I need some help on how to get the audio with the captures

[matrix]

I'm as new as one can be to video capturing. I have experience in DVD convertion, but nothing at all in capture.
I just got a capture card, a tv@nywhere. I know some people don't like this card, but it was the best (speaking about price) I could get my hands on.
Now, everything seems to be OK, exept the audio. I can't seem to be able to get the audio working.
It works fine in WinDVR, and if I capture in mpeg, but I don't wanna do that, since I can do a much better job converting the avi to mpeg.
So I'm trying to capture in avi. I tried using lots of software, like VDub, Amcap, FlyCap, Virtual VCR and iuVcr. I can't get the audio in any of them. And I suppose my conection is OK, since it works in WinDVR.
I'm trying to capture from my satellite receiver, using SVideo for video and regular audio conection to my Sound Blaster Live Value card. I never tried the main board card, btw.
I tried all the pins in the back of the sound card, and all the options in the audio part of these programs, and nothing works.
All the programs seem to do the audio too, but where the hell is it? I even extracted the audio to wav with tmpg, and try to play it, but seems to be empty. Or it is there, but I don't have what I need to hear it?
I was wondering, are you supposed to hear the audio in any of these avi capturing programs?
Do I need any codecs or something for it to work?
God! I thought this would be simple.

My Sys: WinXP home, PIII 733Mh, 384Mb ram, 60Gb HD.

So please, I would appreciate any help.
Thanks in advance.

[Fantasma]

Hello

Try doing the following:

1. Go to your audio settings and select the recording source and select Line In, you can do it doubling clicking the Sound icon on the lower right corner of your computer.

2. Does your TV Card has a a sucket connection called Audio out? mine has it and I use a jack connector link the Audio out to my computer's Line In.

[cjv]

If you are using the audio-passthrough of the tv@nywhere, go direct to line-in on the SBLive instead, as the passthrough does not work outside of WinDVR yet.

Also, make sure the line-in is unmuted in control panel (you can turn the volume down to 0 if you don't want to hear it). It comes muted by default.

TV@nywhere doesn't work well in VDub, but works great for me in iuVCR. Just play with the crossbar settings a bit, try each one along with enabling/disabling preview, opening and closing iuVCR with each new setting. Once you stumble upon the right setting, don't mess with the crossbar settings ever again. :)

Once you get this all going, would you mind posting some untweaked samples (either JPEG/MPEG/etc..) in the "Samples" thread below?

I have the exact same setup as you, so if you can't get it working, let me know and maybe I can help you in more detail.

cjv

[matrix]

@ Fantasma

Thanks. I tryed all that but no success.
Anyway, after reading some more threads on this forum, I did what cjv sugested, and it does work now.
I used most of the capturing programs I could find, but VDub and VirtuslVcr don't let me capture at higher resolution than 320x240, and so does flycap.
I can use however amcap and iuVcr with any resolution I want. The only problem is my system is Fat32, so I can only have 4GB file. Amcap doesn't seem to do segmented files, so I cap. a movie last night with iuvcr wich does that, and everything appears to be OK.
No sync issues.

Once you get this all going, would you mind posting some untweaked samples (either JPEG/MPEG/etc..) in the "Samples" thread below?
You mean encoding a short clip without any filter or anything?
I'll do that.
I'm just doing some samples right now just to see how I can get the best out of it.
Anyway, thanks for the help, and I'll post, if I encounter any problem.

[cjv]

About the samples, yea, anything you can manage. Some prefer JPEGs, some prefer MPEGs, some prefer DIVX..etc. Anything is better than nothing, just check out the thread for a suggested posting format so we can see your system/setup details as well.

That thread could always use a bump!

cjv

[matrix]

I feel I have to rectify something here.
In my post above, I affirmed that there are no sync issues, but there are. Big ones.

