Audio capture problems

[pyrohydra]

I've been banging my head over this for the better part of the evening. After some fruitless searching I've decided to ask the forum for assistance.

I recently began capturing using my bt8x8 card after nearly a year hiatus. However I am having several problems doing so. My source is a VHS-C tape, NTSC.

Problem #1: It seems that VirtualDub will not capture (uncompressed) audio at 48 KHz. I am almost 100% sure I was able to capture at 48 KHz before. Am I going insane? Or could something have changed on my system that's preventing me from doing so? (Vdub has not been updated since I used it last).

Problem #2: May be related to Problem #1 - I notice after capturing my audio sounds a bit "distorted" compared to the source. Specifically, it seems like more bass is being added to audio, making it sound terrible, especially when people are shouting. I have my audio connected to the Line-In port on my sound card. I tried adjusting the volume and balance levels to no avail.

Problem #3: Not really related to capturing. I resize the video to 352x480 with Virtualdub, and encoding using Tmpgenc's 2-pass VBR mode - 3000 kbps avg, 900 min, 8000 max. I figured this would be enough to get a decent picture, considering my source. However I am seeing mosquito noise around sharp edges in the video. Is there any way to mitigate the mosquito noise without increasing bitrate? I am using TMPGEnc's noise reduction filter, but at a low setting (4 1 2). I'm reluctant to go higher because I notice negative results from this (grass becomes a green blur).

I'll appreciate any help. I'm still sort of a newbie at this stuff, as I have been using DV pass-through for the past year, but I'm trying to get away from that.

[pyrohydra]

Anyone?

Regarding the audio problem - perhaps I did not describe it properly. What I'm hearing is a "scratchy"-ness in the captured audio, expecially with voices. I've tried adjusting the line-in mixer volume, to no avail. I'm pretty stuck right now, about to go back to using DV pass-through. I have been capturing at 44.1KHz/16bit/mono.

Regarding the mosquito noise problem, I'll try several more things to resolve that - perhaps using a sharpen filter and doing CQ encoding.

[Ejoc]

When I cap for DVD I do:

Using VirtualDub
1) Audio set to PCM; 48.000 kHz, 8bit, Stereo 93kb/sec
2) Video set to 352x480; Codec (no flames I'll explain) XviD Mpeg-4, 1-Pass CBR 10,000kbps

I know, use Huffyuv to capture, well I found that XviD at 10,000kbps is accpetable for me, and with my limited HDD space, I can not use Huffyuv to capture 2hours worth of video.

[pyrohydra]

Yes, but see, I CAN'T capture at 48000 Hz, I don't even get presented with the frickin' option.

Why would I not be able to do this? Is it something inside my sound drivers that's set wrong? I tried removing my sound card out of device manager and letting Windows XP re-install it, but to no avail.

[Ejoc]

Are you trying to set the audio from the little box in the bottom right of the virtualdub window, or from the Audio->Compression menu?

[pyrohydra]

Are you trying to set the audio from the little box in the bottom right of the virtualdub window, or from the Audio->Compression menu?

Both. I see no 48KHz option in either place. And I downloaded the free trial of iuVCR...no 48KHz option available from there either. So the problem seems to be with my system and not Virtualdub-specific. This isn't a big deal because I can always resample to 48KHz if I want DVD audio. It's annoying nevertheless.

However, I did find out what was wrong with my scratchy audio problem. I was tweaking the Line-In volume in the PLAYBACK area when I should have been tweaking it in the CAPTURE area . If I move the slider low enough (almost to the bottom) I get a good audio capture. However I noticed that I have to move the slider again if I want to capture after a reboot, since, even though the slider was in the same place I left it, the actual capturing volume was louder, until I moved it slightly. That confuses the **** out of me.