Out of synch sound from digital8 passthrough???

[Smells_Like_Feet]

I have been trying to make use of the digital passthrough feature on my TRV-740 camera. The video quality is outstanding, but the sound gradually loses synch with the video. After an hour of video, it is worse than watching dubbed movies . After searching through many posts the only result I see is to attempt to measure the rate of synch loss and resample the sound at a different frequency. This seems like a lot of work that I thought the camera would accomplish internally. Please tell me there is a fix or mistake in my setup.

Here is my capture setup:

Vhs->d8 camera->firewire card.
Capture software used: Pinnacle Studio DV
Computer specs:
AMD 2400+
Dedicated 200GB WD HDD
MSI nvida based motherboard
Pinnacle firewire card (came with Studio)
1 GB ram
Windows XP

Any help is appreciated.

-Smells_Like_Feet

[borghe]

about the only thing I can suggest is to make sure you are capturing the audio at 48Khz. I do all of my analog captures through a TRV330 and they turn out beautiful. If you capture at 44.1Khz instead of your camera's 48Khz, in theory your sound will gradually fall behind (x frames played back at a slower rate). Does your video slowly speed ahead of where your sound is at?

[G-man]

Are you catpuring to AVI files or are you converting directly to MPEG during capture? If AVI, does it actually go out of sync when playing back the AVI file thru media-player on your PC?

If you are not capturing directly to AVI, I would try that to see if the out-of-sync is occurring at capture or during encode. I don't understand how a firewire capture can go out of sync.

[Smells_Like_Feet]

Hello and Thanks for the replies,

It appears as though the video gradually lags behind the audio. Yes, I am capturing in DV-avi through Pinnacle Studio. I have also tried capturing in window Movie Maker with the same result. Since the capturing is being done in the camera (and digitally transferred to the computer HD via the Firewire), something must be wrong with the camera. I hope it is something simple such as an improper setting in my TRV-740, however I am beginning to wonder if I have a bum camera .

Has someone else had this same problem and fixed it???? Can someone help me out with this problem? PLEASE!

-Smells_Like_Feet

[FulciLives]

It is odd that you are having audio synch problems with your setup. However, this could be possible (even with your setup) if the original source is of "bad" quality. For instance if you are trying to play back an old VHS tape that has many drop-outs where the video gets interupted then this could cause problems although usually in such a problem the audio get ahead of the video ... not the other way around. Maybe try a different source ... such as a "clean" cable channel for instance ... and see if you still have audio synch problems. If not then you know it is th source that is the problem but if you still have audio synch problems with even a clean video/audio source then something else (the camcorder?) is wrong.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[FulciLives]

Hello again

As a test you might want to try to record the input to the camcorder unto a DV tape. Then hooking the camcorder up to your TV and playback the DV tape and see if the audio is out-of-synch. If it is then you know then that the problem is either the cam or the source. If however the playback of the DV tape is in synch then try to copy it to the computer. Now if the computer copy is out-of-synch then you know something is wrong with either the cam (the way it outputs via FireWire) or the computer ... but at least this will help you to isolate the problem ... to an extent.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

*** EDIT ***
My mistake you have a Digital8 so you will be using Hi8 videotape but you get the point ... copy it to the tape FIRST then try playing back the tape to check for audio synch.

[Smells_Like_Feet]

Thanks FulciLives, for your suggestions. I have tried the record to D8 tape followed by transfer to computer via firewire and all is well. So I guess that I have narrowed my problem down to the passthrough - a primary reason I chose this camera .

Any suggestions on what might be wrong or how to fix it. I can't help but feel it is a simple fix, but if I have a bad camera I want to get it serviced .

-Smells_Like_Feet

[wwaag]

I have a Sony GV-D200 D8 video recorder (great device) which also has pass-through. I have tried long captures (2hrs) and experienced the same thing--loss of synch after about an hour and by the end it was terrible. I posted the problem and found out that I was not the only one having problems with Sony's passthrough. The only reasonable suggestion back was to capture as Type1 DV rather than Type2 DV. Since this would then require a re-conversion back to Type2 for my apps, I decided it wasn't worth the effort since I also have an ADVC-100 which locks AV sync. Anyway, if your camcorder is your only capture device, you might give this a try and report back if it works.

wwaag

[Smells_Like_Feet]

Recently tried Ulead Video Studio (ver. 5.x) to do the capture and lo and behold synch problem gone . I think that the Ulead software used a different DV codec (type 1 or type 2, unsure yet) and the Pinnacle software is limited to the other. The problem with the Ulead is the that video was not very good (several instances of dropped frames and macroblocks on) while the Pinnacle was extremely clean. I am considering upgrading to ver. 7.0 on the Ulead software. Any comments?

I am very surprised by this issue, as I thought the video would be "captured and compressed" by the Camera and the software would facilitate transfer to the hard drive. Apparently the final result is dependent on the transfer software. I am going to next test the WinDV software and see if I can get good results.

Anyone else experience this problem with their DV setup? Anyone find the culprit? Thanks for the advice, wwaag.

-Smells_Like_Feet