Yeah, sorry to mention it's firewire. Well, we went into "system" and adjust recording levels up. I ll do a test later. hope it works. thanks for the help
Lawrence

Sorry to tell you there are no volume settings while capturing through firewire. If it's capturing low volume then your source is low volume. All a firewire "capture" does is create a bit-for-bit digital copy of the source onto the hard drive. There is no modification of the signal at all. What you get is whatever the source is.

Adding to the post by Chienworks, what you *might* want to do is...

Export the audio when your project is done, turning off all filters before render to get a clean copy. Then I generally apply a noise filter (use SOFO plugin but other will/should work) -> normalize -> apply noise filter -> bring back into Vegas.

I've had variable results using normalize in Vegas when you have any splits or separate clips in the audio track - normalize should really be done to the entire track as process, plus you don't get anywhere near the finer control of an audio editor like SoundForge. The reason for the emphasis on noise, is that when you raise volume levels, you're going to raise at least some noise levels to where they might be noticable.

thanks all for your suggestions. I know audio was recorded correctly - nice levels at -20dB on a dsr 500 dvcam camcorder... i've changed record level on the laptop - still havent tested it. extremely busy... but will this weekend. my current "newbie" puzzle is controling audio levels - I'm used to incite editing - there, there are key frames you can set on your audio track so that you set the level at X at the first frame, drop to to Y 3 seconds later, bring it back up to something in between a little later... in other words more than just fading in and fading - acutally riding the level on each audio track as needed.

Hello,

I'm curious about the behavior of the windows mixer, while inputtng to Vegas . . .

Do you have recommended settings for line-in, or wav faders? I.e. should they be halfway up, 2/3, 3/4, or full? Or does it matter, so long as 0dB is not exceeded?

Much obliged for any help!

Cheers,

XOG

Funny, I have the opposite problem with the signal too high.

For what its worth when I first got Vegas I was disappointed in that I couldn't get any incoming audio to sound anything like it should. It turned out that the cheesy little record applet part of Windows had a corrupt DLL and on top of that I forgot to install a driver my motherboard needed to record properly. Silly me. Once I fixed these, like I said, if anything the gain is too high.

What follows probably varies depending on your sound card. Over in the extreme lower right hand corner of your desktop, the Task Tray area or whatever Microsoft is calling it now you should have access to Windows Mixer control. Again, depending on what kind of audio setup you got you may or may not have all the options I describe below.

There should be two tabs. One for Volume, another for Record. Click on the Volume button, then set the master control to near the top of its range. Maybe about 3/4 of all the way up. This should allow you to better set volume off your speakers if they too have a volume control which most do. If you don't use line in, this slider should be set all the way down. The main thing is look for the microphone slidder and push it all the way down too. The other sliders are more personal preference.

Now click on the record button. Push ALL the slidders down to minimum except for the microphone slidder. Depending on how good your sound card is and the microphone, push the microphone slidder up to maybe half way to 3/4, maybe a little higher.

There is usually a tools or advanced tab. Click it. Newer sound cards allow you to set speaker configuration. Do that plus adjust the extra set of volume sliders here that control the various speakers. Look for a sound effects tab. Again, newer drivers allow for special effects. TURN THEM ALL OFF! This can introduce echo, reverb and lots of unwanted stuff that can much better be controlled with the various Vegas FX plug-ins.

Now see how things are working. Add a audio track. Arm the track by clicking the circle icon which should turn red. Specify WHERE you want Vegas to record audio files to. Once you do than a mixer control is added to the header area of the audio track showing the same kind of green/yellow/red bar.

Turn on your mike if it is powered, click on the circle icon in the scrubber control area and speak. That's right... to record in Vegas you need to arm TWO controls! A wave file with peaks will be generated as you talk until you hit stop. Play back and adjust the windows volume slidder (under the record tab) either up or down to get good levels when recording in Vegas.

I attempted to follow the procedure below...

But no luck. Not even sure what I was doing. Was I recording with the mike into the computer to set speaker levels? Any way, I saw the audio levels could be adjusted for a microphone when I do the procedure below. But.... still the audio from my DVCAM taped is recording into vegas extremely low. As i mentioned, i know audio was recorded
well. I get good audio when i digitize onto my incite system (component/line). It seems to me if I adjust audio levels for video and volume in the record tab in the audio properties area of my pc you pointed out... that should do the trick. but no... additionally after some failures at video capture, the video capture window an error message that comes up everytime i try to capture: "video capture has detected it was not shut down properly. would you like to load the previous project." If i press yes, video capture is hung up and doesnt function. if i press no, same thing: still hung up. shutting down vegas and computer doesnt make this error go away... sad but true.


"What follows probably varies depending on your sound card. Over in the extreme lower right hand corner of your desktop, the Task Tray area or whatever Microsoft is calling it now you should have access to Windows Mixer control. Again, depending on what kind of audio setup you got you may or may not have all the options I describe below.

There should be two tabs. One for Volume, another for Record. Click on the Volume button, then set the master control to near the top of its range. Maybe about 3/4 of all the way up. This should allow you to better set volume off your speakers if they too have a volume control which most do. If you don't use line in, this slider should be set all the way down. The main thing is look for the microphone slidder and push it all the way down too. The other sliders are more personal preference.

