How to capture DV accidentally recorded at 12bit 32kHz?

[TlatoSMD]

I've accidentally shot two DV tapes at 12bit 32kHz, and I'm not able to capture these two tapes properly.

Well, capturing itself works fine in STOIKcapturer or VirtualDub via USB or Firewire, but when playing back my captured file in Media Player Classic, I only get lots of BEEPS on the audio. Opening the file in VDub, I get the same BEEPS, and at some time into the file duration, playback just stops with the error msg that the audio is unreadable. Same when I'm trying to export the file from VDub, all I get is an error msg that the audio is unreadable.

Extracting the audio by using Adobe Audition works fine at first, while file properties obviously identify the audio to be 16bit 41kHz so all I get is a file that's like an audio tape played much too slowly. That wouldn't be much of a problem, but after speeding it up what I get is no BEEPS but no sound at all where the BEEPS used to be.

Via googling I've found that in a thread dating 2003, somebody here suggested using BeSweet for this problem, however BeSweet doesn't help me much if I have nothing to properly extract the audio from the file.

Might getting Adobe Premiere Pro help me with this? I've heard it might support 12bit 32kHz capturing. Somebody else told me Audacity might help as it supports working in 12bit 32kHz (which Audition doesn't) but does it support extracting audio from video files?

I'm kind of in a hurry, I need to get the whole project done by early November, and there's more to it than just getting this footage on my hard drive. I'm so desperate I've even tried to connect my cam's earphone monitor out to my PC's audio in, however it seems that signal is only suitable for my mic in, not for my line in or aux, and my mic in only seems to work in mono, and besides, I have no guarantee at all that it might remain in-sync with my video if I'll capture analogue audio signals like that.

[setarip_old]

You should be able to accomplish the conversion with GoldWave. Just "drag and drop" the captured file onto the primary GoldWave window and it will extract the audio and let you save it in your desired format as a separate audio file...

[TlatoSMD]

What I get that way is an empty black audio timeline with the name of my captured file, and when trying to save it as another file, the error msg I get is that GoldWave identified the length of the audio file as 0. It's from the very same file that has audio in Media Player Classic and VDub, only with lots of BEEPS and partly unreadable for VDub.

In GoldWave, file properties says my file is 32kHz, and "system signed 16bit".

The GoldWave version I got is v4.26. Is that the right one?

Update: Okay, tried the same with a shareware version of v5.06. This time, not even an audio timeline appears, only the error msg that the file contains no audio at all.

[henryho_hk]

Try Virtualdub (not the modded version) 1.6. Set audio to full processing mode and save it as WAV.

[TlatoSMD]

Well, that way I get correct speed and pitch, but the result is the same as in Media Player Classic, lots of BEEPs. Those can't be on the tape itself since the cam's speaker itself doesn't give any BEEPs when playing the tape.

[trolltuning]

Do you still have the instruction book for the camera? If so I would reread it cover to cover. I seem to remember something in mine about not doing such and such or you get the beeps on the tape. Once you know what they are maybe someone can figure out how to get rid of them. Otherwise you could always place a mike next to the speaker on your camera and re-record the audio. Of course quality will suffer a little and you might have sync problems.

[henryho_hk]

Have you tried WinDV? Use it to make a DV Type-1 AVI, which is a direct data dump. Then load the AVI into Virtualdub 1.6 and try again.

http://windv.mourek.cz/

[TlatoSMD]

Unfortunately, it was a rented cam. All I know is that it was a Panasonic with a mic on top of it (which seems pretty rare according to google, all models I found have their mics on the front or on the sides). I'll try to call up those guys to get the model number so I'll be able to download a PDF or something.

UPDATE: I've tried loading the WAV output by VDub non-Mod version into BeSweet, but not even BeSweet is able to read the WAV. By now I figure I simply need an audio or video tool that supports 12bit audio. Been googling for anything like that for quite some time now but all I get is camcorder tech specs and explanations that there are these two DV audio specs of 12bit/32kHz and 16bit/44.1kHz.

Have you tried WinDV?

