solved: No sound during DV capture....but

[surefire]

Hello all.

I'm rather new to video capture and have a question/problem.

I recently purchased a Canon MV700i digital camcorder. I just recieved a firewire card to pipe the DV into my computer. I want to capture at full DV avi uncompressed so that I can edit and encode to any format I want. The problem is when I use movie maker to capture DV avi (Movie maker is a temporary solution until I purchase something better) I get no sound. If I capture at a lower quality the sound is present when the video plays but of course the video quality is poor. I tried using my friends copy of Pinnacle studio 7 but for some reason it wont run on my PC. I read one of the "how to" articles on this sight and captured using WinDV but there is still no sound when the avi file is played.

Am I doing something stupid? Why Can't I capture sound as well as video when capturing in DV avi? I'm a little baffled.

[petar]

Am I doing something stupid? Why Can't I capture sound as well as video when capturing in DV avi? I'm a little baffled.

I don't think you're doing anything stupid but you baffled me with "if I capture at a lower quality the sound is present". How do you reduce the quality? Your camcorder sends you a defined DV stream. Are you actually capturing DV and on-the-fly converting to another codec?

Anyway, maybe it's the file type. DV AVI can be type 1 or type 2, the difference being the way the audio is saved. Try capturing in the other type. Use WinDV until you fix the problem. It's a very simple tool that does nothing but save the DV in an AVI format. If WinDV doesn't work, no other tool will either.

[surefire]

Thanks for the reply.

I just meant that in "Movie maker" there is the option to capture at different settings ie 128 kbps or 768 kbps or full DV. The settings other than full DV have the sound present when played back, only when set to DV is there no sound.

I tried using WinDV but once again when the captured file is played back in Windows media player or real player there is no sound only high quality video.

It just seems strange to me that the sound is part of the file in all captured formats except for full DV. Do I need to send the sound separatly using the audio out on the Camcorder into the computer sound card?

As an aside, I just tried capturing both types 1 and 2 in WinDV: still no sound in both file types uuuhhh!

[MpegEncoder]

Your problem certainly sounded like a type-1 VS type-2 problem.

You might want to grab GSpot and use the "render" util at the bottom of it's screen. That might help you know what's going on.

BTW, if I've said it once I've said it a million times: DV is NOT UNCOMPRESSED!!!

[petar]

Never captured with Movie maker but when you capture at 128kbps or 768 kbps I'm sure it's converting the DV on-the-fly to some other format (wmv, probably). That's why the quality is lower. The fact that you are getting sound when you do this means your camera is configured OK and you are receiving the stream just fine (no need to connect anything to the sound card).

The problem has to be either in the DV recording into an AVI format or in the way you play the DV (problem with the codec or the player). Since you tried both type 1 and 2 with WinDV probably it's not the former.

Extract the audio from the DV stream (with VirtualDub or any MPEG encoder, just output the audio in a WAV format) and play it. If it's OK then it's a problem with your player or your DV codec.

[surefire]

Well chaps: I copied two short DV files from my camcorder (type 1 & 2) on to CD and tried to play them on my laptop. Results are that when type2 is played there is no sound, when type 1 is played - sound is present . So it looks like the camcorder outputs type 1 DV-avi. Quite why my desktop wont play sound on type 1 is something I will have to look into. It maybe that I need a different DV codec or something like that.

Moving on a little, I tried to extract the sound from the type 1 file using VirtualDub but I get a message saying that VirtualDub doesnt support type 1 files. If this is the case how can I split the sound from video on this type of file? Are the any applications that will do this (preferably freeware).

Thanks for the help so far guys.

[Safesurfer]

It's not your camcorder that determines the type of AVI, it's the capture software you use. If you want to use the Type1 files in Virtualdub, you need to convert to Type2, with something like https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=195#comments . What player are you using? Have you tried loading the Type2 file in Virtualdub and extracting the audio as a Wav file?

[victor010170]

Read the post of Jim44 in this DV forum. I do not know how to make a link but the post was on Feb 24, 2004. He had similar problem and he fixed it.

[surefire]

Thanks safesurfer and victor. I used the linked program to convert to type 2 DV and I can use VirtualDub now.