John CB & John EB. I labored over that very question. If I open the file in any other app to get the 10-sec clip, the problem doesn't exist, so the audio problem also wouldn't exist from a clip that way. So I clipped inside MEP and saved as an .avi as you say.

The whole original clip is only 1:20 so I placed it in the same DropBox folder as earlier https://www.dropbox.com/sh/d5x8jryn7yap0fs/AACvnuPptnkLL0aQvncAOzuKa?dl=0

Huh??? The file plays ok from DropBox, too. So I guess the only problem is with the import function within MEP, not the file since it opens fine on virtually every other player I've tried?

@William-Murphy

I tried this file in VPX11, MEP2019, MEP2016 and all have the sound problems. In Magix Sound Forge Cleaning Lab, no problem except that it ran at the wrong speed. I tried in Pinnacle Studio 23U and Vegas 15 Edit, no problem with the sound or speed in either. The problem seems to be limited to Magix VPX/MEP video programs.

John CB

@johnebaker

Which version of MovAvi did you use - I have 15 and it opens the file

Hi John.

I tried it in the latest, 20. and got the error message.

Jeff

@William-Murphy

Further to my last post, I tried the file in Samplitude Pro X3. The original samplerate is 32kHz and I think that this is what is playing havoc with the video programs. If I extract and use object resampling in Samplitude to get it to 44.1kHz, I get the bad noise. No change imports the file correctly, but plays at the wrong speed. Change samplerate to 32kHz and my Soundcard doesn't like it. Convert file upon insert, plays correctly.

When you originally imported this, into MEP I presume, what were the audio settings? Can you try the import again, but set the audio to 48kHZ? Take a screen shot of the import settings.

John CB

@William-Murphy

Hi

Thanks for the clip I have run a MediaInfo analysis and ( @CubeAce are you clairvoyant?) it has 2 stereo audio streams muxed into the video and I suspect that it is this that is causing the issue.

When imported into MEP there is only audio in the Left channel and nothing in the right - this conforms with the norm for recording Mono audio in the left channel.

I ran to video clip through MovAvi Video Converter 15 and converted to mp4 - the sound issue is resolved.

As @yvon-robert originally posted - run the video clips through a video converter before importing into MEP

@browj2 - setting MEP to 48kHz makes no difference.

HTH

John EB

@johnebaker

MEP is normally set to 48kHZ. What I mean is what were the audio settings for the original import of the Hi8 file from the camera, not the avi file? I think that something is wrong with the settings during the import from the camera Hi8 to AVI. The problem should be fixed at the source if William is going to be importing more files from the camera. If all have been done, then, of course, the easiest solution is to convert the files.

Thus the question is how did the audio get messed up in the first place?

Samplitude automatically created a 44.1kHz file from the avi file (32kHz audio), which imported correctly into MEP.

John CB

@William-Murphy

@johnebaker

Sorry, I had to go out to work.

Hi Bill.

I'm glad you have a solution at last. I think the problem is in the Demuxing (or separation of audio from video). If I remember correctly the video portion of the signal is in the analog realm while the audio is in both analog and digital in the Hi8 format. I suspect the strong pulse is the digital sound and a duplication of the analog track but because it is digital the signal is much stronger (but not decoded) when converted to a purely digital format. I also think if I remember correctly the digital audio was in packets and read in bursts from the helical scan heads,hence the pulses. I am a bit fuzzy about all this as I left professional audio recording as PCM digital recorders were just coming in. They didn't last that long as a format and professional recorders were pigs to align the recording / playback heads correctly.

Hi John.

No, not clairvoyant. :-)

Cubase asks on a video import if I want to split the audio track up into individual tracks. I can then expand individual waveforms up to the bit level. That's over the top and almost useless for examination but reduced down a bit you can see variations from track to track quite easily, and as I can also set the timeline to have the playing part of the track stationary in the center of the screen while the timeline whizzes past it's easy to see the modulation of the waveform as it passes. Stacked one above the other you can see clearly differences between audio track waveforms. Great for audio editing but not without a few drawbacks.

Ray.

@William-Murphy

Hi

. . . . Don't have a clue what or how it fixed it but am grateful. . . . .

DVDate has demuxed (extracted) the correct audio streams into and changed the audio so as to be interleaved with the video rather than muxed into the video stream as you can see below in the MediaInfo analysis of a before and after conversion.