Initially, when I checked my segmented avi's, everything seemd to be ok, probably because there's very little dialogue in that movie, so was hard to notice.
However, after combining all those files into one, and encode it, the audio gets way off sync. I mean WAY OFF.
In the middle of the movie, wich is about 70 min long, there's more than 4 minutes difference. Video gets way ahead.

Now, as I said, I'm very new to this, so I can't blame the card, or anything else, but my lack of experience.
I had quite a lot of dropped frames(if I recall correct, around 250 in some 2600 frames. I could be wrong though), wich might be due to several factors.
Ohter programs running in the background, rather slow computer, fragmented HD, settings chosen by me, and who knows what else.
I have to do some real tests before I can say anything.

There are some things I don't understand.
I chose the NTSC framerate (29.97), but in iuvcr's status window, the framerate was around 25 fps.
Is that normal? I had internal fps checked. Should I have checked the audio stream offset too, and change something there, or better don't mess with any of those settings?
I did earlier some tests, and I don't know. I'm confused. Most of the time the framerate reported is as I said around 25. But sometimes, it goes down to even 1, or less. What's going on?

Anyway, I just hope I get a hold on this iuVCR thing, before the 30 day trial period expires, so I know what to do. Get it, or don't get it.

I hope somebody clarifies that FPS dilema for me.

Regards
Matrix

[1loser]

Originally posted by matrix
I chose the NTSC framerate (29.97), but in iuvcr's status window, the framerate was around 25 fps.

I'm using iuvcr for the first time and I'm having the same problem. I can't get the frame rate setting to go to 29.97. It's set for 25 (I want it at 29.97) but it captures at 20 fps.

Does anyone know how to correct that?

[cjv]

Go to Video tab->Capture format button
Click on Colour format/compression, YUY2 should be selected, but if you expand the dropdown list, you should see YUY2 again. Choose the other one, then you shold be able to change your frame rate above 25fps.

cjv

[Herske]

Not it's not normal, you should capture at 29.97 fps. Set the right fps as cjv said, and in order to avoid desync, you should set "master stream" to "audio", "audio stream offset" to "auto" and use "short audio samples".

It might be a good idea to disable "smart tee preview". Be warned, if you set the master stream to audio, the fps will not be _exactly_ 29.97, and CCE might not accept the avi. Works perfectly in tmpgenc, though!

[matrix]

No. iuVCR sucks. It doesn't work for me no matter what I try.
I got another program though, Mgi videowave. So far, I'm very pleased with it. If I cap at 720x480, it drops a couple of frames here ant there, but I capture now at 640x480 and I have 0 dropped frames. I'm doing SVCD, so I resize it horizontally anyway. I looks really good. But I have yet to do a full movie, to see if I get any sync issues.
As I said, it looks very promising. Even at the higher res, for short samples, didn't notice async.
But iuVCR? No way. With my machine anyway.

[1loser]

Originally posted by cjv
Go to Video tab->Capture format button
Click on Colour format/compression, YUY2 should be selected, but if you expand the dropdown list, you should see YUY2 again. Choose the other one, then you shold be able to change your frame rate above 25fps.
cjv Thank you, before I read your post I was able to get it to work but I selected UYVY. It now works when I select the second YUY2. Can someone tell me the difference between UYVY and YUY2. When I feed the avi file into Cinemacraft I used ConvertToYUY2().AssumeFPS(29.970,True).

Originally posted by Herske ...in order to avoid desync, you should set "master stream" to "audio", "audio stream offset" to "auto" and use "short audio samples".

It might be a good idea to disable "smart tee preview". Be warned, if you set the master stream to audio, the fps will not be _exactly_ 29.97, and CCE might not accept the avi. Works perfectly in tmpgenc, though!

Thank you, What about the settings "system timer for video and audio" and "sync using stream offset"?

I am capturing at 640 x 480 and than I use this script in Cinema Craft.

