The Last Laugh
3rd Level Green Feather
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2001
- Messages
- 4,588
- Points
- 38
Hello everyone,
Before I begin, I am sorry for crossposting to both the Tickling and General Discussion forums, as I'm not sure which one is most appropriate. On the one hand my problem is about technical stuff that seems to belong in the General forum. On the other hand, it mostly concerns tickling footage, which I may want to distribute later. Since so many people from the tickling community seem to have experience with multimedia I thought I could get some badly needed help here. Than you. Anyway, I'll understand if one copy needs to be deleted.
Ok, so I know analog footage can be a pain to capture, especially when one doesn't have a super powerful system. I know, I've had problems with it myself. But I thought digital was immune to such problems. I was under the impression that audio and video were made one and couldn't get out of sync. Apparently I was wrong.
When I capture footage from my camcorder the resulting clips are in perfect sync, no matter how long they are. The problems occur when I splice more than one clip or scene together.
If I splice two clips, usually with a transition effect to link them, the results are pretty good. There may be a slight sync problem with the part of the new clip that corresponds to the second original clip, but it's hard to see and I can live with it.
However, if I try to splice three or more clips, then I have problems. Say I use three clips of 2 minutes each, called A, B and C. In this case, the first 2 minutes (from clip A) are perfect. The two next minutes (clip B) are pretty much ok too. Hard to tell if there's a problem. However, the last 2 minutes (clip C) are pretty bad. Delay between video and audio is obvious. If I use four clips the last part gets even worse. I guess it would get worse and worse if I added even more scenes. When a ticklee opens her mouth and starts shaking with laughter but you only hear the laughter half a second later (or earlier), it looks pretty damn silly.
The sync problem doesn't seem to get worse with time. I mean, the delay doesn't get progressively worse as the clip plays. Instead, the sync remains exactly the same for the duration of the first source clip, then, after a transition, a delay appears, remaining the same until the next part, and then the next part, which is even worse. It's like it doesn't matter how long each original clip is. I may get better results when splicing two 5-min clips than when splicing four 30-sec clips. I guess duration may have some influence, but the number of individual scenes is a more important factor. By the way, I tried doing it without transition effects, and the result is the same. It's not the cause of the problem.
I don't know much about video capture and clip editing yet, but it seems to me that not being able to splice more than a couple of scenes without losing sync is ridiculous and abnormal. Especially with digital. I can't imagine this is a common problem.
My goal is to edit the clips and produce one big clip or a few medium clips and transfer them back to my camcorder, on MiniDV tape. Right now the only way I can do this is by splicing 2 scenes together at most, transfer them to the camcorder, do the same with the next two scenes, and so on. It works, and sync is decent enough that way, but it's a hassle and it doesn't make for very nice transitions
I guess it would help if I described my system:
CAMCORDER: Sony TRV900, connected to a FireWire card with an appropriate cable.
COMPUTER: Asus motherboard, Duron 1000 processor, 512MB RAM, 60GB/7200rpm IBM hard drive, 32MB GeForce 2 MX-200.
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 98SE
CAPTURE/EDITING/PRODUCTION SOFTWARE: VideoWave4.
I know Windows 98SE isn't ideal, especially since it can't take advantage of all that RAM, but it should be functional. As for VideoWave4, well, that's all I have at the moment. Normally it should be enough for my needs, as I don't want to do anything especially fancy, but it is a little unstable for some reason. And I can't help but wonder if it might not be partially responsible for the sync problem. Then again, maybe not. I don't really have the money to buy new software, especially considering VW4 is supposed to do the job.
By the way, the way I work is to capture in DV format (720x480 .avi files), edit in the same format and then transfer the resulting clips to the camcorder. Pretty standard method I think. I'd also like to create some MPEG files, but I need to find a solution to the sync problem first.
If anyone has any idea what might be wrong I would be very grateful for any advice I can get. Thank you in advance.
