Where's my audio?

[Ervin Farkas]

Got a few hours of DVCPRO-HD footage to edit. It has been filmed with Sony Z1Us and captured from the HD mixer via HDSDI card to a MAC, so the files are QuickTime wrapped, have a .mov extension.

Edius recognizes the video no fuss, but audio is hiss only. In properties, Edius reports wave format, 24 bits/48KHz. When played back, there is a 0 dB hiss only both in the speakers and on the audio mixer display - rubberband shows nothing, it's all gray.

The audio is there though, I can extract it with Adobe Audition and add it as separate track, but I was wondering, why can Edius not read it?

[Andy Mees]

How many tracks of audio in the quicktime? When you play back in Edius which of those tracks are you monitoring? Edius offer no feedback when playing from source, as it doesn't enable the mixer window from source. However if you drop the clip into a timeline with sufficient audio tracks to match the source, then you should be able to properly "see" the distribution of the audio across those tracks]... thats what I'd check first.

Failing that, you have to remember there is no guarantee of compatibility between Apple's implementation of the DVCPRO HD codec in Quicktime and Canopus/GVG's implementaion for Edius ... remember Canopus are notoriously proprietary with there codec implementions just as are Apple.

If you are unable to recapture the clips directly to Edius then you might want to try batch coverting them through Procoder to see if that properly accesses the audio and can fix the issue, or possibly via the Convert function from within the bin window.

[Ervin Farkas]

Thanks for the reply Andy.

It doesn't make a difference where I play the video, playback or record window. Your reply gives me an idea though, I will try to enable four audio tracks in the project settings (I started with the default 2 tracks) and see what happenes, but my guess is there is nothing in the two additional tracks either since Audition only extracted a pair of stereo tracks.

Recapturing is not an option; as stated in my post, this was a live recording (interviews for a TV talkshow I edit) via a video switcher and AJA card to the MAC and transferred to an external USB hard drive. So the files are not in the Canopus codec, but the native QT.

And as I already said, there is no big problem, I have already extracted all of the audio of the 6+ hours recording and added video to the timeline from the .mov file, plus the audio saved with Audition. So it does not impact me as far as editing, I was simply wondering why Edius is not reading the audio that is definitely there. I tend to believe, you are correct when you state that Edius and FCP use a different implementation of the DVCPRO-HD codec. I am thankful to Edius anyway... not many NLEs edit this format.

[Dave Gosley]

Hi Ervin

Are you using a Canopus card (Storm, Raptor etc) for importing and use with Edius?
I made the mistake of plugging my audio system into the PC on borad sound output and wondering why I couldn't get any sound out of Edius - when I could get sound from any other video or sound file outside Edius.

Unless you have two sound systems you have to remember to plug speakers into the audio out on the Edius card.

Not sure if you are setting up video and audio tracks individually - have you tried placing material on a mixed a/v timeline?

Please forgive me if I'm out of order here.
Regs
Dave

[Dave Gosley]

Another thought - have you tried toggling the sound import to convert to 16 bit?
Cheers
Dave

[Ervin Farkas]

No Canopus card. I tried both AV track and separate A and V track.

But I guess you just gave figured it out, Dave: it is 24 bits indeed!

Please elaborate on "toggling the sound import to convert to 16 bit".

Thank you,

[Pat Sipes]

There have also been a few reports of .mov files having this problem (I ran into it with Digital Juice). The upgrade to 4.6 fixed it.

[Dave Gosley]

Theconvert to 16 bit is there in the settings setup when you choose to set up a new video standard. Don't know why or what audible effect it would have.

I have now upgraded to 4.6 and I have fun with my system. I have the DVSTorm 2 Pro which has sound and I have the on board sound.

If open a project and have no sound its probably due to the speakers being plugged into the motherboad. So I change them to the DVStorm outlet and get sound.

I shut down the pc, re-boot open the project and have to put the speakers back the other way around again.

I am always having to swap speaker channels - sometime the sound works from an output other times I have to swap it. No real solution - except buy a second speaker set....