I have transfered several Digital Video [DV] segments from my Sony Handycam to my Hard Disk [HDD] using Nero Vision (version: 4.1.0.9). The segments were stored as DV Type 1 AVI files.

I then attempted to use Nero Recode (version: 2.2.7.6) to recode them to mp4. This worked, with the notable and important exception, that NO sound track appears to have been transfered and there is NO audio on playback of the generated MP4 (The original DV and intermediate AVI both have good audio).

The audio track selection is shown correctly in Recode (Audio #1 tab) prior to processing. Also, the incorporated mini player in Recode correctly plays the avi with both video and sound.

I have successfully recoded other videos (not from DV), although the sound level does generally decrease signicicantly.

OS: Win XP
Pentium D
Plenty of memory and disk space.

Questions:
1. Any ideas on how to get Recode to correctly process the sound track?

2. Any ideas why the finished video (video only, no sound as per above) will play with Quicktime but not with Nero ShowTime2 (Version: 2.1.0.11)? (Error received: Cannot play this media file. The file is either corrupt of the application does not support the format you are trying to play.)

Thanks,
Scott

Sounds like it could be a codec problem.

Get freeware 'GSpot' then run the file through it and see what it says.

Welcome to the Forum!

Ok, after much more web searching, several hours of reading, and some personal testing, I believe I have the answer:

Simply put: NERO did not make their recoder compatible with the output from their capture program. Naughty, Naughty Nero.

I do find this to be highly frustrating, and would have appreciated a mention in the help documents (which I downloaded from the Nero website.)

Here is what I figured out, so that hopefully others will have a quicker process.

DV comes in one of two primary standards: Type 1 and Type 2.

Type 1:
Slightly less bits per unit time
includes audio as an interleaved component of the video track

Type 2:
Slightly more bits per unit time
includes audio as an interleaved component of the video track
ALSO, includes audio as an independent track

Here are some outputs from GraphEdit on 60 second test files. Each was captured directly from a Sony DV cam via firewire (1394) and was exactly the same (starting frame to ending frame) of tape:

The capture of the Windows Movie Maker and the Nero Vision with Type-1 Selected looked like this:

[See Attached image type1.jpg]

The following files:
-The Nero Vision set to Type-2
-The original Nero Vision with Type-1, which was then post processed with Uleads Type-1 to Type-2 converter (available: http://users.tpg.com.au/mtam/software/dv.zip) Per the specs, there is no loss by the conversion.
-the WMM generated file through the Type-1 to Type-2 converter as well:
all looked like this:

[See Attached image type2.jpg]

Resulting file sizes:
216,549,888 Capture (Nero) Type-1.avi
217,512,448 Capture (WMM) (Default).avi
227,512,224 Capture (Nero) Type-1 converted to Type-2.avi
228,528,816 Capture (WMM) (Default) Run through converter.avi
228,871,680 Capture (Nero) Type-2.avi

Interestingly, the 'Nero Type-1 converted to Type-2' is actually slightly smaller than the 'Nero Type-2'. It makes sense that the Nero Type-1 is the smallest, but how the Windows Movie Maker file ends up at 10 meg less than the Nero Type-2 is something that eludes me.

Windows Movie Maker (2.1.4026.0), Windows Media Player ( 10.00.00.3927), Quicktime (7.0.3), Nero Showtime (2.1.0.11) and Nero Vision (4.1.0.9) were all able to play all the AVI files created with both sound and video.

I then converted all the AVI files to MP4 files using Nero Digital. As expected, the Nero Type-1 file lost the audio. Interestingly though, the original Windows Movie Maker file also lost the audio, while its counterpart which had been run through the type-1 to type 2 converter maintained the audio.

All the resulting functional MP4 files (with both video and audio) were 73 MB (using an atypically high 9.80 Mbps compression setting, reasonable video can be had at less.).

Summary,

While I can certainly see the advantage, in that Nero provides for either Type-1 or Type-2 capture, I can not understand why full support for Type-1 is not included with Nero Recode.

I would also like more assistance in both the pop-up help and the main body of the help documents.

I hope this helps others, and a thank you to all who's articles I have read.
Scott


Some other resources:

A very nice article by MS (which leads to several other relevant articles):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...pe2dvfiles.asp

Such as this one:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...fileformat.asp

Here is a link to an article on Doom9 which discusses this issue:
http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-48252.html

The utilility by ulead which I cited in my earlier post appears to stop transfering accurate audio after about 18.5 minutes of conversion. The video continues to transfer but the soundtrack goes to white noise.

I used Ulead 9 and I noticed that after a while the downloaded clips seemed not to have audio. I had to adjust the audio volume properties of each clip for it come out, but it sounded tinny.

The downloaded avi, when played on media player, did not have audio.

Is this a common Ulead problem?

I think I found the reason for the problem. For the sake of others who might have encountered it.

I tried Pinnacle 7 and while capturing it reported that there was a change in the audio settings and recommended that capture be restarted from that point. The video got downloaded with no problems in the audio.

I noticed that the audio setting seems to have been affected when I used a lavalier mike. The video was taken a Sony DCR PC9 using an azden wireless mike. The audio was affected everytime I changed from the azden to the built in mike. Why it does it? I don't know.

To the moderator of this forum, you may move or delete these set of posts from me.

All the best!