Now click on the record button. Push ALL the slidders down to minimum except for the microphone slidder. Depending on how good your sound card is and the microphone, push the microphone slidder up to maybe half way to 3/4, maybe a little higher. "

FWIW, different sound cards record at different levels with the windows controls set identically. A few examples I've come across on various machines, Cmedia will record a bit low, but clips very easily - soundblaster live records a slight bit lower, but really hard to over do it and induce clipping - audigy 2 a bit louder, & still somewhat hard to induce clipping. All of those had to be normalized in post.

So I would think it might be related to the soundcard (or chip) itself, remembering Kelly's post that: "All a firewire "capture" does is create a bit-for-bit digital copy of the source onto the hard drive. There is no modification of the signal at all. "

If so, if it depended on the audio chip in your laptop (which normally aren't the greatest known), perhaps the only options are to increase the volume of your audio in post, by normalizing etc., or record the audio separately though an add-on card or usb/firewire box (think midi-man/maudio, motu types rather then creative extigy).

The audio card on my fujitsu is a sigma tel. dont know anyting about audio cards, so i dont if its good, bad or indifferent. btw just be super clear: i am capturing well recorded video and audio on dvcam tape from a dsr 1500 player recorder through firewire to a laptop with the above sound card, a 2 gig pentium 4 chip, and 512 of ram. im going to try a separate post for dsr1500 owners - see if that gets any response on the low recording level of audio. i'm out of ideas, but that doesnt mean there arent good answers out there!

This is getting pretty far off topic, but... what may work if in fact the problem is a weak signal is a simple preamp. You can buy them in all price ranges, or make your own, if you're into electronics like I used to be when I was a kid, which a sadly a long time ago. In fact just being curious, I did a quick search on preamp and found this site which offers all kinds of circuits if that too is your hobby. Anyhow, I got to go through my junk box and it what parts I got laying around.

There are several to pick from, I kind of like the look of this one:

http://sound.westhost.com/project88.htm

how would a pre-amp work through a firewire connection?

LR, you are capturing through firewire from the camcorder, right? If so, then ignore every response in this entire thread that refers to sound cards and volume controls. None of them apply at all. There is NO volume adjustment nor is volume adjustment possible while capturing through firewire. The sound card is not used during the capture process, except to let you monitor the audio if you so choose. The capture process doesn't involve the sound card or it's volume controls in any way, shape, or form.

Geez... excuse me. The topic has gone beyond capture. We still haven't established what the original poster's problem is. The camera, (doubt it) cableing (maybe) Windows (maybe). Vegas itself (doubful). Further you'll notice XOG changed the topic to windows mixer. That should have been obvious what I and others were responding to. Happens all the time.

Part of the problem with forums like this is you sometimes end up playing twenty questions. All of us respond to the threads we wish to and ignore others. Sometimes the answers are right on point, sometimes they miss by a mile. All part of the process.

Having someone say in effect shut up and only listen to what I told you is poor form to say the least. And so ends my participation in this thread.

Since it seems Chienworks wants the question, OK, fine, now solve the problem. We all will look forward to your solution since one badly swollen head is better than the collective wisdom of the entire forum.

LR :

Was curious how you are determining the captured audio is low?
What does the wave form on the timeline look like?
(Peaks and valleys or practically flat)
Have you opened the captured file in another app like media player,
if so, how was the level there?

As the person who raised the issue about audio and seeking help (thanks everyone) let me respond to a couple of items which may clarify. 1. the dsr 1500 is a fairly highy quality dvcam recorder player with a firewire interface. 2. On the question how do I know audio is recording low? good question. I will double check, but I believe the waveform was low (again, I will double check ). Another reason the capture appeared low was the following: I had captured avi and wav files on another edit system (incite) and imported them into vegas. Those imported .wav files played loud and clear with strong wave forms on the timeline.

Here's more info...

Was curious how you are determining the captured audio is low?
What does the wave form on the timeline look like?
(Peaks and valleys or practically flat)

ITS FAIRLY FLAT. AUDIO IS PEAKING AT 20 ON VEGAS MIXER OUTPUT. MAYBE (!) AUDIO IS JUST FINE. I RECORD AUDIO AT -20 ON MY DVCAM CAMCORDER -TREATING -20 LIKE 0 ON AN ANALOG RECORDER - SO PERHAPS AUDIO WAS FINE ALL THE TIME. PROBELM WAS I WAS COMPARING IT TO.... (Have you opened the captured file in another app like media player, if so, how was the level there?)
...ANOTHER A CAPTURED FILE FROM AN INCITE/MATROX APPLICATION WHERE I CAPTURED THE VIDEO/AUDIO THROUGH A MIXER AND PULLED UP THE DIGITAL -20 PEAK TO AROUND A +5 OR 7 PEAK ON MY ANALOG MIXER AS AUDIO WAS CAPTURED. SO MAYBE AUDIO IS OK.

QUESTION: I HAVE 2 TRACKS OF AUDIO ON MY PLAYBACK DEVICE (DSR 1500) AND YET I SEEM TO BE CAPTURING ONLY 1 TRACK OF AUDIO INTO VEGAS. IS THAT THE IT WORKS IN THE FIREWIRE UNIVERSE?

LR :

If I'm reading you correctly that's two stereo tracks (1/2 & 3/4)?
My understanding is that Vegas VidCap will only capture a single stereo track.
You may want to look at this thread -

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=122560&Page=0

You might also try a search on 'Scenalyzer'.

HTH,
bd

yes, you're right, vegas captures a single stereo track - i can see that now.
also - i've fixed the low level audio problem: it is low. i opened it up in sound forge, increase volume, and now it is set at the right level.