help increasing recording volume

[dvd_maniac]

Could someone tell me how to increase the recording volume on my aiw 8500 radeon? I record of digital cable and around 10% of my channels have a low volume.

[SansGrip]

Could someone tell me how to increase the recording volume on my aiw 8500 radeon? I record of digital cable and around 10% of my channels have a low volume.

I had precisely this problem, except all the channels were way too quiet, even ones that sound louder than others on the TV.

My "solution" was to plug the audio into my sound card's microphone input and enable the mic gain in the mixer.

[dvd_maniac]

I have a sound blaster audigy sound card. How do I plug in both the red and white rca cables into the one mic input? If I do will I lose stereo sound?

[SansGrip]

I have a sound blaster audigy sound card. How do I plug in both the red and white rca cables into the one mic input? If I do will I lose stereo sound?

I'm not sure about the 8500, but my 7500 has a 3.5mm (I think) jack running out of the video/audio connector. I just plugged that into my mic input instead of the line in.

Failing that, you can buy RCA->jack cables at RadioShack (or you could buy the bits and make it yourself), but the stereo thing is a very good point. I'm guessing the mic input probably isn't stereo, but I don't know for sure. You might want to find out before taking that route.

[theReal]

My "solution" was to plug the audio into my sound card's microphone input and enable the mic gain in the mixer

Not a really good solution... even if it was a stereo input, the quality of the mic input is usually lower than that of the line, AUX and CD input.

[dvd_maniac]

there is no setting anywhere in mmc or ati control panel, I have also checked the windows control panel multimedia applet. there must be a way? Is there a registry key that sets the default record setting? I have called ati on this myself and they were no help(as usual).:confused:

[SansGrip]

Not a really good solution... even if it was a stereo input, the quality of the mic input is usually lower than that of the line, AUX and CD input.

Yet another reason I'm not happy with this capture card.

[SansGrip]

there is no setting anywhere in mmc or ati control panel, I have also checked the windows control panel multimedia applet. there must be a way? Is there a registry key that sets the default record setting?

Not that I'm aware of. Best thing I can suggest is run the signal through an amp before taking it into the computer...

I have called ati on this myself and they were no help(as usual).

Big surprise.

[Swan]

And there is no way of turning up the output volume from the device you're capturing from? Do you have a cable TV decoder? On the two cable decoders I've had, output volume could be controlled.

/Swan

[dvd_maniac]

Yes it has a volume output level and I have it all the way up 100%. Like I said b4, most channels are fine it is just some channels that give me problems. Maybe I should look into a software solution? Is there anyway to increase the audio after capture while at the same time converting to ac3 from an ati mpeg2 file?

[dvd_maniac]

I will try this and see if it can be done to increase the volume. The website only talks about decreasing it.

http://www.rageunderground.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=001391


"There is a key in the registry [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ATI Technologies\Multimedia\Features\TV\Sound], lower the Record Volume to a more reasonable value (I use 80Hex, a nice round number!)"

[dvd_maniac]

I was wondering if anybody else had any suggestions on this? The registry thing didn't work for me...

[SansGrip]

I was wondering if anybody else had any suggestions on this? The registry thing didn't work for me...

Can't think of anything other than amplifying it at the source. Sorry.

[Swan]

Of course you can do post-processing on the audio to raise the volume and loudness levels. I do that all the time. If you capture with HuffYuv or Mjpeg compression it will be a little easier, but I do it on Mpeg-2 files every day, so it IS possible. :)

You will need a good audio edting software, such as Sound Forge or the more advanced and harder-to-learn (and more expensive) Wavelab from Steinberg. There are probably other softwares that'll do the job, but these two I have personally tested and I know they'll work.

If the incoming audio volume is extremely low, it may be problematic. You may get what is the digital variation on noise. I believe it is called "Quantization Noise".

I always set the audio in volume before I capture so that I have a healthy amount of headroom. Digital recording is so much harder than it was in the old cassette deck days. If you overmodulate a digital signal, the quality will be horrible. It's better to have a little headroom and increase the levels afterwards.

/Swan

[dvd_maniac]

Do you use an ATI product for capturing? If so how do you set the volume in with it?

[SansGrip]

You will need a good audio edting software, such as Sound Forge or the more advanced and harder-to-learn (and more expensive) Wavelab from Steinberg. There are probably other softwares that'll do the job, but these two I have personally tested and I know they'll work.

Check out GoldWave too. It's excellent.

[Swan]

Originally posted by dvd_maniac
Do you use an ATI product for capturing? If so how do you set the volume in with it?
If this question was for me, no, I don't have an ATI product. I have a Pinnacle PCTV Pro. But I have used a Matrox G450 eTV and a Aver Tv Studio, before I settled on the Pinnacle. And setting the in-level was the same procedure with them.

