Sound dropouts during Print to Tape

Klavisha wrote on 1/22/2003, 8:28 PM

I have been trying to print a project back to my digital camcorder, and each time I've tried I'm getting sections of up to about 20 seconds each where the soundtrack drops out. It doesn't appear to be the tape, as I tried four different tapes and got the same intermittent dropouts, tending to occur in approximately, though not exactly, the same areas of my movie. The movie plays fine through Windows Media Player. Does this sound like a problem with my camcorder? The video looks okay, not "dirty", and I didn't notice pixelation in my small camcorder LCD. (Didn't get as far as dubbing to VHS and viewing it on my large TV screen, though.) Previous projects printed without a problem. Any ideas possibly connected to VF? Or is it time to find a camcorder repair shop?

Comments

ralphied wrote on 1/22/2003, 9:26 PM

Does your project in VF consist of any MPEG files as original footage rather than all of the video being DV .AVI files?

Before using DV AVI files exclusively for use in my VF projects, I use to get weird sound dropouts when printing to tape and burning DVD's. Since changing to DVD AVI files though, I've never had this problem.

The fact that the sound dropout occurs at the same spot in the video, to me, does not suggest a problem with the camcorder itself. If it were the camcorder, you would think the sound would dropout more randomly at different locations.

Klavisha wrote on 1/23/2003, 4:25 PM

Thanks for your suggestion, ralphied. No, I didn't use MPEG files. The 42-min video consists of DV .AVI footage captured via Firewire from my Sony digital camcorder and from my sister's Sony 8mm camcorder (converted to digital via a Dazzle breakout box), plus .MP3 files as a background music track. I noted the dropouts both in sections using my digital footage and using her 8mm. (I've combined original digital footage and 8mm footage before without problems.) I used an animated .GIF file at the very end, but Print-to-Tape didn't get that far. The sound dropouts were more random than perhaps the impression I gave in my message - they tended to occur in roughly the same areas, approximately one-third to one-half of the way into my movie rather than at the beginning. They occur in sections both with and without an .MP3 playing. The first instance of dropout seemed to occur in the same approx (2 or 3 min) section of video. Since I stopped the Print-to-Tape process once I noticed the problem, I never did see if this would continue happening all the way through.

I cannot think of anything I used for this project that I haven't done successfully before. I also closed other programs on my computer, such as screen savers, before Printing. Could something running in the background cause dropouts like this?

safari_tim wrote on 1/23/2003, 5:44 PM

I think I had this problem once as well. The fix turned out to be I had to defrag my harddrive before printing to tape. Also make sure the DMA is turned on if your harddrive supports it.

-Tim

ralphied wrote on 1/23/2003, 7:53 PM

If it's a hardware problem, or a problem with your system not being fast enough, why would just the sound be affected? I would think the sound and the video that goes along with it would stutter and be choppy.

When I've had problem in the past with just the sound, it always seemed to be something with the component footage causing the problem. It's almost like VF is going along doing its processing and then something causes it to hiccup where it seems to lose track of the continuity between audio and video.

But, I admit, I'm in no way an expert in this area. I'm waiting for 'Chienworks' to join in on this thread to provide the answer.

Klavisha wrote on 1/25/2003, 8:01 PM

Update, in case anyone else has this problem: Doing a search on "audio dropouts" in the VF and Vegas forums brought up many references to audio dropouts with various camcorders during PTT. There were numerous fixes suggested, most of which I've done - defragging the hard disk, making sure no other programs were running, etc. Next step: my video was on my C-drive, which I know is not recommended; I've moved it to my F-drive which holds only video files and will see if that makes any difference. Somebody suggested lowering the audio sampling from 48 to the next lower sampling rate, 44.1. Will give that a try too. Thanks to everyone who participates here - what would I do without this forum!