So to start off im no tech expert im basically a “noob” at computer software but im willing to learn and take consecutive criticism, with that said onto my sync problem.
I do recordings for about an hour length and i do a sync test every time before i start my commentary, when i go to edit the video the initial sync test is synced but when i get past lets say for example five minutes it is out of sync, it seems to do it at randoms points in the audio it does not do it at the same intervals of time so come to you guys asking if there is anything i can do to fix it I’d appreciate any solutions or advice.
Are you recording on the same computer as the game is playing? I’m going to guess that the game is “hogging” the CPU & data bus, and you are loosing bits of audio. That would make your audio appear to play-back faster than it was recorded, and you would usually hear some “glitches”.
Also, sometimes two applications can be trying to use two different sample-rate clock settings.
It’s generally a bad idea to run another application while recording.
sorry should have mentioned that im playing on a console i use the PC primarily for recording and editing the capture card im using is the Avermedia HD DVR which built into the computer. i never really run anything else when im recording aside from the audacity and the capture card software but I’ll diffidently check on that.
Yes, gradually losing sync over a long time and losing it in chunks are very different. Also, analyzing the error is valuable. Does the sync always go out the same direction? I’m guessing yes, in which case it would be very valuable to record on a separate machine from the game – unless the game has provision for doing that.
Audacity is a very simple audio program and doesn’t Play Well With Others.
Koz
sorry should have mentioned that im playing on a console i use the PC primarily for recording and editing the capture card im using is the Avermedia HD DVR which built into the computer. i never really run anything else when im recording aside from the audacity and the capture card software but I’ll diffidently check on that.
One solution might be a hardware mixer to mix the commentary with the game audio before capturing it with the Avermedia card. (You wouldn’t need Audacity and you’d be bypassing your soundcard.) The downside to this is that you can’t adjust the game & commentary levels separately after recording.
The DVR is demanding, although not as demanding as game software. Capturing/recording (or playing back) audio and/or video is not an easy task for a computer. The multitasking operating system is always doing things in the background (even when you are running only one application). When capturing/recording audio/video, the data comes-in at a constant-steady rate into a buffer, and it gets read from the buffer in bursts and sent over the databus to the hard drive whenever the operating system gets-around to it. If the operating system doesn’t get around to it in time, you get buffer overflow and a “glitch”. If you are capturing audio/video with Avermedia while capturing audio with Audacity, both data streams need to share the databus and the hard drive has to jump-around between two different writing locations. There is probably another data stream going to your video monitor. If your video capture device uses software encoding, the uncompressed and compressed data also has to share time on the databus. (During playback, you can get buffer _under_flow if the buffer “runs dry”.)
Maybe your computer is fast-enough for all this stuff, and maybe not… Or maybe your compuer is fast-enough but the Avermedia driver takes-over the data bus and holds-on for just a bit too-long, and the Audacity buffer overflows??? Usually the computer is fast-enough on average, but the time-sharing doesn’t work-out perfectly…
The soundcard and video capture card have separate clocks (oscillators) and they will drift apart. But the drift/difference should be less than 1% and you shouldn’t notice it after only 5 minutes.
First off want to say thank you DVDdoug and kozikowski for the quick reply and suggestions, i listened to what you both said and from what i could understand is that my computer might not be able to handle doing both the recording of capture card and the recording of my voice so decided to try recording the game-play on my desktop and record commentary on my Macbook and still got the same problem. Im wondering if it is the headset im using to record my voice that’s causing the problem, if so should i try and find a USB microphone?
By the way the headset im using is a Astro A40 Mixamp Pro 2013 edition.