I capture via S-video from a digital satellite reciver. Audio goes straight from the sat receiver into line-in on the sound card. When I first got started with capturing, I actually had the opposite problem of yours. Some stations were heavily overmodulated. I was fortunate, it seems, as I could adjust the outgoing volume on the sat receiver and lower it.

I set the volume in Windows, in the Recording Properties of the volume control. I first start my audio editing software, set it to "record" (standby-mode, so it doesn't write to a file, but I still can see the incoming levels). I then turn the approprate line-in on and nudge the slider up and down until I see a good, safe, steady peak level in the audio editing software. I leave headroom, because there are always louder and quiter moments in any TV-program or movie. It's better to record the audio at a lower level than having the levels steadily peaking around -0.2 DB or something. One extreme peak and you get severe clipping and your recording is ruined. I set it to about -2 or - 3 DB.

/Swan

PS Goldwave is nice, but nowhere near as good as Sound Forge or Wave Lab. They have many more functions to increase volume and loudness without causing clipping.

[McQuaid]

I've had this problem on my capture card, I've seen this on friends capture cards, and come to the conclusion that most capture cards audio abilities suck.

Your best bet when dealing with the audio from your cap card is to cap at full volume and increase it later. This can easily be done in tmpgenc, by choosing setting/audio, choose 'use audio edit' then setting again, and check 'change volume' and indicate something like 150-200%. You can play the audio as a test before encoding. Not sure off hand about vdub, but I believe it has something similar.

But if you want any half decent audio you should be using your vcr as a tuner and feeding it's audio out to your sound cards line in. Definitely NOT to your soundcards mic in. Most soundcards mic in are garbage, even on some top of the line soundcards.

This is the pain in the ass in the end, if you want the best capture, you can't rely on your cap card as a tuner, use the vcr. Problem is, you have to rely on your vcr to tune to a specific channel. Not the ideal situation if you want to cap multiple shows on different channels.

There are IR serial ports hacks I've seen people make to control their vcr's from their puters, which I'd love to make, but haven't gone that far yet.

[dvd_maniac]

i know you can make your vcr record what you see, so it will just pass through the video from my cable box, but i wonder what kind of video loss i will have? maybe i should set it up for the audio to pass through but keep the video s-video for the video portion. good idea I will check it out and let you know

[SansGrip]

Goldwave is nice, but nowhere near as good as Sound Forge or Wave Lab. They have many more functions to increase volume and loudness without causing clipping.

At the risk of being OT, did you check the Effects->Dynamics section in GoldWave? You can play with amplitude almost infinitely :).

[Swan]

Originally posted by SansGrip
At the risk of being OT, did you check the Effects->Dynamics section in GoldWave? You can play with amplitude almost infinitely :).
Yes. I used Goldwave when I first got started editing wav's in the mid 90's. I transferred - and still do - my old vinyl albums to CD.
I quickly dumped it when I discovered SoundForge and then later, Wavelab. ;)

Goldwave is slower and less advanced than both Sound Forge and Wavelab. But it has a more pleasant price tag, especially compared to the last-mentioned. :)

But different strokes, for different folks.

One advantage with Sound Forge and Mpeg-capturing is that it opens .mpa (mpeg audio) files directly. With Goldwave, you first have to convert the audio to .wav before you can open it.

@dvd_maniac
You will probably get a quality loss if you pass the video signal through a VCR. Take it straight from the cable decoder box via good, thick cables into the capture card.

Just how low are the incoming audio signals on the problematic stations?
Install Goldwave (or whatever you prefer) and turn the line-in volume to full blast in Windows recording properties so you can see in DB how the signals look. Since you have a Soundblaster Audigy card, you should also tick the "What-you-hear" in the recording properties. Can you increase the "what-you-hear"? I assume you have it, most Creative cards seem to do. It is the master recording control, with a stupid name. :)

Perhaps you need some form of amp and mixer in between the cable box audio out and the audio card's line-in?


/Swan

[dvd_maniac]

I've got it down now.
What I do not only helps me out with the audio but it also lowers the size of the dvd project by a good 1GB on a usual 4GB project (using a standard ati mpeg2 captured file) after this process it ends up a little smaller than 3GB.
first I do a simple demux in mpeg tools (TMPGenc 2.58.44.152)
The resulting files are 1 m2v and 1 mp2(audio) files.
I input the mp2 file into ac3machine and the only thing I change is I check MAX GAIN. after this is done I take the resulting ac3 file and input that into ac3machine and reencode again using MAX GAIN"You have to type the file path in as it won't show in open dialog box. I get NO noise or problems with this method and can use a higher bit rate for video giving me a better overall result. I also have to use this method because there is no setting anywhere in windows, multimedia settings, volume controls, MMC 7.7.0.1, or cable box. Everything is ALL THE WAY UP already.