Pulsating sound!

[Germanicus__]

I've been capturing video directly to mpeg2 with WinDVR. (I would have liked to capture to AVI then convert, but I haven't the time or space.) The InterVideo codec used by WinDVR captures audio to mpeg as well (I later convert that to AC3).

The problem I have is that the audio has a slight waver or pulse to it once captured. It isn't very noticable when there is just speaking, but it becomes more apparent when music is playing. This pulsating warble is hard to explain, but I'd love to get rid of it. (It's kind of like listening to an old, slightly warped, record.)

I have a Hercules Fortissimo II sound card, and I'm sending the audio stream directly through the aux input.

The wavering sound exists only in captured video (before and after any conversions).

Any Ideas? Thanks.

Windows XP sp1
AMD XP18+

[au7usa]

If the source is 44.1kHz and your capturing at 48kHz your probably hearing an interference pattern.

Try to determine the actual source sample rate and capture at that, then use something like CoolEdit, or SSRC to upsample using dithering.

Just a guess but your system might be doing an On-The-Fly sample rate conversion, and it doesn't have enough time (during capture) to determine if the data it's seeing is accurate.

[Turbo2000]

You are not alone in experiencing the pulsating warble in WinDVR. On some sytems, it always occurs when using any interVideo software that utilizes the intervideo MPEG2 codec. Changing the sample rate will not help, even when using the sample rate setting called "from source".

I have been struggling with this for the past 2 months, I have tried every possible combination of settings but it still pulsates. I thought it might be a hardware incompatibility but the "warble" does not occur using Win98 on my rig, only in WinXP Pro SP1, so it's not a hardware conflict.
A clean install of WinXP plus WinDVR3 and the problem is still there, so that eliminates a conflict with other installed software packages.

Would appreciate any input as to why this would occur in WinXP and not in Win98. WinDVR came with my TV card and if I could resolve this it would be the ideal DVR software as it encodes MPEG2 on the fly beautifully. Plus we have a thread going on TV-Cards.com and no one has figured this out.

[stounedi]

I have the same "wobbling" sound with WinDVR? Sorry for bringing up such an old post but I have the problem described above and have been trying to find a fix for almost a month... Changing to different TV Capture software also isnt an option, since all they seem to have some (other) issues or I just dont like them.

WinDVR would be the perfect tool for me, if it just worked.

[Germanicus__]

Regretably, I never did find an answer to the sound problem. I was using the TV@nywhere Master, and had the sound warbling issue with both WinDVR 2 and 3.

I eventually ended up using the MainConcept PVR software. Not perfect, but it did the job for me.

I now have a completely new card since I moved to Europe.

The verdict on the TV@nywhere card was great potential in the hardware, but the software/drivers stank, and they never made any efforts to improve it.

[stounedi]

Hello... Just cheking if anyone has yet solved this problem?

[johns0]

Solved by capturing with virtualvcr with picvideo 3 codec and encoding with cce or tmpgenc.

[stounedi]

Damn this problem. VirtualVCR seems to be dropping frames with many codecs, and that Picvideo 3 Codec seems to to cost money. I cant believe there is no solution for this problem. Not even the manufacturers or the software developers can give any help :P