit Details, and voila, you have all the markers on your timeline for each chapter. Very fast and very reliable. Highly recommended.

Oh, and Wave Repair costs money, but the author actually emphasizes that this particular feature is free and you can use it for this one purpose without paying any money.

John_Cline wrote on 11/30/2008, 4:57 PM
John, I'm so glad to see you use the term "voila" correctly instead of "walla" like I see on the Internet WAY too often.
johnmeyer wrote on 11/30/2008, 5:36 PM
John, I'm so glad to see you use the term "voila" correctly instead of "walla" like I see on the Internet WAY too often. Well, thank you, although actually I didn't spell it correctly either. As I wrote it, I debated whether I wanted to take the extra time to add the correct accent, something that takes extra time on an English keyboard.

While I don't know any French, I believe that the correct spelling is:

Voilà

As for "walla," that sounds like something our Italian wallpaper guy might have said: I'ma gonna puta da paper on da walla.
cbrillow wrote on 11/30/2008, 7:11 PM
I often see it as "viola".

Sheesh....
johnmeyer wrote on 11/30/2008, 7:53 PM
Viola?

Now that's doing violins to the language.