What's causing dropped audio?
 

This is in reference to my dcrtrv950:

Lately, there have been empty gaps in the audio track of
my recorded videos. The video portion is fine. The duration of these gaps are a few frames at a time (I was able to visually see the gap by loading the video into Vegas 5). Seems to be random. Especially noticeable when videotaping musical performances. I may have always had this problem but never noticed it until I started to edit & author my videos to DVD.

I've reset the camcorder to no avail. I use only new miniDV tapes. I have set the audio at 16 bit and MIC level is at the default, Auto, setting.

I also have the same problem (to a larger degree) on my other camcorder, dcrtrv7. Audio settings are the same as above camcorder. Audio Mix is at the default, ST1.

Can anyone show me how I can resolve this problem?

Thanks in advance,

Junior Pascual

Have you tried a tape head cleaner in your cam?
Thats the very first thing I would try.
Good luck

The fact that you've started to see this on two different cameras is interesting. I would look at things which are in common... perhaps your firewire card, cable, software or computer hardware? I've never seen anything like this on my PDX-10 or VX-2000...

Thanks, Chris & Boyd!

I guess it's the old "Can't see the trees from the forest"... or something to that effect ?

Anyway, Boyd's comment really opened my eyes to what else could be wrong.

The results: The cameras were fine. The firewire cable and ports and the rest of the hardware were fine. It was the software; or more specifically, an apparent bug: When doing a video capture in Vegas 5 and using the mouse, ANY movement of the pointer in the vicinity of the video control buttons causes dropped audio and some corruption of the acquired video.

It could be unique to my setup but I tried to locate the camera as far away from the computer as possible but the result was the same.

I'll just use the keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse when doing video captures.