Pinnacle studio plus 10.5 700 PCI still has audio drift problems !!!

[powerslider]

Like many others I wanted to capture some family movies from VHS to digital. I did a lot of research into analog to digital conversion, and the dreaded audio drift problem.
I saw many people complaining about studio 7 and studio 8, and then some articles claiming that studion 9 had fixed the problem, so stupid me, I went for the latest studio plus, with the PCI 700 capture card. But incredibly, it's still not fixed.

They still do not have a simple tic box to sync the audio to the video. Yes, I know what you're thinking, I've got a slow machine, I've got a crap tape, I'm dropping frames, I've got too many scenes, I've got blanks in the tape. But, no. I've got a fast PC, brand new quality VHS tapes, I'm not dropping frames, the imported picture is perfect, and stable, I've turned off scene detection, and I have no blanks in the tape. But still I have progressive drift building up to 5 or 6 seconds per hour.

SO BEWARE OF PINNACLE STUDIO PLUS FOR LONG ANALOG CAPTURES.
IT DOES NOT WORK.
AND THE WORST PART IS THEY KNOW ABOUT IT, AND STILL CLAIM IT WORKS !!

If you go into their knowledge base, and search for audio drift, they will try to blame on your PC, on your tape, on your VHS, etc... But the simple fact is that other software packages have an option to sync lock together the audio stream and the video stream. I realise that independent audio and video streams is great for fancy editing, but for long analog captures, you MUST HAVE SYNC LOCK.

But then again, if they had sync lock in studio plus, how could they justify the price of the more fancy packages sold by pinnacle and avid ?

Anyway pinnacle you got my money this time, but never again !!!

[xxiangg]

But the simple fact is that other software packages have an option to sync lock together the audio stream and the video stream. I realise that independent audio and video streams is great for fancy editing, but for long analog captures, you MUST HAVE SYNC LOCK.

I know that DV format has A/V sync capability. I have not heard that some software will
do A/V sync automatically for separately captured audio and video streams. By theway,
I always capture to DV format first (using either Pinnacle MovieboxDV or ADVC100).
I only use Pinnacle Studio for editing and do not have A/V sync problem for Studio7,8,9.
Try to use DV flow and you will have less problem.

[harley2ride]

One sure way to stay in sync, is to capture the video in one pass, then make a second pass and capture the audio. Then join the two with editing software. There was a great article on how to do this in Maximum PC Magazine a few months ago, using nothing but Microsoft Movie Maker. It is more time consuming that grabbing everything in one pass. So far, I have never had any sync issues. I capture from my video camera as DV-AVI and go through and ADS PYRO AV/LINK, into my Firewire on my PC (tried multiple capture softwares), and all work fine. Capture VHS tapes through the ADS unit as AVI, again, using multiple softwares, and never any sync issues. Even my old 12yr old vhs tapes with multiple recordings from different dates including about a dozen different events, all stayed in sync after extensive editing (had to remove the ex wifes), still came out with the final dvd in sync. I did use Vegas 5 for all my editing, authoring and encoding. Don't know how much difference that makes.

[Bigdaddybrat]

I have had nothing but Issues with Pinnacle software... I dropped it really quick after it screwwed up my Graphics card settings and my ATI media Center software.

I too say never never never again.

As for the Audio/Video sync... I played with the Pinnacle software for 5 months and after only being able to get 1 out of 10 home made dvd's to work I threw it in the garbage. I downloaded the updates for the version I was using and it still did not work... It is a piece of CRAP!

I have given up on it and since I have family that is in the industry I am now learning how to use Avid express pro.

Good luck.

[v-sharp]

My machine is Pentium 4 1.7 GHz with 1GB DDR 2100 running on WinXP SP2, and I've never had a dropped frame or audio synch problem with ADS Tech PTV-305 with built-in "Audio Lock". Another good thing with this card is it's only $50. Heck, most times I'm even on the internet with the firewall program and other stuff running in the background and they didn't affect the outcome of the capture.

[FulciLives]

My machine is Pentium 4 1.7 GHz with 1GB DDR 2100 running on WinXP SP2, and I've never had a dropped frame or audio synch problem with ADS Tech PTV-305 with built-in "Audio Lock". Another good thing with this card is it's only $50. Heck, most times I'm even on the internet with the firewall program and other stuff running in the background and they didn't affect the outcome of the capture.

For those interested the aboved mentioned ADS Tech PTV-305 is the model number for what ADS calls the Instant TV Deluxe PCI which is a PCI capture card that uses hardware MPEG encoding. It is similiar to the Hauppauge WinTV PVR products such as the Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 model.

I have never used the ADS Instant TV Deluxe PCI (PTV-305) but I have used the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 (USBAV702) and it is a most excellent capture device and my understanding is that the PTV-305 has the same "guts" or "chipset" as the USBAV702 so assuming that is true (which is my understanding) then there is no wonder that the PTV-305 is such an excellent performer.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[powerslider]

Hi Guys
Just an update on my troubles with pinnacle and eventual success with virtual dub.

After the original post up the top, I went in search of a software package that would do the analog capture in sync. Tried scenalyser, and iuvcr, but always with more or less drift (more than 1 second) after about one hour of capture.

Finally tried VirtualDub, and bingo. It re-samples the audio at a variable frequency to suit the rate of arrival of the video frames !!!!!
This guy is a genius !!! Kudos to you OH GREAT AVERY LEE !!!!!!!!!
I now have 3 hour long captures on AVI, of kids and family, with probably over 30 or 40 start/stops per 3 hour tape. And at the end of the capture, the sync is PERFECT.

Now I will make a donation to VirtualDub, edit the AVIs at my leisure, and make sure that I never again buy a Pinnacle product.

Thanks to all for your suggestions.