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“Phantom sound” problems!
Hello,
I have the most strange problem: after making amateur movie everything was fine – I edited it in Final Cut Pro and everything was perfect while watching on timeline, but then when I wanted to export it – problems started.
1. I made “Print to Video” using firewire cable from Mac to my miniDV camera. At the same time I had A/V cable connected from A/V out on that miniDV camera to TV (for control). Everything was fine on TV and I was satisfied. But later I had to check something on that material on miniDV tape, so I decided to look all of it (15 minutes), but on camera display and speakers only (no TV). Then I noticed that some sound is missing! I connected it to TV – and there it was! Not missing. Once again I played it without TV – and once again there was no that sound on miniDV camera speakers.
2. As that film is about to go to one film festival of amateur films, I decided to make DVD too – just to be safe. So I used Export Using Compressor (classic settings “Best 90 minutes”) and it gave me m2v and ac3. Then I made the simplest possible authoring (film only, no menus) to my HDD. I played that DVD with Leopard’s DVD player – it was perfect. Then I burned it to DVD and played it on Sony DVD recorder (not in computer) – those sounds were missing! I immediatly took that DVD and put it in Mac and played it again from DVD player – sounds were there! Then I put that DVD into PC and played it with Power DVD – sounds were there! And once again, using Sony DVD recorder (not in computer) I couldn’t hear them on TV!
Can someone tell me what is going on, as I am totally clueless… 🙁
Thank you in advance, and best to all
Zvonimir
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3 Replies
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I would go back to your timeline and see if the missing sounds have anything in common.
My first guess would be that the missing sounds are panned to either the far left or the far right, and that the play back devices where the sound is missing are only playing back one channel – the channel the sounds are not on.
If this is an artistic decision, great – just fix your monitoring. If it is a mistake, adjust the pan setting of the sounds.
Best,
Tom M
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Hi Zvonimir, it is possible that the left and right channels of the audio are out of phase. a tricky concept but bear with me. This is often hidden when listening in stereo, but is readily apparent when the audio is mixed down to mono (such as would happen when previewing on the camera only).
When you were recording the audio, were you using a professional 3-pin microphone, with an adapter lead possibly to a 3.5mm headphone jack type input?
Professional (shotgun) microphones have balanced audio outputs on XLR 3-pin connections. If you want to know what balanced audio is, google it, cos someone else’ll do a better job of explaining it. But the outcome is, if the cabling is wired incorrectly, you end up with the left and right channels having OPPOSITE versions of each other (like matter and anti-matter). This will sound fine when you are listening in stereo, because the two channels don’t mix, but when you listen through the camera speaker the two channels are mixed to mono, and the out of phase audio cancels out – and silence. So you may well hear the other sound effects but the main dialogue will be missing.
How to fix this? well, isolate which tracks are causing the problem, then try muting or deleting one side (left or right) of the track – so that only one of the channels is coming through (panned center).
Try that and let us know how it goes.
-Tim -
Hello everyone,
thank you all – that was it! Tim, you guessed everything right and gave exactly right solution! Thank you once again.
Thanks to all
Zvonimir
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