Re: Audio quality and WME9 series

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 18:02:01 -0700, davoud
<davoud@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


>Sound, video and game controllers:
>
>ATI WDM Rage Theater Audio
>ATI WDM Rage Theater Video NSP
>ATI WDM Specialized MVD Codec
>ATI WDM Specialized PCD Codec
>ATI WDM TV Audio Crossbar
>ATI WDM TV Tuner
>SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio
>I captured a video of the desktop with the Audio (I captured the audio
>through the basic microphone that i have) using WME9. My first question is:
>
>when selecting the "screen capture" on the WME9 series main window, Why
>there is only one option for capturing Audio (default Audio device)?

That's pretty odd. The SoundMax should show up as an input device in
the encoder, in addition to the 'default_audio_device' listing. And,
then the soundmax should let you use the 'configure' button to choose
settings for the input in use - CD, Mic, Line-In etc etc.

Regarding low volume levels, are you *sure* the mic wasn't plugged in
to the Line-In socket ? That would reproduce the low volume level, as
a mic does about 0.1v peak and line-in takes 1.0v peak inputs. If you
could crawl round the back and carefully check the labels on the
plugs, that'd be great !!

>What if I want to burn the video to a dvd? what else I can use to have a
>high quality professional sound?

Well, DVD players require MPEG video rather than windows media (apart
from some very new players anyway). So you need to really capture the
video 'uncompressed' initially, then convert it to WMV if you need
that using the encoder - and convert it to MPEG video using a tool
like VirtualDub.

In fact, VDub is dubbly (pun!) useful cause you can use it to capture
from devices in the first place, which will default to producing an
AVI video. That's all ideal - but unfortunately I don't remember a
"screen capture" setting for VDub !!!

It's possible to set in the encoder, a "full frames (uncompressed)"
setting : Choose "Windows Media Hardware Profiles" from the
destination dropdown - on the Compression tab of the encoder (and PCM
audio can be selected there too) - press the Edit button to see these
options. Even that doesn't help too much cause you're stiuck in WMV
format, and you need MPEG

So the step needed really is to 'transcode' this to MPEG format :
There's a guide here which shows you how to do that.
http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/wmv2avi.html
You might experience some quality loss, so the key is to keep the
compression of the initial screen capture as minimal as possible.

HTH, Happy Hunting !
Cheers - Neil
.