Unable to mix Audio

HiddenDrive wrote on 12/6/2004, 5:32 PM
I keep getting the error message "Unable to mix audio, operation timed out" when I am trying to render my project and save it to the hard drive. I transferred my video from VHS-C using a ADS DVD Xpress capture box. The project renders to a certain point but then quits. I've watched the render and went to the point in the video where it quits. I delete some of the audio track before and after this point and it will render further into the project until I get the same error later on. Can anyone take a guess as to whats happening? Is there something wrong with the audio from my ADS box? The properties of the audio are 48,000hz stereo, MPEG Layer 2.

Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 12/7/2004, 6:56 AM
Is it possible you've just overloaded your hard drive?

You not only need lots of space on your drive to capture and store your video files and your resulting rendered files, but you also need lots of empty space for the program to write temp files, trade paging files, etc. Often, this must be "contiguous" space -- in other words, if your disk is heavily fragmented, the program, or the operating system, can't find a large enough block of space to put its temp files.

Make sure you have at least 20-30 gig of free space (depending on the size and complexity of your project) on your hard drive and make sure you've given your drive a good defragging and maybe even a clean reboot before you try to render.
HiddenDrive wrote on 12/7/2004, 8:06 AM
I guess that could be it but I do have a brand new 160 gig hard drive and my project is only about 15 mins. long. I will check this though. Any other ideas?
Steve Grisetti wrote on 12/7/2004, 11:11 AM
Actually, HiddenDrive, now that I look at your original post, that may not be the problem at all.

DVD Xpress is, technically, not a capture bridge -- at least not in the sense that it's designed to produce AVI data that can be edited. DVD Xpress is designed to convert analog data into DVD data, the main purpose of which is to use it to burn your own DVDs directly from it.

There are a number of problems with trying to edit DVD/MPEGs, which is really a delivery format and not an editable format. The MPEG compression format is one. Sound files that are incompatible with many editing programs is another.

That's not saying we can't salvage your files. You may try to put your file into MovieMaker (a free XP feature) and exporting it as a DV-AVI. If that doesn't work, try downloading a terrific piece of freeware called VirtualDub, from www.virtualdub.org and doing the conversion with it. You ideally want to be working with AVIs, particularly DV-AVIs (although some analog capture bridges produce MJPEG-AVIs, which also work well). Although you can technically bring many file formats into MovieStudio, using AVIs will save you a lot of headaches in the end.

If none of this freeware helps, you may still have a couple of options. 1) you can forego editing completely and just use MyDVD (or DVD Architect, depending on which version of MovieStudio you own) to just burn your files directly to a disk. And, 2) if you are willing to invest about $150 into another piece of hardware, we can probably recommend an analogue-to-digital bridge more compatible with your goals.

And that's the extent of my "expert" knowledge on the subject. Maybe another forum contributor has had more experience with the ADS hardware you've been using.

Hope that helps!

HiddenDrive wrote on 12/7/2004, 12:26 PM
Grisetti,
I really appreciate your thought and insight into my dillemma. Sounds like I bought something that doesn't do what I thought it should (my bad!) When you import old VHS with some other devices it comes in as 'DVI' not MPEG? Should I convert the audio stream to .wav?

I truly thank you for your time and expertise!
Mike
Steve Grisetti wrote on 12/7/2004, 12:34 PM
I'd first try to convert the entire video/audio batch using MovieMaker or VirtualDub. If that doesn't work, there is software out there (WinMPG is one example). Do a search on this forum and you should find a couple of other recommendations. They cost about $30.
HiddenDrive wrote on 12/8/2004, 11:23 AM
Would this be a problem if I've already spent several (4-5) hours editing my video? I hate to lose what I've done.
gogiants wrote on 12/21/2004, 2:18 PM
One feature in Movie Studio might be helpful to you here: Movie Studio will prompt you for a new file if you open a Movie Studio project file and the video clips you've used in the project are "missing".

So, if you recpatured your source files, you could move the old captured files to a different location. Then, when you open Movie Studio, it will prompt you for the new files. This should then preserve all the edits you've made on the files, but would use the new files instead.

Two IMPORTANT warnings on this, though:

1) I've never tried this when the new file is in a different format than the original file.
2) This will cause problems if your new captured files are "off" by even a few frames. For instance, the "scene detection" on the two captures might be off by a bit. Fixing things for these differences may still be faster than starting all of your edits over from scratch.

Still, it might be worth just copying the original files to a different place and giving this a try. Just make sure to save a copy of the original project file and save a copy of the original media files; that way you can always go back.