LoadPlugin("C:\avs\mpeg2dec.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\avs\Decomb.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\avs\Convolution3D.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\avs\UnFilter.dll")
AVISource("capture.avi").ConvertToYUY2().AssumeFPS(29.970,True)
Telecide()
Decimate(5)
AssumeFrameBased().SeparateFields()
Convolution3d(0,6,12,6,8,2.8,0)
BicubicResize(352,240,0,0.60).weave()
Unfilter(4,4)
ResampleAudio(44100)

than I use the pulldown program to get the frame rate back to 29.97

The video looks perfect and the quality is excellent but I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do when making an mpeg-2 for playing in my standalone DVD player.

Also in Cinema Craft I DON'T select progressive frames, linear quantizer scale or zigzag scanning order. Normally when converting a DVD (film) I select those settings.

Can someone please inform me if I should be using the script above and those settings in Cinema Craft.

Thank you.

[cjv]

Looks like a good start. Here are a few suggestions:

If you capture to HuffYUV or MJPEG, YUY2 is it's native format, so you don't need ConvertToYUY2().

After you Telecide/Decimate, you are left with progressive frames. Why SeparateFields() and Weave()? You don't need these.

You are resizing to VCD res, which is small, so I doubt Unfilter(4,4) is actually doing anything. Bump that up to at least Unfilter(5,5).

I _would_ select Progressive and Zigzag in CCE, because you essentially have a progressive stream just like a DVD.

One important thing, I assume you are using CCE for MPEG-2? 352x240 is not a valid MPEG2 DVD resolution, so your files will not play in all/any standalone DVD players. If you are using CCE for MPEG-1, then your res is valid, but CCE is a crappy MPEG-1 encoder.

cjv

[1loser]

Originally posted by cjv
After you Telecide/Decimate, you are left with progressive frames. Why SeparateFields() and Weave()? You don't need these.

I _would_ select Progressive and Zigzag in CCE, because you essentially have a progressive stream just like a DVD.

One important thing, I assume you are using CCE for MPEG-2? 352x240 is not a valid MPEG2 DVD resolution, so your files will not play in all/any standalone DVD players. If you are using CCE for MPEG-1, then your res is valid, but CCE is a crappy MPEG-1 encoder.

cjv I'm not sure why I'm using Separate() fields and weave() but the resolution actually comes out to be 352 x 480. Try it for yourself. It gives me a CVD which is DVD compliant.

Does the Telecide/Decimate change the frame rate from 29.97 to 24 and than a pulldown is needed to get it back to 29.97?

[cjv]

You're right, it does come out to 352x480 with the Weave().

In your case, I would try changing:
AssumeFrameBased().SeparateFields()
Convolution3d(0,6,12,6,8,2.8,0)
BicubicResize(352,240,0,0.60).weave()

to:
Convolution3d(0,6,12,6,8,2.8,0)
BicubicResize(352,480,0,0.60)

It should yield the same result, and may shave some time off of the encode.

Does the Telecide/Decimate change the frame rate from 29.97 to 24 and than a pulldown is needed to get it back to 29.97?
Yes. That's exactly what Decimate(cycle=5) does for NTSC files.

cjv

[matrix]

I don't belong in this discussion anymore, but I just want to report back about this: It looks really good. But I have yet to do a full movie, to see if I get any sync issues.
I just capture a one and a half hour movie, using mgi videowave5, 640x480, 29.97fps. There were no frames dropped, quality is really good, and most of all, audio and video are perfectly syncked throughout the whole movie.
Of all the software I tried, this gave me the best results.
Next time, I will try a full movie at the highest resolution, just to see how it comes out.

A wile ago I started another thread about how to choose huffyuy as compresion codec in videowave.
All I had to do was register huffyuy to take over all yuy2 colorspace conversions.

I'm really glad about getting this software, with my computer,(P3 733MH) and my capture card,(tv@nywhere) it did a great job.
BTW, I changed my system to NTFS, I also got another HD (120GB, Western Digital, 7200RPM) wich I use only for captures.

