Audio clicks-converting VHS to DVD w/Canopus ADVC-55, firewire, iMovie

[Danae]

Can anyone help me? I've been converting analog VHS tapes of home movies, to digital and burning them onto DVD's. I thought everything was going great until my son watched the DVD's. He said there's a clicking noise throughout the DVD's. Other than that, the audio is fine. I'm hearing impaired so had no way of knowing there was an audio problem until someone told me.

In order to find out where, in the process, the clicking noise shows up, I imported a VHS tape into iMovie. I did nothing to the converted video clip after I imported it, other than play it on my iMac for my son to listen to. He said the clicking noise is already in the video clip so obviously, it's being added by the importing process.

What's causing the clicking noise in the video clips and how can I prevent it from happening? Any help or suggestions is appreciated. Thank you.

[lordsmurf]

The VCR or camera, maybe.
However, sometimes it was recorded that way by the camera. I hear it often.

[Danae]

Hello lordsmurf, I've tried a different VCR (I'm not using a camera). Could it be the RCA cable I'm using?

My son says the VHS tapes when played in the VCR don't have a clicking sound in the audio. He also says it's continuous, clicking that seems to match the borders of each frame. In other words when I played the imported clip for him in iMovie, the clicks seemed to correspond to when the line (indicating which frame was playing), ran over the frame borders.

[zoobie]

try disabling everything down in the taskbar by the clock especially any anti-virus/firewalls
if it continues, try disabling most of your background aps/programs/processes that are running by following the below:
ctrl+alt+delete>processes

[Danae]

Thank you zoobie.

I have an iMac. The only things I see running my taskbar by the clock are Skype and Airport. I'll turn them off and do another import.

I don' I don't have an "alt" key and don't know what the equivalent key is on my iMac, but will try to figure that out if quitting Skype and Airport doesn't remove the clicks.

I'll post the results when done.

[Danae]

Hello again zoobie.

I turned off Skype and Airport, then imported a VHS tape into iMovie. There was a huge improvement. My son said the clicking is still there but is barely noticeable. He says the clip audio is acceptable now, but I'd like to eliminate the clicks completely if I can.

Just for kicks I turned Airport back on, but left Skype off and imported a VHS tape into iMovie. My son said the loud clicks had returned.

I found the "alt" key on my iMac. Surprisingly, it's labeled (in small lettering) "alt" (DUH me!). In my defense, it's also labeled "option" in much larger lettering. Pressing ctrl+alt+delete didn't do anything. I wasn't sure what the ">" meant in your reply, so I may be doing it wrong. I searched "help" for "processes" and found nothing so I'm unable to find out what other bg apps/programs/processes are running. Any help in finding them is greatly appreciated.

[zoobie]

unfortunately, I didn't notice you're running a mac. there's a mac-specific forum here. perhaps they can tell you how to shut off all unnecessary processes that are running in the background when working with video or perhaps create a video-only profile which doesn't load all the OS processes when editing

[Danae]

Creating a video-only profile is a great idea! Thanks so much for mentioning that and the Mac-specific forum too. I'll see if I can get into the forum. I did a quick look and it's not immediately apparent to me, but sometimes I'm kind of slow. Thank you zoobie!

[Rawit]

Try disabling the audio-lock feature on the Canopus. I ever made a recording that had clicks. Disabling the audio-lock feature solved it. Apparently it doesn't handle every signal well.

[Danae]

I'm sorry but I don't know what or where the audio-lock feature on the Canopus is.
I'm really a tech idiot so have no idea what the following means.

It appears, to me, that the Canopus only has one feature I can change and that's the DIP switches. Other than the switches, the ADVC-55 is just a box with a bunch of jacks and one status indicator.

Of the switches only #2 is in the "on" position. That switch is set by the manufacturer for my particular point of purchase.

Switch #1 toggles between NTSC and PAL, it's in the "off" position.

Switch #3 is for the Audio Input Level. It's in the "off" position. According to the ADVC-55 User Manual, turning it on will make the sound louder but possibly distort it when the audio signal is over a certain level.

Switches 4 - 6 According to the User Manual, these three switches are "Reserved"

[Rawit]

I googled yesterday if the ADVC-55 had the same audio-lock feature and it has... But apparently no dip-switch to turn it off? On the ADVC-110 it's the 4th dip-switch. Try switching that one. I guess the hardware is almost the same except for the added outputs on the ADVC-110.

[Danae]

Thank you Rawit. I'll give that a try.

ATTENTION PLEASE: I'm no longer using this forum for this problem.
I've switched to the Mac forum for help.
So please don't reply with any more solutions here. Thank you.

I don't know how to remove my original post or the threads.
If anyone can tell me, private message me.

[redwudz]

Continued in:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/323737-Need-to-know-to-find-disable-background-proc...47#post2005947