PC as video recorder and sound

[1vegan]

I can use my pc as video(recorder).

It records, but when I play the file, there is no sound?

The video/tv card is a ATI 9800se and I play the files with Power DVD.

Can any one tell me why I hear sound when I watch the channel but can't hear it when I play a recording?

[FalafelsRule]

What software are you using to record with?

[1vegan]

good question.

when I click on the TV-icon a program opens that only shows ATI and.......8.6 or something.

that's all it says. I record with the TV program and I suppose the problem is in there.

The "power dvd" program plays DVD's with sound, so I suppose that's ok.

[FalafelsRule]

It sounds like your audio capture settings on that software may not be set correctly. When you open your recording program, you should have an option menu. Your audio capture option should be set at recording the audio at 48khz. Usually you are given several khz options and can just choose the one labled 48khz.

[FalafelsRule]

BTW, windows XP comes with a basic recording program called Windows Movie Maker. It is simple to use program. Maybe you can try recording, or importing the material you wish to record with that.

[1vegan]

I'll check the first thing you mentioned.

I do have XP and Movie Maker, but I can't figure out how I get the movie maker to record tv-programs. (like really from the antenna cable)

I think that moviemaker is only for use with movies on disk or from a camera.


ETA: I'll make some screenshots at home and post them tomorrow.

[Syntax]

If your using an ATI all-in-wonder, or similar, then the typical windows video capture programs are unlikely to work.

This is because of the way the ATI cards work (In brief, they don't do everything in hardware that most cards do, and so require to be specifically understood by the software).

On the other hand, PowerDVD is _not_ the best video playback tool. My first recomendation is to find out if there is actually an audio stream in the video. May I suggest that VirtualDub (http://www.virtualdub.org/) might be useful here. It's quite the completist piece of software, so you may need to poke at it a bit to find out.

My guess is that it doesn't.

If it does contain audio, then you just need to find a different (and better) software for playback. Try it in Window Media Player, for example.

If I'm right, then the problem is thus: The video and audio are recorded from different places - the video is done by the graphics card, whilst the audio is done by your sound card. In order for the sound to work, it has to get from the video card to the sound card. This is either by a cable inbetween them (more likely) or through digital means (much less likely). Note that the cable might well be inside the case, so not seeing it ouside isn't terribly meaningful.

(At this point, my knowledge of windows breaks down, so some windows guru might need to translate the following into proper windows names).

To find out, open up your volume control, and get some TV channel playing, so you can hear it. Now, go along the volume control, muting every channel, with the exception of the master volume. What your looking for is to find out what one affects the sound coming from the video card. If there is a cable outside the box between the two, it's probably the line-in. If not, it's probably marked AUX or similar. Either way, find what one it is. Make a note of it (and don't leave it muted. Been there, done that myself :))

Now, open up your ATi video recording software. As FR said, you need to tell it to get the right source. It's likely to be in the options (or prefferences) menu. Make sure that it gets the right piece of sound hardware, and the right part (line-in, or aux , or whater you spotted earlier). If it just gives you the option of of a sound card, then you'll need to ensure that the sound card isself is set to record from that source. That's likely to be in either the volume control, or it's control panel menu. (Reaching the edge of my knowledge here, I'm afraid).

If you find that there is audio being recorded, but it's not the TV channel, gradually turn the volume up, until you can hear the background hiss. It is advisable to disable anything that can make noise at this point, otherwise it can be painful :). If you can hear the TV, but it's just very faint, then you need to increase the volume slider for whatever channel (line-in, aux etc) the audio comes in on.

Interesting, I'm going to slightly disagree with FR on one point. If your sound hardware is built into the motherboard, then, yes set it to record at 48kHz. If you have a separate sound card, then it doesn't matter, and you may well get better results at a lower setting (32 kHz is as good as it can get for TV, FYI).

To explain above (Skip if this makes no sense): Most AC97 codecs only operate at 48kHz in hardware, and do sample rate conversion in software, so matching to the hardware gives better results. Plus, bad implementations can break at other sample rates sometimes. Outboard cards (normally) are able to do it properly, at whatever sample rate they're told to, so reducing the sample rate places less load on the system. TV audio is low pass filtered at 16kHz, so a sample rate of 32kHz is optimal. Plus, smaller file sizes too.

Right, there's a couple of points there, give that a shot, and let us know how it works.

[FalafelsRule]

Wow, I didn't even know some video and sound cards may be incompatible thus eliminating the possiblity of recording the audio to match the video.

I did open up windows movie maker and it seems to not have an option for recording a tv program or live stream. It records from a source plugged into your usb port or arranges and edits video clips you already have on your hd. I was also disturbed by the fact that you can not save your finished product as avi, mpg or m2v only as a windows movie project file or whatever.

Let us know how you make out.