[Paul Rogati]

Another system: Mac mini 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, OS 10.5.8, Wirecast 3.5.6.

Record settings: H.264 (Main), 512×288 pixels, best quality (no bit rate constraint), 30 fps, key frame every 90, audio 64 kbps 44.1 kHz “best” 16 bit mono
Stream setting: LAN – H.264 default

Last week I started both the record and stream and tried to watch the stream remotely. The stream started with chipmunk audio and then the audio ceased, so I gave up watching. The lecture recorded fine.

This week I decided to leave things as is and just record. The audio in the recording was exactly double speed – I was able to change the timing to 50% in Amadeus Pro and now have a good file. So with no change in setting, one week recorded fine and the next didn’t.

I noticed the RTP Payload in the Packetizer settings was H.264 Video (which seems to be the default). I have had success in the past changing that to QuickTime, so I have changed that and nothing else. I will keep you posted. – Paul

[Paul Rogati]

An update, focused on the one system I have that uses the Kona LH card (Mac Pro G5, 2 GHz DP, 4 GB RAM, OS 10.5.8). Over semester break I did what updates I could – Wirecast to 3.5.6, Kona drivers to 7.1, Mac OS updates. As I geared up for the new semester, I did a recording and playback behavior was wacky (it played faster than real time and sometimes there was audio but sometimes not), and I could hear the audio cut in and out while monitoring. After several tests Wirecast crashed and I could not get it to launch without crashing (I tried deleting prefs, re-installing, downgrading to 3.5.4 and even Kona 6.0.3). Getting desperate I emailed Telestream support and they said “Wirecast does not support video capture cards”. This got me to thinking (plus I was anxious to get things working for classes today). So I just uninstalled the Kona drivers – which meant I had to use a different camera that gave me Firewire, but I had one – and Wirecast came back to life and appears to be working well again. I will update with observations, but I now feel I was recording all Fall on the edge of incompatibility between Kona and Wirecast. I think I will abandon the LH card. – Paul

[Paul Rogati]

My FS-100 (v4.0.0.04080107) is suffering under the same symptoms. We went to transfer video from an event we recorded, which should have been an hour, but all we found were several clips, two 1 minute and one 22 seconds.

There were other oddities, such as the two drive icons in the Finder not both being the yellow Firewire drive I was used to seeing. So I decided to Repair Disk and Format to see if that would clear things up. The drives do now look normal in the Finder, but I made several test recordings, and they all freeze early on, even though the file continues to “play”.

My observation was that the counter stopped during record, even though the recorder continued. I had read elsewhere about someone having trouble with their Firewire connection and thought that maybe an intermittent connection would be to blame. I changed cables, but that didn’t solve it. – Paul

[Paul Rogati]

Addendum: system details

Mac mini 2.26 GHz, 4GB RAM, OS 10.5.8
Wirescast 3.5.4 with HDV option
Canon VIXIA HV40

[Paul Rogati]

I apologize for my slow responses. Once the school year started I have little time to test. Here is an interesting round of data. Yesterday I made a recording with the same settings I had used a week ago with no problems, but this time the audio was slooow. My starting settings were H.264, 15fps, AAC audio at 128kbps, 44.1kHz with Better compression.

Excuse the jump because I discovered something today. I was able to correct the audio with Amadeus Pro and when I went to recombine the fixed audio track with the normal speed video track in QTPro I discovered the following Durations in the file properties:
File – 1:36:48.51
Video Track – 0:48:24.30
Sound Track – 0:48:24.30
Hinted Video – 0:48:24.30
Hinted Sound – 1:36:48.51

I have another post in this forum about Hint tracks getting messed up, usually the audio hint track is missing, so I’m suspecting there might be a correlation.

Back to compression settings. Once I noticed the aberrant audio, I made a series of test recordings, and the setting that made a difference was stereo/mono: mono recorded normally, stereo recorded slow. But what I didn’t test (based on today’s discovery) was recording and NOT having Wirecast hint the file in real time.

[Paul Rogati]

Thanks for the post Paul. I was beginning to think I was creating unique problems. One thing I discovered is that the weird audio speed shows up on the record Mac (in this case with the AJA card), but will play fine on another Mac. I’m thinking that implicates the Kona, but I have issues like you mention with other configurations. I have a handful of Wirecast system setups – some straight Firewire in, one using a Blackmagic card, and one with an AJA Kona LH. I am about to embark on adding HDV to two new setups (oh joy!). – Paul

[Paul Rogati]

I’m thinking it might be a Kona issue rather than a Wirecast issue: I installed QuickTime Broadcaster to see if the behavior was any different. It isn’t. Thanks. – Paul

[Paul Rogati]

Thanks, the update did the trick, but only on an Intel Mac mini. I still have blue on a PowerPC G5 which lacks in RAM. But the mini will do me fine. – Paul

[Paul Rogati]

Thank you Craig. I changed the insertion point of the audio (into the Canopus box the camera was plugged into, rather than the Mac Pro’s line in) and the audio and video are now spot on.

However, I set up a test to stream a source over several hours, and the sync separated by a second or more.

So I set up another test with two Mac Pros in parallel – same source, same encoding. The original Mac is a dual-core 2.66GHz Xeon with 2GB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT video card. The new competitor is a quad-core 2.8GHz Xeon with 4GB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT card. Lo and behold the newer Mac could maintain sync over hours easily, breathing lightly at under 10% CPU usage. The older Mac lost sync, working at over 40% CPU. Since it has CPU to spare, would the sync culprit be the RAM, the graphics card, or both?

Thanks again. – Paul

Edit: I went exploring and discovered the new, syncing Mac had a Wirecast setting of Capture Device Size: Native, whereas the problematic Mac had a setting of Capture Device Size: Reduced.