Just thought that mabe this will help other people.

Regards.

[1loser]

Originally posted by matrix
I just capture a one and a half hour movie, using mgi videowave5, 640x480, 29.97fps. There were no frames dropped, quality is really good, and most of all, audio and video are perfectly syncked throughout the whole movie.
Of all the software I tried, this gave me the best results.
Next time, I will try a full movie at the highest resolution, just to see how it comes out.

A wile ago I started another thread about how to choose huffyuy as compresion codec in videowave.
All I had to do was register huffyuy to take over all yuy2 colorspace conversions.

I'm really glad about getting this software, with my computer,(P3 733MH) and my capture card,(tv@nywhere) it did a great job.
BTW, I changed my system to NTFS, I also got another HD (120GB, Western Digital, 7200RPM) wich I use only for captures.
I am now using a 120 G 7200 RPM drive on a separate controller card (my other harddrive is on the motherboard's controller) and also NTFS. I read using a controller card and capturing video to a separate drive is best. I'm now able to capture at 640x480 with iuVCR and I get about 35 dropped frames per hour. The video still comes out perfectly in sync every time. When I check the frame rate in virtualdub it's perfectly in sync, 29.964 fps.

I'm using a 1.1 GHZ athlon, so since you have a slower computer (Pentium III 733) you are actually doing much better than me. Maybe videowave5 is even better for capturing than iuVCR.

I was using virtualdub sync but now that I discovered iuVCR I absolutely love it!

1) Does videowave allow you to watch the video as you capture it?

2) Can you program videowave for timer recording?

[matrix]

I just capture the other day a movie at 720x480, 29.97fps. I got some dropped frames, about 1 per second. But somehow, in VDub it shows me a framerate of 29.967. And the movie is in sync all the way.
That's what I'm glad for.
With iuVCR I had lots of dropped frames, and way out of sync.

1 and 2. The answer is no for both.
I can watch if I capture at lower resolution. 320x240.
But no programming it.

[DaveQB]

Originally posted by 1loser
I am now using a 120 G 7200 RPM drive on a separate controller card (my other harddrive is on the motherboard's controller) and also NTFS. I read using a controller card and capturing video to a separate drive is best. I'm now able to capture at 640x480 with iuVCR and I get about 35 dropped frames per hour. The video still comes out perfectly in sync every time. When I check the frame rate in virtualdub it's perfectly in sync, 29.964 fps.



i am not using any scripts, i would just like to know the settings you used in Options to keep AV sync

i get 0 dropped frames, but my Audio is way behind my Video and it cant be fixed with VD offeseting the Audio, has it increases its difference as the video goes on :(

[DaveQB]

Originally posted by 1loser


1) Does videowave allow you to watch the video as you capture it?

2) Can you program videowave for timer recording?


i have used Virtual VCR before, but didnt make any diff when i was using VD and my old BT878 card,

trying it now and it might solve the sync problem* plus
you can watch the capture as yuo cap even @ hi res (running PAL 768x576 here)
the CPU is a bit more, approaching 50% but min the screen and its back to the same as iuVCR (33-38%)

this is using mjpeg @ 19

hope this helps

*frame rate is up @ 24.99xxx
rather then 24.72xxx or so in iuVCR, therefore slowing the video that little bit allowing sync capturing

edit: added * to reason my thoughts

[DaveQB]

well same result,
out of sync AV :(


everyone who has sync problems, is it your Video getting ahead of the Audio??

it takes bout 30 mins til you can really notice it, maybe cap in segments :(

i read that capturing in mp3 solves this

is that right ??
gona try that now

[DaveQB]

well i'll continue this convo to myself (i am good @ that)

here's what fixed it for me

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=136554&highlight=sync

i tried the change Frae Rate so Audio and Video match and it worked !!!

perfect sync

now i will try to simply cap @ 24.964 and save the process of fixing the file

hope this helps someone