This is what MovAvi did when I converted it.

Before conversion

General
Complete name                            : C:\Users\john\Documents\MAGIX\DVD_BD_Projects\test projects\christmas at lauries 1989.avi
..

..

Audio #1
ID                                       : 0-0
Format                                   : PCM
Muxing mode                              : DV
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Duration                                 : 1 min 20 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 768 kb/s
Encoded bit rate                         : 0 b/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 32.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 12 bits
Stream size                              : 7.33 MiB (3%)
Encoded stream size                      : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Audio #2
ID                                       : 0-1
Format                                   : PCM
Muxing mode                              : DV
Muxing mode, more info                   : Muxed in Video #1
Duration                                 : 1 min 20 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 768 kb/s
Encoded bit rate                         : 0 b/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 32.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 12 bits
Stream size                              : 7.33 MiB (3%)
Encoded stream size                      : 0.00 Byte (0%)

After conversion

General
Complete name                            : C:\Users\john\Documents\MAGIX\DVD_BD_Projects\test projects\christmas at lauries 1989_type2.avi..

..

..

Audio
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : 1
Duration                                 : 1 min 20 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 024 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 32.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 9.77 MiB (3%)
Alignment                                : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration                     : 33  ms (1.00 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration             : 33  ms

HTH

John EB

@johnebaker

Which version of MovAvi did you use - I have 15 and it opens the file

Hi John.

I tried it in the latest, 20. and got the error message.

Jeff

@emmrecs

@johnebaker

Hi both: I've asked Movavi support for an explanation and will report back if/when I get one.

@CubeAce

A little aside from the problem as there has been provided a solution.

...in the manual about using the SP mode( to lengthen recording time)....

...

I suspect the recording was made in the SP mode to save recording space as it has the attributes the Hi8 manual I found online warned could happen if not transferred to another medium using the camcorder....

I suspect you are mixing the SP with LP here. SP is Standard Play and LP is Long Play. It is the LP that has a warning about possible mosaic-like noise due to its non-standard play/recording time.

@shgrude

Yes, correct, sorry for the typo. I should have checked it before putting that up.

Hi

Good to see you have a solution @William-Murphy.

I am a bit late to the party but this unusual problem continues to interest me and has caused me to scan the memory banks of my early forays into Non Linear video Editing with DV material.

I used to use a forerunner of Corel Video Studio when it was owned by Ulead and I seem to remember there was a choice of DV-AVI formats you could capture and export with - DV-AVI Type-1 and DV-AVI Type-2. There is a good explanation here of the differences: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/directshow/type-1-vs--type-2-dv-avi-files which fits with @johnebaker's take on it.

There was a bit of confusion due to the 10sec clip you uploaded as judging by the bitrate 120Mbps you chose an Uncompressed AVI export in MEP and this converted the file and baked in the problem noise, which would be present in any player.

But get this - I loaded your 1min 20sec original full clip into my oldest version of MEP 16 Plus (not 2016!) on Win Vista and it played without problem!

I thought it may be something to do with the OS as alluded to in @terrypin's german post, but I then tried the next oldest version MEP 2013 plus on the same PC and it had the problem. However another clip from my archive which had been created in Ulead and had exactly the same Media Info attributes (with the 2 x 2 channel audio streams DV AVI type-2) as your problem clip, played fine in MEP 2013!

The only difference I can see so far between MEP16 and MEP2013 and later versions, is that there is an import module called DV AVI import module in the program settings that is not present in the later or latest versions, but unchecking this module still allowed the clip to play. If I knew where this module resided in the program folders then I might see if it could be copied to a later version.

Ideas in light of that anyone?

Peter

Hi Peter.

[Edit after suggestion by John EB]

@Scenestealer

[End of edit]

First of all, sometimes your @ Scenestealer contact activation seldom works (It doesn't come up in the list of contributors in the @ list) as in this case, so I haven't been able to call your attention directly.

That set aside. Which version of Vista? There were eight versions and only two had the Windows Media Center extras embedded into them. I never had Vista as an operating system but was favoured by some creative types if it was a media center embedded version as it apparently had a few advantages over the standard version. Could that be a factor?

Your direct show link was interesting and seems to hint that the Windows SDK kit has tools to fix the problems with such files. As such I've bookmarked your link for future reference.

