Video Capturing Software?
 

Which video capturing software allows you to monitor the audio input levels during live video capturing?

Are there "easy" programs for this, or possibly shareware programs that will perform this?

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Anyone? I looked at Adobe 6.5, and it does not monitor the audio levels. Any other suggestions?

What are you meaning by monitor? Let you listen while you are capturing or shows you a display with the db levels?

I use Avid Liquid 7 and I can monitor audio and video while I am capturing via 1394 firewire.

I think Scenalizer does also, but I have not used it.

Hope this helps,

Jeff

It does indeed Jeff. I have used Scenalyzer and it's great for what it does at the price they charge.

Tom.... check out Scenalyzer. I'm not saying that's your only choice, but as a dedicated capture program, it gets the job done very succinctly.

-gb-

You know I have never checked that in PP2. Although I don't think it does because it wasn't desiogend for that. It's only an editor. Now audition on the other hand does and very well.

Thanks for the responses guys. I am searching for a visible audio level. Programs such as Goldwave or other shows you an actual level at which the audio is coming in while recording. Similar to if the audio level button were pushed on a video camera with this particular function (ie. Sony PD-150/170). It actually shows the levels of the audio.

My current setup has audio cables going from the soundboard straight into a dvd recorder during live mixing, and there is no guarantee that I am getting sound. I want to skip this step and record straight to the computer (live mixing), but I want to ensure that I am getting audio at a "normal" level.

I may be showing my ingnorance here, but if you are capturing digital 1 and zeros, is the level embedded in the digital capture, and only editable after capture ?????? Why would a meter really matter ?

Here's something that happened once before...

I had audio cables running from the sound board into the DVD recorder, and the recorder takes video from the video mixer. I watched the DVD later and realized that one of the cables was bad, so I ended up with sound only on one channel. I'm sure I could extract the dvd footage and then duplicate the sound, but the hassle is sometimes too much. Now I am trying to record straight into the computer and avoid the dvd recorder. So, it goes from the cameras to the video mixer into the computer, onto the hard drives. Again, I wish to monitor the audio levels to ENSURE that I am actually getting sound on both channels, and to make sure the sound doesn't peak or anything like that.

ScLive has little audio level bars that confirm audio is coming in, and will serve as a 'is it working' monitor. Or you could listen ...

But what you can't do with any digital transfer is adjust levels -- it is just a file transfer, and the levels are what they are. If you are capturing analog, using some sort of plug-in or stand-alone program ... then you can adjust levels. But a file transfer is just that -- no adjustments.

Cheers,
GB

Chris, the digital 1's and 0's are grouped to form a number, say for example 0 to 10. The hardware that converts the analog to digital has to amplify the signal to get it well positioned in the available range of numbers. If the level is very low, then the signal may only use the range 0 to 3, in other words not have much resolution. If the sound is too loud, it will try to use 0 to 15, which will still end up using 0 to 10 as the output with 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 all being output as 10. This will result in ugly distortion of the sound. This really means that the level is just as important as in analog recordings.

That's all well and good -- true, even -- but not relevant to a Firewire transfer. At that point, the A>D conversion is done -- you can no longer adjust the conversion levels. Or more to the point, any adjustment you make is now 'in post'.

Chris has it right -- Brendon has it right only during the A>D conversion, which is not available within Premiere, or ScLive ... it is typically a hardware interface routine.

GB