Help capturing off a VCR ...

[user2]

I have a Pinnacle PCTV card and I want to convert some of my old VHS take to VCDs. The problem is the sound, it is not very sharp. I have the Audio line out of the VCR to my line in of the sound card. When I capture the video and I play back, the sound is not as sharp as when I play the VHS tape from the VCR ... and it only comes out of one speaker.

My system is a pentium III 500MHz, Sound Blaster AWE64 sound card and planety of ram.

Any ideas of how to imporve the sound and make it to play off both speakers not just one? Thanks guys

[Hong Kong Phooey]

There might be two factors to consider...
1) Are you capturing from a mono or stereo VCR, & was that recording in stereo? Remember, the capture of the sound quality is only as good as the source.

Also, I believe that only the PCTV Pro card,(which I have), is capable of stereo capturing,(apparently. It's to do with the FM Radio add on,I think).
BTW-take a tip & don't use the PCTV vision software for capturing. The utils listed here are much better!!

I think once you've captured, it's possible to "split" the "stereo" (or mono as you're finding),sound from within TMPGenc. I think you select joint stereo within the soun option & it'll resplit the audio into 2.
But I'm a little confused, what do you exactly mean "sharp". Is the sound coming in muffled?

[user2]

I am not able to run either "VitualDup" or "Avi_io", it says "You cannot use this device when another video application, such as DVD, video conferrencing, video editing, TV viewers, or WebTV for windows is already using it. To use this device for your current application, close the application that is using it. .....
But none of the mentioned application is runnng on my system! I am on Widnows 2000. To make sure none of the application is running on the background I check the processes running and didnt' find anything running.

So, why I can't use VitualDup or Avi_io

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Hmm. Are you sure VirtualDub or AVI_IO can see the PCTV card? Also, you might want to check the IRQ settings for the PCTV card. Go to Control Panel/System ( or the Win2k equivilent, I'm a Win 98 user myself, so I'm not too knowledgeable about Win 2K.), & check the properties for your devices.

I know that personally, the PCTV pro card would always try to grab IRQ 11 which was also my Geforce 3 card. In fact, it might well be an IRQ issue. Set aside an IRQ solely for your PCTV card. You may well have to assign it through your BIOS on your motherboard, & then let windows sort out the rest of the IRQ's.