I would also like to know some of the answers as I may at some point in the future have to archive some video tapes donated by John Bingeman for the dockyard in regard to a series of dives on the wreck of HMS Invincible which sank in the Solent in 1758 for the recovery of artifacts found at the site in 2002 and will need to be digitized before the tapes degenerate. So I may find myself with the same problems at a future date.

I'm also concerned in general with the problems of long term archiving in digital media formats as computing develops. I also had a great Ulead program that ran on Win 98 that produced embedded 360 degree panoramas that I can no longer use. The original disk degenerated and I can't get the player or encoder back.

All of this appears to be happening within decades rather than film's lifespan and doesn't appear to bode well for the future if after a while a file has to be re-rendered to another format to survive, as each successive rendering will degrade what will be a decreasing resolution file compared to newer formats.

Ray.

Hi Ray: Re your first point, I think that typing ‘@‘ automatically displays current contributors to the thread. Further characters offer more members.

@terrypin

Hi Terry.

I have symptomatic problems just with Peter's @ Scenestealers contact.

Happens a lot to me. No-one else's presents problems for me. His seldom shows but does now and then.

Very odd.

Such as notifying you now. His notification icon just doesn't appear most of the time for me from the list.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

Funnily enough yours does not show up either.

When you want to use the @ Username there are a couple of requirements:

1. if you are inserting into existing text, there must be at least one space before and one space after where you want to insert the @ Username - ie make sure there are 2 spaces at the insertion point and position the text marker in between them
   
   or
    
2. start at the beginning of a new line
    
3. If the name does not appear in the list then continue typing the name eg in order to get yours above I had to type

@Cube you then appeared in the list and selected it.

HTH

John EB

@Scenestealer

@johnebaker

I had tried the first method before John but it never worked. However, second method has worked a treat but why only ever Peter's? This has happened to me on other threads. At first I thought it was a random bug but has it has only ever happened with trying to notify Peter.

Sometimes when clicking on an individuals contact selection I get

@unknown

and have to retry but only Peter's notification goes missing.

@johnebaker

@CubeAce

Note that Peter’s starts with a capital letter, which might be relevant?

I needed to type three letters of yours, Ray, before it joined other options beginning with ‘cu’.

@terrypin

Hi Terry.

Ha! And yet William-Murphey's has come up for me every time.

Note Scenestealer's is still missing.

I'm going to put this down to yet another of Magix's mysterious relationship with the rest of reality 🙃

As long as there is a work around,I don't mind.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray that's funny because it takes a few tries and some extended typing to get yours to come up too! It might have something to do with our capitals as Terry mentioned though, as initially you would not come up at all unless I started with a small c.

I am on Vista Ultimate which had the Media Centre but MEP 2013, 2014 exhibit the "Motor Boating" of @William-Murphy 's file on the same OS.

I'm also concerned in general with the problems of long term archiving in digital media formats as computing develops.

Yes and this was the most convincing argument for continuing to use Motion Picture Film for major Cinema and TV production long after Digital should have taken over. Kodak certainly pushed this aspect when their Movie film stock sales started to be threatened. There is probably not a 2 inch Quad tape machine existing in operational condition now, that nearly all the stations used in their VTR section to record and play TV programs.

Peter

@Scenestealer

Hi Peter.

I agree.

Even if the machines were still in operation the tapes (Even BASF Pro 50) would now be losing ferite oxide as the glue degenerates. You can 'bake' a tape once and provided it was stored correctly played once to transfer to another medium. The chromium tapes for cassettes may fare better as the production method was a high heat transfer of base tape material directly onto the tape which was freeze cooled at the point of transfer contact. I still have two unopened, vacuum packed 10" reels of 1/4" tape for use with my Revox and some BASF and AMPEX tapes are still just about hanging on but the other 400 + reels need to be baked and transferred. Luckily I don't have any old video recordings on tape and audio file types seem to be good enough not to have warranted too much change over the last few years. Even MEP reads my 32 bit master wav. files. At least for the most part as long as they can make older files types readable copying them doesn't normally mean degradation of the original.

No my main other concern is as we go from 4K to 8K and beyond and get larger and larger viewing screens at home, then the perceived quality of older recordings will become less visually appealing for incentive to watch.

Ray.