Audio input problem with HDV

Mac G5 Tower
FCP 5


I have been shooting some nice bird and alligator footage on my Sony HDV.

I can digitize the picture fine but can?t bring in audio. I?ve checked to see if I have to switch something on the camera to output through the firewire but can?t find anything. I?ve looked all over on the FCP A/V and can?t find anything to change. Any ideas?

<<<FCP A/V >>>

The Log and Capture panel itself has settings for Audio, Video, or Both. You need to catch it while the panel is open.

There is another possibility. Do you have a fancy-pants video capture card in addition to the straight FireWire HDV capture? We have one card that on occasion will assume incorrect sound settings.

You do know absolutely that you have sound, right? You can hear the boidies choiping through headphones?

Koz

Just to cover the obvious, along with Koz's queries....

If you bring a captured clip into the timeline, does it also give you apparent audio track(s) but you can't hear them when you play the timeline? As a follow-on to that, do the audio meters do anything when you play the timeline? What I'm getting at is the distinction between "not capturing" the audio and "not playing back" audio that actually was captured. There are various setting within FCP that control the latter.

Scott

Could be FCP or your camera causing the problem. It would help if we knew what kind of Sony HDV camera you have and are you using the built in mic or an external mic. If an external is your mic phantom powered? If unsure please indicate. There are lots of variables. The menus in the Sony HDV cams are confusing including the audio portion. It could be a bunch of things apart from the menu selections. However, my wager is on the camera's menu settings. And make sure you have your camera powered up in VCR mode when launching FCP.