Just did. As convenient as the file-splitting option into scenes is, the result is the same as when extracting the audio directly from my captured file into Audition: Lots of missing audio where the BEEPs used to be.

Otherwise you could always place a mike next to the speaker on your camera and re-record the audio. Of course quality will suffer a little and you might have sync problems.

Is that supposed to be sort of a joke? That's even worse an idea than mine about recording the analogue mono signal coming from the cam's earphone monitor plug.

[bb]

DV should incorporate either 12 Bits / 32 kHz or 16 Bits / 48 kHz audio. 44.1 kHz is rather uncommon, although it is part of the Blue Book specification.

Provided that the DV stream has been captured properly, you should be able to open the DV file in your favourite NLE application. If the NLE software itself does not convert to 16 Bits / 48 kHz audio correctly, you may save to a WAV file and use ssrc (an easy-to-use commandline program) to get a decent upsampling. If you decide to use TMPGEnc to convert to DVD MPEG-2, then you may use its audio resampler as well, which is pretty good in the newer versions.

bb

[henryho_hk]

Just did. ... the result is the same as when extracting the audio directly from my captured file into Audition

What if you play the DV Type-1 AVI in VirtualDub 1.6 directly? How's the audio?

[TlatoSMD]

If the NLE software itself does not convert to 16 Bits / 48 kHz audio correctly, you may save to a WAV file and use ssrc (an easy-to-use commandline program) to get a decent upsampling.

I tried that by using the BeSweet GUI for SSRC, however the tool was unable to read the WAV file I'd exported from VDub.

Anyway, thanks for your support guys, I've figured out a solution to my problem. I was not able to get decent analogue audio from the rented thousand-something Euros Panasonic cam, but from my cheapo Canon cam that I've got yesterday.

It came to me while I just sat there all frustrated, and since all productive work had failed to get the stuff onto my harddisk, I decided I might try to at least view my footage on TV by connecting my cam to it. Now, while the expensive Panasonic cam had had only a Firewire and an S-VHS connection plus some odd earphone monitor that only gave me a rather low-quality mono mic signal (sounding like an inverted average at about 8kHz or so but still better than trying to put the same signal into my line-in), the analogue A/V connection that came with my cheap cam beside its Firewire one had a small pin on the cam side, and three cinch plugs on the other, with an additional three-cinch-to-SCART adapter. Well, that failed as well since I didn't have my TV's remote anymore and couldn't set it to its A/V channel.

But that's when it dawned on me that with this cheap cam I was basically holding a clean analogue stereo signal on two cinch plugs in my hand that suited my PC's line-in. What I did then was capturing the DV video stream in VDub, and made it get its audio simultaneously from my line-in, of course with VDub's feature of subjecting the automatic resampling of my analogue audio to the more accurate video stream.

All I had to care about after that was correcting some peculiar but simple audio interleave which made the captured file's audio, allthough basically in-sync, start a little later and lagging behind exactly equalling the time that had passed between hitting "capture" and starting cam playback. For instance, if I'd needed 5 seconds to get my cam running after hitting "capture", I afterwards had my audio lagging behind at exactly 5 seconds for the whole resulting file so it was easy to fix by using Audio --> Interleave... in VDub at a finally resulting sync precision of about 1/500th second (judging by ear and my naked eye). For some odd reason it didn't even result in those 5 seconds being cut off of my audio at the end.

[bb]

TlatoSMD, I'm glad that you finally solved your audio problem - although I believe that it should be possible to do it the way it is supposed to be: digital, not analogue.

bb

[henryho_hk]

TlatoSMD, have you tried WinDV transfer using the Canon camera?

[TlatoSMD]

TlatoSMD, have you tried WinDV transfer using the Canon camera?

Yes, I did. No audio where the BEEPs used to be, even though there's neither those audio gaps nor the BEEPs coming from the cam's speaker itself.

[henryho_hk]

That means WinDV generated files through the Canon camera is ready for digital processing, right?

[TlatoSMD]

You mean perfect files? Nope, all WinDV gave me from those tapes were lots of audio gaps were the BEEPs used to be.