newbist's FCE audio capture problemos
 

Have been putting off this post for awhile...

Doing a first real project with/for a friend of a friend. Shot all summer with a Sony d8, a trv740. Time to edit on FCE. After several lengthy captures, I realized that almost all of them have an awful electronic booping sound throughout the audio. I am brand new to nle, and don't consider self to be terribly tech oriented, in general. Have watched the tutorial dvd several times, it helped me through the initial capture procedure. Bought the fce user's manual. Searched a few forums regarding this issue. The other day, I happened upon an apple related website forum, cruised through it's FCP/FCE FAQ. #8 had to do with a beeping in the audio of the capture, and that it "indicates that one or more or more audio tracks are encoded in an incompatible format." At last! I thought. It's a common problem with a common solution. The Answer to this FAQ ends with: "Audio imported from imovie3 projects can be rendered within FCE to resolve the issue."
Sooooo, after importing a clip or two from imovie to FCE "to resolve the issue", I find I can see the video, but not hear the audio. ! ! !
At the risk of asking too many obvious FAQs here, HELP? Should I just stick to camera work, my first love? I'm whimpering, I know. This cam, btw, is not on the "official" Apple FCE compatible list. Is getting my material to FCE via imovie THE WAY? Any other critical specifics to this scenario I should have provided? A thousand thank yous in advance, and a thousand more to come....
Shawn

It will help to know more about your computer, OS, drives, ram etc. what versions of FCE, QT etc. How many channels of audio are you trying to listen to? Have you rendered the audio? What was the audio shot in, 12 bit, 16 bit? What are you trying to edit in 12 bit, 16 bit? This can be easily solved, it's not brain surgery.

The most common reason people don't hear audio is because FCE is pumping it out down firewire to your camera. Open up your camera and you should know if this is the case. To have FCE not do this, go into the preferences and change your external video settings.

2- Don't capture with iMovie, as those files don't play well with FCE. Capture properly in FCE.

3- Avoid TC breaks when you shoot. A TC break is when the timecode resets to 00:00:00;00. It can happen when you are reviewing your footage. When you change back into camera mode, use the end search feature or rewind to a place where there is timecode. If you do get timecode breaks then you have to spend a little more effort capturing.

4- Change your camera's audio into 16-bit mode. This gives you 48khz sound instead of 32khz sound. The other mode isn't really useful.
12bit = 32khz
16bit = 48khz
Make sure your capture settings match whatever mode your tapes were shot in.

computer: g4
os: 10.2.6
memory: 512mb
processor: 1.2 ghz
fce: 1.0

Audio was recorded at 16bits, with a mono boundary mic and a wired lav, separately, directly to camera.
I unplugged firewire from cam to avoiding "pumping", just a few minutes ago. Instead of nothing, this time, I got this same blasted incessant booping!!! This is from a clip imported from imovie to fce. This is the same booping, mind, that happens when I capture straight to fce. I tried capturing with two "easy setups": dv ntsc, and ntsc 48 khz fw basic. I tried stopping capture before in-tape edits, where timecode break might occur, without success. Note: there were a very few capturing instances with no booping, but they were exceptional, and I couldn't tell you what might have made them special. Would a microphone cause this? It isn't part of the d8 recording, and it doesn't happen in imovie. Aargh....

In FCE can you look at the info about the captured clip using the >Properties< command? It will tell the true MHz of the audio clip. Have you tried rendering your audio clips in FCE?

<<<-- I unplugged firewire from cam to avoiding "pumping", just a few minutes ago. Instead of nothing, this time, I got this same blasted incessant booping!!! This is from a clip imported from imovie to fce. This is the same booping, mind, that happens when I capture straight to fce. I tried capturing with two "easy setups": dv ntsc, and ntsc 48 khz fw basic. I tried stopping capture before in-tape edits, where timecode break might occur, without success. Note: there were a very few capturing instances with no booping, but they were exceptional, and I couldn't tell you what might have made them special. Would a microphone cause this? It isn't part of the d8 recording, and it doesn't happen in imovie. Aargh.... -->>>

You get this booping when there is a mismatch between your clips and your sequence setting. In this case you shouldn't be using clips captured from iMovie. Export your iMovie clips to FCP movies (self-contained) or Quicktime DV movies. FCE might have batch export which may make things easier for batch exports. Or you could render the clips, but you will need to render them EVERY TIME YOU MOVE THEM.

Read the manual and capture properly. You should be using all the easy presets and making sure they all match up. Your capture settings and your sequence settings should be the same (NTSC superwhite 48khz I believe).

Well....
Page 685 of the user manual.....

"Beep in the Viewer or Canvas:

When audio material that requires rendering is played in the Viewer or Canvas, a steady beep occurs, indicating that the material can't play in real time."

I dropped a beeping clip just captured into the timeline and was then able to watch/listen/work with it, beepless. What a maroon. I really don't know what I'm doing. Aside from the dvd tutorial, and driving far to pay much for a two day workshop somewhere, are there ways to learn nle, perhaps by way of FCE, from scratch? Edit with imovie for now.......

(a beeping clip)(unrendered):

File size: 2.3 gb
frame size: 720x480 pixels
compressor: dv/dvcpro-ntsc
data rate: 3704 k/second
video rate: 29.97 fps
audio rate: 47.993 khz
audio format: 16-bit stereo

It probably requires rendering for one of two reasons, and audio mismatch of capture settings (as Glenn and I have been trying to point to), or the camera is unsupported. An unsupported camera has certain characteristics that the software can not remedy and makes the software perform in an undesirable manner (such as audio beeping during playback). There is an outside chance more ram might stop the beeping also. Your system may not have enough ram to playback the clip in RT without rendering the clip.

Try lowering the audio quality to medium or low? (this does not affect the quality of your audio output) That's under the preferences somewhere.

Something I'd also like to try, (this, among other things was recommended by Apple tech support): capture footage with another device. I recently purchased a Sony pdx10, but can't easily get the Sony Premium tapes locally, and so have yet to attempt this. Will check and recheck these capture settings. Thanks for the thoughts!