Sound distorted when capturing from ATI AIW

[Gary]

I've been trying to capture a VHS take using my AIW 128 Pro but am getting distorted sound like it is overdriven. What I have tried so far:

* I've tried using VDub, Ulead Capture 6.5, and (ouch) ATI's MMC, all with the same results.
* I have gone to the Volume Recording Options and have my Line In set virtually all the way down. Even at this level VDub's Audio levels show a lot of Red when displaying.

I don't know of anywhere else that I can set the levels so that the sound isn't distorted. Any other ideas?

I'm running Athlon 1Ghz, 386Mb, Windows XP.

Thanks.

[energy80s]

I had the same problem. Basically the output from your video is too high for the input of your sound card. You need to introduce some sort of volume control between the two. I use an old casette deck, feed the output of the video to the input of the cassette deck, and the tape output to the input of the sound card, then adjust the record level on the tape deck to get rid of the distortion in the PC. A bit messy, but it works!

[Gary]

Just for fun I tried to capture with XP's Movie Maker (I know I know) and the sound was good...no clipping! Could this be a VFW issue then with the other programs?

I'm going to mess with the audio capture and use the video from VDub to see what I get.

[Fred©]

well, you did not mentioned your sound card, but i have such problem using a Genius 5.1 live sound card... i resolved that problem capturing in 44kHz, stereo, and 8 bits... with 16 bits, the sounds becames distorted... than i convert to mpeg vcd profile and its sounds becames a true 224kb/s audio...

Fred©

[Fred©]

by the way, using 8 bits for sound, like my vhs old tapes are really recorded, my frame drops go to ZERO... no more VT syncs or delays...

good work.

Fred©

[Gary]

Thanks Fred, I'll try that. I've spent most of the weekend playing with this and even purchased a Pinnacle TV card to try that. It still was distorted so it must be my sound card (SB Live). After spending two days working on this I discovered that I can record into my DV camcorder via the composite ports (I only thought I could go IN via the 1394), so I copied to DV and then it was easy to dump to the computer without loss or distortion. I'm authoring my sister's wedding DVD now.

[JumboTech]

I've had this problem with two ATI cards. I go with the "attenuate before it gets there" approach as one of the previous posters had mentioned.

Al

[alecl]

I've got the same problem with an AIW 128 Pro. How come changing the line in levels doesn't fix it though. Is it too high to even get into the soundcard?