vhs capture question

[ronco05]

i am new to this so bear with me.i am trying to capture a vhs tape to my pc.i have a leadtek winfast tv 2000xp deluxe capture card.i have the vcr hooked up to the pc with the composite cable.i get picture but no sound.i dont have a dv camcorder to hook up to, so is it possible to get audio and video with the composite cable?thanks.
win98 se
leadtek winfast 2000xp deluxe capture card
soundblaster pci 128 sound card

[Roundabout]

Not with the composite (video) yellow cable. That carries only a video signal. You must run the audio separately (red and white) to your capture card, or you will have no audio.

[Ejoc]

so is it possible to get audio and video with the composite cable?thanks.

No, it only carries video. What you need, my capture card came with it, is a cable to take the audio RCA jacks, the red and white ones, and convert it to a stero mini jack, that I could plug into my line-in on my sound card.

[ronco05]

i have everthing hooked and i am now getting audio and video.the problem now is the audio and video are out of sync.how do i resolve this problem?thanks.

[almostaborted]

are you capturing to a separate drive? what other programs are you running? what are the components in your computer?

please search the forums..a/v sync problems can be caused by many things and has been covered many times on the forum

[ronco05]

on another forum someone mentioned to use Virtual Dub.i cant get it recognize my leadtek card.i cant find it anywhere in the settings to enable it.anybody?

[bladestorm]

Does anyone know where I can find that cable?

Radioshack carries those 2 RCA male to 1 eighth inch male cords (about 3 or 4 bucks if I recall).

Ronco - are you in capture mode (under File) in VirtualDub. When you are there, (I am going from memory here) you just need to go under Video and then Source (I would have to double check when I get home.

Ronco - I had that same problem WITH VirtualDub. Is the audio behind the video? If so, this is a problem with dropped frames. What happens is the video loses frames, but the the audio doesn't resulting in the audio getting behind. There are two solutions.

The really, really REALLY hard solution: For the most accuracy, watch the video as it captures and take note of every time frames are dropped. Then, open the captured file in GoldWave or SoundForge and remove 0.033 seconds for each dropped frame at that time point in the audio. Save the audio file and combine them in VirtualDub. WARNING: A number of people have gone insane using this method!!!

The quick and sloppy (but not too sloppy) solution: capture the video without watching it. When done, reopen the file in VirtualDub. At the bottom you will see the total length of the file (in hours:minuteseconds.microseconds). Make a note of this time and close VirtualDub. Now open the same file in GoldWave (same as other method). You will probably notice that the length of the audio differs from that of the video in VDub. With everything selected, choose Effect>Time Warp. With Length selected and using the Rate algorithm, type in the length of the video as you wrote it down. Click OK. The audio will be resampled so it fits precisely into that time frame.

A few notes: Using Rate, it says pitch will change. Don't worry about this. Unless your capture dropped an exhorbitant number of frames (in which case, what is the point of trying to work with it), you won't notice. You can use Similarity to keep the pitch constant, but the time isn't nearly as accurate, and can still leave sync problems.

After saving your audio file as something new, open the video in VDub again. For the Audio, select From WAV file and choose the audio file you just made. You sync problems should be history!

[overloaded_ide]

Why go to all that trouble??
Just fix the system to capture correctly and stop dropping frames!

Every frame you drop is lost video, if your dropping enough to cause sync problems you probably have poor video playback. A few frames spread out over an hour might not be too bad, but alot of frames, or all grouped together would be bad.
Otherwise it would be a good way to reduce file size. Just drop 1 of every 30 frames

Course it could be something other than dropped frames causing the problem too.

[bottle-necked]

First ronco05, you should fill out your profile.

Second. You system 'can' capture in sync audio/video, but it may not do it at the quality settings you are trying to use. Lower the frame size way down, lower the bitrate 'way down' and run a few short capture tests. Raise these settings slowly while testing to find your 'systems max quality setting'. To go beyond those you will need to speed up your system by either fixing driver conflicts, bottle necks, hardware or software upgrades, etc. (use standard settings. etc VCD, SVCD, DVD Low - Med - High, etc"

There are so many things effecting the simple audio sync problem that one can't start to write all of them down. Do the reduced quality runs then tell us what your system 'can do' with and hardware you're running. Maybe then we can help.

Also, turn everything else off when capturing video, monitor and record your CPU loads, and monitor your hard drives (MB/s) during testing. These simple tests can pinpoint problems pretty quickly.

Good luck.

[vhelp]

hi guys.

@ HangoverMS,

I read your post above on goldwave and soundforge methods for "fuddging"
the audio's sync and all.

However, can it be used w/ FPS conversions ie, 30fps downto 24fps ??
I have done this (still testing) and my side-effect is audio out of alignment,
though video is fairly smooth, but needs tweaking some more

Any help (instructions) on how to "fudge" the audio for 30fps to 24fps ??
Would be greatly appreciated

Thanks again,
-vhelp