PDX10 & Vidcap audio problem

farss wrote on 12/13/2005, 5:34 AM
Anyone know if this got fixed in V6.0c?
I just captured several PDX10 tapes from camera #2 of a multicamera shoot and as both it and the main camera had a feed from the desk on one channel I had great plans for how easy this'd all be to get synced. Ha, well Murphy killed that one, the one channel I got from the PDX10 was the mic channel, bugger! And I hate trying to sync off camera mics, fortunately the camera were physically pretty close and both had AGC off.
Thing is this footage was captured on our venerable old VAIO that still runs VidCap 4.0 (it wasn't broken until today so why fix it, yeah right, OK). If someone can tell me this bug has been fixed in a later release I'll update the beast.
This isn't a show stopper, just something to file away for next time, twas easy enough to validate sync from the dancers feet.

And just looking at the footage I now understand why several have been asking for a colour matching CC FX, trying to match the DSR 570 to the PDX10 is going to be fun, not! I can just hear those little ballarinas asking " Mummy what does my tu tu keep changing color?"
Bob.

Comments

farss wrote on 2/13/2006, 2:34 PM
Well,
no one had a clue about this last time and now I've another set of tapes from a different PDX10 from a different client.
Now this gets really nasty. They have FCP, they captured the tapes to their system, vision was fine but the audio sounded like garbage. So they dump it out onto tape and send it to me and nothing I can do with it, the audio is total distortion, not clipped just DISTORTED.

So my client burst into tears, she's been so worried she's been physically ill. I ask her for the original camera tapes just in case.

They play back PERFECT from the analogue outputs of my DSR-11, perfect image, perfect audio.

Vidcap goes NUTS trying to capture. One frame of major macroblocks and that's it.

SCLive does no better, it thinks it's being sent a NTSC frame in a PAL stream and suggest I update DirectX ?????

These tapes were recorded with the camera in DVCAM, everything should be perfectso far all it is is a perfect disaster. What the hell have Sony done with the PDX10.

If all else fails I can do a capture from the analogue outputs of the deck, yukky I know but at least the poor client can get something.

I know I'm not the only one here to have had problems with the PDX10 but even FCP has problems with it. Not like this camera is some new HDV invention, it's supposed to be shooting vanilla DV25, how did Sony get this thing so wrong?

Bob.
farss wrote on 2/13/2006, 4:13 PM
This just got one awefull lot wierder.
Hooked up the old D8 camera to the firewire output of the DSR-11.

Guess what, it sees perfect video coming out of the DSR-11. So next step, put tape into D8 camera and record a bit. Connect D8 to PC. Capture using Vegas, perfect EXCEPT audio in MONO!

So try SCLive, audio is stereo???

Note this is now coming off an old D8 camera, not the PDX10, whatever is in the 1394 data stream gets into the D8 and gets recorded in such a way that VidCap only can get mono but SCLive gets stereo, very, very wierd.

Bob.
farss wrote on 2/13/2006, 5:46 PM
Ya wouldn't believe it, it was a ghost in the machine. Powered down PC, reseated VIDEO card, restarted and everything works OK!

I should have tweaked when SCLive suggested something might be wrong with DirectX. I still haven't a clue as to how dubbing the material to a different tape format (D8) meant I could capture it OK.

I'm still having to use SCLive to cope with the PDX10 camera tapes so I don't get mono but I can live with that.

When I tried to copy the dubs the client made via FCP I got horrid audio distortion, I'm now wondering if that was the same ghost in the machine that caused that problem.

Now all I've got to do is fix the audio levels of the mumbling speakers and the clipped applause, that's a piece of cake compared to these other speed bumps.

Bob.
ForumAdmin wrote on 2/13/2006, 5:54 PM
I have a PDX10 and like it very much except for this issue you describe- it records audio in a wierd "dual mono" format when using external mics. I don't know of any video app that captures it so that audio recorded as above appears on the timeline correctly (correctly = as if were shot with a PD170 or just about any other dv camera).

All is not lost (although the D8 camera is another variable you should try to eliminate). The solution is to use Scenalyzer and capture the "other channel" as a separate wav file, but for this to work it is suggested you use the pdx10 to capture with.

Once files are on your drive you could marry the ch. 2 audio back into channel 1 + video using a nested project in Vegas and from there it'll be easy to keep them in sync during your edit.