How do you cap CD Audio?

[LiquidHAL]

Problem: My capture card (3dfx voodoo 200) does not have an external audio out. instead, i use one of those internal cables for connecting a cdrom to a sound card. There is an output on my capture card that is connected to the cd audio on my sound card (internally). I can hear it fine, but so far i have not been able to record. Anyone know how? is there any way to capture the audio/video together or at least capture them seperatley and then mux them?

[videoguy79]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe you need to go into your Control panel settings and enable analog CD playing. This lets you record/listen to a CD through the audio cable, instead of going through the IDE bus. I have only used this option once, when trying to create mp3's from a badly scratched CD that would not read digitally. The only drive I could do this from was the one connected to the sound card through the cable you described. . so I am assuming that is what you need to do. Let me know if that works.

[LiquidHAL]

Which setting in the control panel is that? i can't find any that mention analog cd, and cd audio is not muted in the volume control. What program did you use to record from the cd? thanks for the help.

[JerryH2]

Why don't you just rip the tracks you want right to a WAV or MP3, which keeps everything digital. If you capture instead, you're going D-A (from CD to soundcard), then A-D (soundcard to file).

YOu can mux them together using any NLE.

[LiquidHAL]

when i said cd audio, i meant from the cd audio input on the sound card. the audio i want is not on a cd, it's coming from my cable tv hook up via my capture card, which is what is connected to the cd audio on my sound card. I would connect it to my sound card throught the regular input, but my capture card does not have any 3.5mm outputs.

[JerryH2]

My bad...try this.

Open Window's sound Recorder (a simple wave file recorder) and click on Edit, Audio Properties.

You'll see a box appear with Playback and Recording devices shown. Select the device that you want to use for recording, then clik on the large button just below the word, "Recording".

That will open another box where you choose the actual input that your source is connected to, in your case, CD Audio. Set the volume to between 50 and 80%, then close the dialog.

Click OK on Audio Properties to close that. Get some audio going on your CD input and click on the Record button. You should be able to save some audio.

HTH.

[videoguy79]

To enable the CD-Audio soundcard input, you normally have to go into control panel>multimedia>CD Audio. There you should de-select "enable digital CD playing". Like I said earlier, this normally allows the audio device (usually a CD player) to be played through the analog audio cable instead of going through the IDE bus. The problem is, since you are trying to send audio from a capture card and not a CD player, I am not sure if the proper device will show up. Try doing what I said on what CD drives do exist in your hardware profile--this might change the settings across the board. If that doesn't work, use the line-in feature on your soundcard. I know that sucks, but I wasn't even aware that most capture cards could capture audio along with the video--I have a USB capture device that requires me to plug my audio in through the soundcard input.

[videoguy79]

JerryH2--
It's usually not a good idea to record using the Windows Sound recorder. The reason for this is that the sound recorder records to your free RAM, where as most other programs record to the hard disk. I have 192MB of RAM and cannot record more than a few minutes of uncompressed PCM wav w/ Sound Recorder for this reason (1 minute of PCM 44.1Khz, 16 bit stereo audio takes up 10MB). Rather, the best utitlies for doing that are good sound editing programs like Sound Forge (my personal fav.) and Cool Edit, though there are some free wav recorders out there if you look for them. These programs record to your HDD.

[JerryH2]

Hmm, I didn't know that about Sound Recorder...I only mentioned it to help get him going (plus every Windows installation has it).

I personally use CoolEdit2000 myself, and I'm sure Soundforge is just as capable. Hal would be far better off using one of these...

[kinneera]

Sound Recorder doesn't really have anything to do with the instructions given:

Open Window's sound Recorder (a simple wave file recorder) and click on Edit, Audio Properties.
You'll see a box appear with Playback and Recording devices shown. Select the device that you want to use for recording, then clik on the large button just below the word, "Recording".
That will open another box where you choose the actual input that your source is connected to, in your case, CD Audio. Set the volume to between 50 and 80%, then close the dialog.

simply get you to the Windows mixer. You can also get there through the control panel. This is the only way to change the recorder input for programs that rely on the Windows mixer to set it (VirtualDub is one such program).

Once you've made the change in Windows, you can still use any program you want to do the actual recording.

[LiquidHAL]

thanks, i finally got it to record the audio. the button only says volume, nothing about how it also lets you change the input. now its dropping more frames than is capping, but thats a different problem. again, thanks the help.