Digital 8 tapes without audio for certain scenes?

[Sess]

Hey there,

I've been searching for any type of answer/solution to this little problem but have had no luck so far. I'm converting home movies for a friend and everything was going smoothly until I got to their Digital 8 tapes. Now, Digital8 is the only format I don't have a professional deck for so I've been using a Sony DCR-TRV260 over firewire to capture.

Everything went smoothly until I hit one tape where there was absolutely no audio. The only thing on the tape was an hour long recording of a dance recital. So I went back and double-checked the other ones I captured to make sure they had audio and they did. However, two other small scenes across two different tapes were missing audio as well. In fact, one scene was playing just fine and then half-way through it just drops out and has a slight humming/buzz noise. Now, I've messed with every possible audio setting on the camera and have found no luck what-so-ever. BUT when I turn on CAMINFO during playback I see the date and settings of the recording and the db meter is fluctuating as if there was in fact audio.

After extensive troubleshooting I've narrowed it down to the tapes themselves. I'm trying to get the original camera info from my friend as I'm thinking these specific scenes were recorded in an audio mode that my camera doesn't have. Which is strange because the TRV260 is fairly recent and these recordings date back to 2002. My guess is that these were recorded with in the AFM mode and my camera only supports 12/16 bit PCM.

Any advice would be very helpful!

Thanks

[NJRoadfan]

Digital 8 only supports 12-bit/16-bit audio like MiniDV, there is no AFM audio track. I have encountered problems with capturing audio on MiniDV tapes with WinDV depending on the AVI file type I used. Does any audio play out of the camera itself on those tapes?

[Sess]

No, there's no audio during those specific scenes when played on the camera. It's definitely not a capture issue and must be something with the tape itself or something with my camera. I just don't understand how, if all Digital8 recordings only use 12/16 bit audio, that some scenes could be "missing" audio as if my camera doesn't support another camera's recordings?

Either way my friend managed to find the camera it was recorded on so we'll see what happens.

[Jarvis]

That is a really weird issue to have.

I've run into problems with miniDV and Digital8 tapes myself, such as changes between 16 bit and 12 bit. This caused audio to stop transferring, and required a restart from where the change occurred. I solved that by using ScLive, which auto detects those changes and transfers all audio in one sitting.

I also had a problem where audio played fine through the camcorder, but when transferred it suffered constant drop outs, during a scene and across scenes. With major visual errors at times. I was convinced it was corrupted, so the only solution was to capture from the analog audio out.

Your situation however puzzles me, because although the dB meter is fluctuating, there isn't even audio playing through the cam. I have no clue what this could be, hopefully somebody else does.

[Sess]

Alright, so I managed to get my friend's camera and it's a Sony DCR-TRV340. Popped the tapes in and the same problem occurs at the same spots. No audio on playback whether through firewire or the camera. I don't get it. I messed around with what appears to be the EXACT same menu and settings as my camera and nothing brings light to why a few specific scenes are missing sound. I mean this is the camera it was originally recorded on and it still has the problem. So my guess is it's with the aforementioned tapes themselves and unfortunately there's not much to do about that?

Any suggestions would be helpful!

[kpmedia]

Meters can fluctuate even when there's "silence" (inaudible to humans). It really depends on how good the meter is. The cheap ones jumpy around a lot, and only have a few bars. There may actually be nothing on the tape.

I've seen it many times (sadly) where the camera operator had the camera set to an external mic mode, but didn't connect anything. And because it was just a cheap consumer camera, it only captured grinding noises from inside the camera, plus hiss and other standard tape noise. The meters would jump around on a VCR, but a full mixer was not so misleading. (This is one of several reasons we use mixers in our transfer racks.)

What happens when you try analog connection direct into a TV?

[jmac698]

I'd have to say it's lost. I can think of lots of reasons for it though, I just don't know how likely they are.
-Someone plugged in external mic for that scene (such as a wireless), but it wasn't on
-The bars is moving a little are from internal noise
-There's also audiophonics; some electronic components like capacitors are sensitive to bumps. If you turn the volume up high, you can hear yourself banging it.
-I'm still curious; in your latest test you didn't mention if you tried the analog audio
-You can recover speech with a lip reader

[Jarvis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sess

a slight humming/buzz noise.

Don't know how I overlooked this before. A problem with data transfer, corrupted tape or otherwise, would result in total silence. The transferred track would have no meter activity at all in those sections.
I also should've asked if, on the tapes where the audio drops out, the db fluctuations on the cam were consistent with the audio issues and thus inconsistent with the video. In which case it would've happened at the time of recording, due to possibly an external mic issue as already mentioned.

I have to agree it looks like it's lost unfortunately.