i record vhs or from the tv using my pinnacle pctv rave capture card but when i play back the video file i just recorded the sound is out of synch with the video. my system is amd xp1600, 256mb, 40 gig, with geforce 4 mx440 grafic card. i would have thought this system was powerful enough to cope with that, does anbody know how to rectify the situation? please help.

-- scott brown (luvvbuzz54@hotmail.com), April 22, 2003

Answers

It could be that you have incompatable codec installed, ie xvid or divx, try completely uninstalling them then trying, or you could try updating your video card divers, or if you have updated them try uninstaling your new drivers and trying the originals

-- Sandy (lord.zorb@zoom.co.uk), May 30, 2003.

This happens because you're probably using two different devices to capture video and audio. The easiest way to get rid of this trouble is capturing PCM uncompressed audio and compressing it later by using VirtualDub (you don't need to compress video again, of course !). I hope that will help you.

-- Teo (uglykidmatt@yahoo.com), August 25, 2003.

Friend, forget about using the software for PCTV Pro, DC10+ etc if you're into capturing something beyond VCD format. Like many others, I own a vast many VHS tapes that I'd like to transfer to DVD. To make it short, I spent days and nights with all versions and upgrades and patches for these two cards. The problem lies with the software and the quality of the codecs they are using.

I finally saw the light when capturing from within Ulead DVD MovieFactory, using only the PCTV as a capture device. Perfect full length movies, no audio synch problems or jerky playback towards the end. Just select MPEG output format and set up the parameters according to DVD specs. Reduce the quality setting from 15 to 10, no visible degradation but it reduces file size. My 86 min movie bacame a 3,3 Gb MPEG2 file. Ready to go to DVD. Voila. Try it. Was it good for you too??

-- Finn Amundsen (fam@chello.no), December 27, 2003.

i have since purchased a standalone dvd recorder and must say it is so much easier than all this messing about with computer hrdware.

-- scott brown (luvvbuzz54@hotmail.com), December 28, 2003.