VidCap audio problem-issue identified

farss wrote on 8/16/2005, 7:22 AM

Sorry to start a new post on this but the old thread was getting a bit too long and muddled.
Here's what I've found.
Take DVCAM tape from camera and attempt to capture from DSR-11 using VidCap. Use Capture Tape. Deck reports audio as 48K, captured file is shown as 16/32K in both Vegas and SF7.
Repeat above BUT in Vidcap click Play and when program rolling click Capture Video. Deck again reports audio as 48K, resulting AVI file is now 16/48K!

Conclusion: Without a doubt there's a bug in Vidcap and it's been there since V4.0 and continues in V6.0b. The issue seems to relate to capture starting on blank tape, perhaps VidCap is 'hunting' for a stream and somehow latches on at the wrong sample rate.

This explains why not many people have noted the problem, it certainly wouldn't appear during batch capture, it will not happen if you manually start capturing after program starts. It will happen with Capture Tape. This is probably not the only bug in VidCap related to Capture Tape, others have noted that the command sequence sent to the deck is at odds with industry standards.

Bob.

Comments

rmack350 wrote on 8/16/2005, 8:08 AM

Hmmm. I haven't captured whole tapes lately and I have a feeling that those I did capture had bars alll the way up to the head of the tape because I never noticed this. (I used to do Capture Tape with scene detection on all the time but I have to try to get along with a m100 system so now I capture based on their shooting logs.)

Good to know.

MarkWWW wrote on 8/16/2005, 11:38 AM

Aha! I virtually never do "capture tape", always "capture video", and that's why I've never seen the problem.

Mark

Grazie wrote on 8/16/2005, 8:18 PM

I only Capture Video .. can't remember when I last did Capture Tape? I don't have the Sony deck . . though I might try and re-pro on my Pannie deck . . Grazie

Spot|DSE wrote on 8/16/2005, 8:46 PM

I pretty much only capture tape, and don't see this at all, but I use a Panny 2000 or a DSR 25 deck for most capture.

Grazie wrote on 8/16/2005, 9:38 PM

Spot's got a a Panny .. I wont bother then. Thanks for saving me the time Douglas - G

farss wrote on 8/16/2005, 10:08 PM

We've done a little more investigation on this.
When the DSR-11 goes into play on blank tape it seems to send out 32K audio, VidCap must 'latch' onto this and then not budge when the deck hits recorded tape and starts to feed 16/48K. Of course not all decks and cameras support 12/32K which is another reason why you might not hit this problem.
I guess the same thing must go for thhe J30 as well, when the tape's blank it defaults to 32K until it finds something on the tape.
Bob.