Sound stutters on video capture

trevster wrote on 1/18/2006, 6:40 PM

Sound is stuttering badly at the capture stage (and plays back same way). I am an experienced Vegas user, now on version 6b, and have had this problem from time to time. Now I have it all the time.
My camera is a Sony TRV900 connected via firewire.
Computer is P4, with hyperthreading, integrated Soundmax card, Ram 1 gig, XP Home Edition.
Video is PAL.
I have tried changing sound property settings etc with no change.
Could someone please offer some help.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 1/18/2006, 8:03 PM

You shouldn't need to change any settings. Just let it capture. One thing to do is to make sure your capture window is minimized. If it's playing back with stutter, then there is something else amiss. Your hard drives are in DMA mode, right? They're not slaved on the same bus as a CD Rom unit, right?

Chanimal wrote on 1/18/2006, 8:24 PM

I would also check your firewire card. I had this problem using the firewire built in the Audigy, but it disappeared when I switched to a dedicated card.

In addition, make sure you have few processes occuring at the same time. For example, turn off Windows drive indexing, automatic updating (for Windows, virus detection and everything else that does so at its convenience--much to the detriment of a clean video capture).

I also second the size of the preview window--make sure it is small, rather than large.

Hope any of this helps.

trevster wrote on 1/21/2006, 6:38 PM

Thanks DSE for your comments, and yes drives are in DMA mode, and I have tried mimimising the capture window. My own analysis so far has shown that the sound stutter is happening on one particular tape (woulnn't you know the most important one). All other tapes are fine. However the sound on the bad one is absolutely perfect when played out of the camera or connected to a TV. It is an odd one.

B.Verlik wrote on 1/21/2006, 6:44 PM

If worse comes to worse, you could capture the sound separately. Use audio inputs and record sound only. Then bring it into your video project and line it up under your original sound. Mute original sound after you're sure it's sync'd from beginning to end.
A hassle? Yes, but better than stuttering.

trevster wrote on 1/22/2006, 1:14 AM

Thanks for your advice. I have now captured the sound using the audio inputs and successfully synched it to the original audio.
Still it is a curious issue.

farss wrote on 1/22/2006, 2:53 AM

It might just be a dropout on the tape.
Sometimes tape dropouts only show in the 1394 stream, on the analogue outputs of the deck all is perfect. I've had this happen on both the audio and video from the odd tape. Makes not 1 bit of sense I know and I'm not the only one to have had this happen.
Bob.