Any guides for capping analog video & audio separately from VHS?

[808state]

I am super frustrated with the last 5 capture cards I have owned and audio sync issues…to say the least. I am an experienced DVD ripper, SVCD/XSVCD and working on my DVD authoring skills. I figure that I should try my luck with capturing video with no audio then capping my audio separately finally syncing the two streams up with a DVD authoring program like DVD Maestro.

Will I run into problems with dropping frames and syncing separately captured audio? Do I have to configure any kind of audio framerate settings in a program such as Sound Forge, I ask because when looking through the settings I stumbled upon a framerate tab.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

[wotef]

frankly, trying to synch audio and video separately is mad

your real problem is probably dropping frames at capture-time, perhaps your capture application has not got good mojo; i'd advise you to try virtualdubsync and read the capture faq on what to do to solve frame dropping

solve the cause, not the effect

[McQuaid]

As he said, try virtualdubsync, or better yet avi_io.

You didn't mention what capture card you have and what drivers.

Old drivers were vfw drivers. Newer drivers are wdm drivers. In theory, wdm drivers are better (support for multiple cards, being able to see your captures while capturing full frame, standard way of tuning channels). But in practice wdm is still not mature enough, or to be more exact, wdm capture software is not mature enough.

Wdm drivers are usually only for win98se and above (winme, win2000, winxp). Win98se normally supports vfw or wdm drivers. Technically, vfw drivers can be written for xp, but it's rare, so usually your stuck with wdm drivers.

See the problem is the best apps for capturing are vfw applications.

I tried all the wdm capture applications out there and all of them had problems with sync issues or frame rate. That was a few months ago, so things might have changed. Now, if someone out there says they use wdm capture apps and have no problems, do this test. Do a capture in your wdm proggie and open the captured file in vdub. Does it say the frame rate is 29.97 in both the first field and the 'change so video and audio durations match'? Every single program I tried failed this test except avi_io. Even vdub itself fails this test when vdub is used for the capturing and Avery Lee addressed this problem on a couple of posts.

I know the issue is usually timing with the sound card and video card, but even knowing it's a daunting task, I find it strange that the only program that captures successfully is avi_io.

Last thing, if you have a card based on the brooktree chipset, you can still use wdm drivers and capture full frame with vdub and avi_io. This drivers are called btwincap drivers. I myself, didn't have the greatest of luck with these, but many people have had great success with them.

[fasttimes]

Originally posted by McQuaid
See the problem is the best apps for capturing are vfw applications.

...

I tried all the wdm capture applications out there and all of them had problems with sync issues or frame rate.Bet you didn't try VirtualVCR (http://www.digtv.ws), or didn't set it up correctly (which, can be a little confusing.)

Rock-solid A/V synch via audio resampling (so no need to dup/drop frames,) rock-solid frame rate, and *accurate* frame drop counter. Combined with the BTWinCap universal Bt8x8 drivers, it's even better!

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>Rock-solid A/V synch via audio resampling (so no need to dup/drop frames,) rock-solid frame rate, and *accurate* frame drop counter. Combined with the BTWinCap universal Bt8x8 drivers, it's even better!

seems liek you're talking VDSync....(hehe)

but seriously,it's not a sin to try to sync audio and video (IF THEY ORIGINATED FROM SAME SOURCE.)
i did it with success on some stuff....
sure,audio and video duration must match,but that shouldn't be a problem.....
then sync it in VDub (interleaving tab of audio menu)
and you're set...

in fact,that's the only technique that guarantees untouched sound and
non dropping video,but don't worry i have used that once till this day,but it was hard as sound a video track didn't correspond,so i had troubles....in th end i had perfectly synced movie:
video from analog satv,sound from VHS...
i'm gonna watch my "midnight cowboy" many times!

normally i use VDSync and have no worries.......

[McQuaid]

Actually I did try virutalvcr, and AFAIK, I did set it up correctly. You can say rocksolid a/v sync, but please tell me, when you open a captured file in vdub and go to frame rate, what does it say? 29.97 in both fields? If it doesn't, no thanks.

[808state]

I can't believe there are no programs that will allow a video and audio clip to be synched up, especially with all the poor winblows users that have sync issues. I have read many time in different places that all "the pro's ALWAYS" capture video & audio separately...so how in the hell fire do they do it. Hollywood always do voice overs in a sound room for motion pictures and later sync them up, so can't we?

My hardware at the moment:

Windows 2000 SP3

512 RAMBUS PC 800 MHz

P4 1.9a GHz

Pinnacle PCI PVR Latest retail drivers

ASUS 8200 deluxe GE-Force 3 Ti500 (with capture) latest NVidia drivers

1 WD 40 GIG (OS drive)

2 WD 100 Gig drive(s) RAID

Promise RAID Ultra 100

I know DVD authoring programs such as DVD Meastro will allow audio to be set at any time after the video clip has started ( I know this cause I just did a DVD of The Wizard Of Oz with Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon as a second audio source with a seven second delay in the beginning of the movie!) If there was a way to somehow insert a marker of some sort into the video & audio for a reference to sync them together in an authoring prog.

TIA

[John2002]

For routine recording you shouldn't need to sync sound and video. If you have sync problems there's something wrong with your setup.

I've captured video and audio seperately before but that was to capture an old tape where the video could only be played glitch-free on a new VCR but the audio recorded in Dolby B could only be played back with an old Dolby B VCR. It's not that difficult. Basically, you can:

1) use VirtualDub to capture the video
2) capture the audio seperately (or with VirtualDub while capturing the video) to a wav file. If you do the simultaneous audio capture use VirtualDub to write out the audio to a wav file.
3) open the video file in VirtualDub and under the Audio menu item select Wav audio and then choose the file with the wav audio
4) find a moment in the video with people speaking near the beginning. Use the offset buttons (the right two) to highlight a brief segment. Under the video menu select direct stream copy and then write out the brief section of video. Watch that video and under audio/interleaving experiment with the audio skew time until the sound looks well sync'd.
5) then find a moment near the end of the video and write out a brief segment with people speaking. Start with the amount of audio skew time that gave the correct sync for the file at the beginning. Is the audio near the end sync'd? If not experiment with the skew time until you find the right sync.
6) if the sync time near the beginning of the video is the same as for near the end then open the entire file with VirtualDub with the wav file and specify the audio skew time and use video/direct stream copy to write out the whole file, now with sync'd audio. You can also reencode instead of doing a direct stream copy if you want.
7) if audio sync is different near the end of the capture you need to stretch or squeeze the audio by the amount of the difference in audio skew time between early in the video and near the end. An audio application that can do this is CoolEdit2000. Use that to generate a new wav file and combine that new file with the video.