I'm new to this forum so please forgive me if this has been previously discussed. I am having a constant audio problem when making digital clones of my original DV material shot on a Canon XL1.

My friend tried making the dubs using a Sony DHR1000 as the player to a DSR11 as the recorder and also tried using the Sony DSR11 as the player to a TVR9 as the recorder. All the dubs were attempted using firewire cable from one machine to the other.

The problem we constantly encounter is an audio glitch about every 3 seconds. It sounds like an abrupt cutout. Any ideas what causes this and how to solve it would be greatly appreciated. Thankls in advance.

Hi Jim,

Could it be that you have not set set the audio bit rate correct on the machines. Make sure that they are the same throughout i.e. 16bit 12bit etc. Having one machine set wrong from the other might cause this problem. Also check to see that your audio frequencys are all the same though out the dubbing process i.e. 48000KHz, 32000KHz, 41000KHZ depending on what the original was recorded with?

You can normally find the bit rate of the original in the datacode.

What I would do is set your decks side by side and go through the menus one at a time comparing the setup, that way you can make sure that there is nothing wrong in your settings.

Have you tried cloning from your XL1 to any of the sony decks/cameras, and visa versa?

Thanks,

Ed

Haven't tried from the Canon directly.

I have successfully made dubs using the same process with the original masters from a Panasonic camera with no problems.

I'll check into the bit and sampling rate compatibility. Thanks.

"Play" from the XL-1. I'd bet the XL-1 heads are slightly out of alignment. When our XL-1 heads started going out, the audio was the first place it showed up (when playing from a Panasonic deck).

After the tapes are dubbed, send the camera back to Cannon for a checkup.

I mention this not because I know anything about it but because I recently read of audio problems with the XL1s caused by its recording (and playing back, I think) at 29.96 fps versus NTSC 29.97. Obviously many owners don't have a problem so the impact isn't clear to me, but it might be something to search on.

David Hurdon

Never had an issue with my XL-1 cameras unless the head starts going out of alignment. That causes sound dropouts.

In the case of the audio sampling at slightly the wrong speed, the problem would be represented by audio that goes out of sync, not dropouts. Since switching to Vegas, this also has NOT been a problem (it WAS in Cinestream).

I will try to dub directly from the Canon today.

A curious question... wouldn't the problem of misaligned heads become obvious if I simply playback the original tape on another deck?

It only seems to manifest itself when dubbing on different decks.

If your camera is doing a non-standard sampling rate and or tape speed or head tracking... you can rescue the tape by making an analog dub from the cam. Especially important if you will send the cam out for service. Something you might have to do if the problems persists.