Francois
P.S. Sorry about the length of this post, but I figured it was best to provide more info than not enough.
Before I begin, I am sorry for crossposting to both the Tickling and General Discussion forums, as I'm not sure which one is most appropriate. On the one hand my problem is about technical stuff that seems to belong in the General forum. On the other hand, it mostly concerns tickling footage, which I may want to distribute later. Since so many people from the tickling community seem to have experience with multimedia I thought I could get some badly needed help here. Than you. Anyway, I'll understand if one copy needs to be deleted.
Ok, so I know analog footage can be a pain to capture, especially when one doesn't have a super powerful system. I know, I've had problems with it myself. But I thought digital was immune to such problems. I was under the impression that audio and video were made one and couldn't get out of sync. Apparently I was wrong.
When I capture footage from my camcorder the resulting clips are in perfect sync, no matter how long they are. The problems occur when I splice more than one clip or scene together.
If I splice two clips, usually with a transition effect to link them, the results are pretty good. There may be a slight sync problem with the part of the new clip that corresponds to the second original clip, but it's hard to see and I can live with it.
However, if I try to splice three or more clips, then I have problems. Say I use three clips of 2 minutes each, called A, B and C. In this case, the first 2 minutes (from clip A) are perfect. The two next minutes (clip B) are pretty much ok too. Hard to tell if there's a problem. However, the last 2 minutes (clip C) are pretty bad. Delay between video and audio is obvious. If I use four clips the last part gets even worse. I guess it would get worse and worse if I added even more scenes. When a ticklee opens her mouth and starts shaking with laughter but you only hear the laughter half a second later (or earlier), it looks pretty damn silly.
The sync problem doesn't seem to get worse with time. I mean, the delay doesn't get progressively worse as the clip plays. Instead, the sync remains exactly the same for the duration of the first source clip, then, after a transition, a delay appears, remaining the same until the next part, and then the next part, which is even worse. It's like it doesn't matter how long each original clip is. I may get better results when splicing two 5-min clips than when splicing four 30-sec clips. I guess duration may have some influence, but the number of individual scenes is a more important factor. By the way, I tried doing it without transition effects, and the result is the same. It's not the cause of the problem.
I don't know much about video capture and clip editing yet, but it seems to me that not being able to splice more than a couple of scenes without losing sync is ridiculous and abnormal. Especially with digital. I can't imagine this is a common problem.
My goal is to edit the clips and produce one big clip or a few medium clips and transfer them back to my camcorder, on MiniDV tape. Right now the only way I can do this is by splicing 2 scenes together at most, transfer them to the camcorder, do the same with the next two scenes, and so on. It works, and sync is decent enough that way, but it's a hassle and it doesn't make for very nice transitions
I guess it would help if I described my system:
CAMCORDER: Sony TRV900, connected to a FireWire card with an appropriate cable.
COMPUTER: Asus motherboard, Duron 1000 processor, 512MB RAM, 60GB/7200rpm IBM hard drive, 32MB GeForce 2 MX-200.
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 98SE
CAPTURE/EDITING/PRODUCTION SOFTWARE: VideoWave4.
I know Windows 98SE isn't ideal, especially since it can't take advantage of all that RAM, but it should be functional. As for VideoWave4, well, that's all I have at the moment. Normally it should be enough for my needs, as I don't want to do anything especially fancy, but it is a little unstable for some reason. And I can't help but wonder if it might not be partially responsible for the sync problem. Then again, maybe not. I don't really have the money to buy new software, especially considering VW4 is supposed to do the job.
By the way, the way I work is to capture in DV format (720x480 .avi files), edit in the same format and then transfer the resulting clips to the camcorder. Pretty standard method I think. I'd also like to create some MPEG files, but I need to find a solution to the sync problem first.
If anyone has any idea what might be wrong I would be very grateful for any advice I can get. Thank you in advance.
Francois
P.S. Sorry about the length of this post, but I figured it was best to provide more info than not enough.
