Is DV capture limited to 32 kHz?

[mb571]

We are capturing from the S-Video out of a sattelite receiver to a Sony DV camcorder.
Then transfering through firewire with Scenalyzer.
Encoding to SVCD with TMPGEnc.

The video looks great but the sound quality is poor. In Scenalyzer it seems that we can only capture at a sampling rate of 32 kHz. Is this a limitation of the Sony, Scenalyzer, or the Type I DV avi file??

Mark

[DivXExpert]

When "capturing" DV you are only transfering the data from the Camcorder to the HardDrive. So if the transferd data is 32kHz then audio on the DV Tape is also 32kHz. Camcorders usually have an option to change the audio quality.

[mb571]

It results in a tinny scratchy sounding audio. Can this be up sampled or modified to clean it up a bit??

Mark

[VideoTechMan]

My scenario is a bit different, but the result is about the same as far as DV capture goes.

In my case I have a Professional DV deck (not camcorder), and I have used it a few times to record direct from the satellite using the SVHS jack, which yields excellent picture quality. The thing I have learned about DV is this:

Depending on your DV equipment, most DV tapes have 3 seperate tracks....one for the video, and two for the audio (Timecode and other misc data is embedded in a special track, or sub-data track). Most people would probably record on one audio track (12bit/32kHz) if they say wanted to record a narrative on the second audio track or something. To have the best in audio quality, you could record in 16-bit audio (48Khz) which would then fill both audio tracks. Audio mixing wouldnt be possible unless you made a copy of the tape down to 12-bit audio. I am pretty sure that most camcorders has the feature where u can change the audio settings before recording. From what I have heard recording in 16-bit stereo is about equvilent to DAT quality sound.

To answer your question Mark, I belive Sonic Foundry 6.0 audio editing program would probably do the job nicely as far as cleaning up the audio. Hope this helps.

VideoTechMan

[Andrew]

So are you saying that if we change the camcorder sound setting to 16 bit, then when we capture it down to the computer we will have a much better sound quality ? Is there any bad outcome ? like do we lose anything ?

[DivXExpert]

When you change to 16bit you loose the option to have 2 audio tracks. Like adding directer's commentary, and having the regular sound.

[David K]

I had the exact same problem with my Sony TRV 340 Digital 8 Camcorder. As the previous post explained, they set the default camera setting for this ridiculous dual track stereo modes (two separate stereo tracks). But when you capture, capture programs can only pick up one of the tracks even if you somehow used both. You can change it -- go into your digital Camcorder setting, Record mode section, Audio mode setting and change from 12 bit to 16 bit. You can look it up in the unreadable user manual in "Changing the menu settings." I actually really like my Sony 340, but this is one feature where they were too clever by a half.