controlling audio levels during capture

Is there any way to control audio levels while capturing?

like maybe capturing through a mixing board instead of firewire. any suggestions or links to info about this would be appreciated.

thanks
shar

You cannot adjust the levels if you capture via firewire. That is a straight digital transfer. You can only do this if you are capturing via a capture card and you audio is routed thru a mixer.


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thanks, do you know if there is somewhere I could get more information about how to route through a mixer?
s

Will you be capturing thru a capture card? You'll need the capture card to capture the audio with the adjusted levels.

More info? Manual for the mixer...manual for the capture card should both say how to do it.


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All that and your playback device has to have analog audio outputs.

You also need to know that once you go into the Land Of Analog Audio that all the old, classic audio problems suddenly appear. Noise, distortion, crosstalk, hum pickup, etc, etc.

Plus, unless your capture process is really talented, you will be forced to capture all the signals, video included as audio as analog. I don't know of any way to process and capture analog sound at the same time you're capturing FireWire video.

In any event, even if you could split capture like that, the sound and the picture would be badly out of sync--lips would move and then later, the sound would come out.

By the time you figure out how to fix that, it would probably be quicker to just fix it in Final Cut--if you can.

My Spidey Sense tells me you are trying to fix high overloaded or painfully low recordings. Both of those tend to be deadly no matter what you do in post. In one case, the show is so low in volume that the microphone noise and the room noise overwhelm the show. That's a bear to fix, but there are tools to help like in SoundTrack Pro.

In the other case, the sound is crunchy and ticky because it's so high. In that case, you have no show.

Koz

yes trying to fix some low recordings, I think we're better off just dealing with it in FCP...
many thanks for the input

<<<just dealing with it in FCP... >>>

Or Soundtrack Pro. There are some very good tools in there to fix errors.

Koz

by the way...
the audio problems I'm having are from footage that was shot on HDV, but down-converted to standard DV NTSC for editing. I don't know enough about HDV audio formats to know if the audio was also down-converted. But if so, the OMF used for onlining is going to be with the lo-grade audio...

is that correct? is there a huge difference between the two audio qualities?

thanks.

"shot on HDV, but down-converted to standard DV NTSC for editing"

you mean a new tape was made?
that;d be silly because you can convert HDV to DV on capture.

if you did the convert on capture, then the audio will be fine.
if you made new DV tapes, then who knows.. it's up to how they were created, i guess

HDV audio is actually (slightly) less quality than DV.
HDV audio is compressed, to leave more room for the image. (or so i believe)
DV audio is not compressed.

i have no real world experience of what the actual difference is to the ear,
but i did cut a feature documentary shot on HDV, and the sound was perfectly usable.


nick

You may try the free WhackedTV from Apple. I haven't try that with FireWire but the options allow to modify audio during capture.

Andreas

What are we talking about? Capturing live shoot audio? Or transferring existing audio?

For shoots you need a mixer with a compressor (set to kick in only when someone shouts). Lots of compression is generally "bad" for movie sound (unlike music recording). Don't cut corners. Hire an audio guy. Pay now or "pay" later. Besides avoiding distortion you need an audio guy to get the best signal to noise ratio -- [mic as close to the talent as possible, minimal headroom (close to 0 db)], to look out for excessive resonance, etc.