Sound and Vision Synchronisation Problems

[Father Brian]

I've been using my EasyCap DC60 with Ulead Video Studio SE 10 for a few days and once I sorted out the settings (e.g. the manual says nothing about Upper and Lower Field), it works well when extracting from VHS.  It might be coincidence but I've found it helps to have as few other programs running as possible and making as much memory and disc storage available as I can.  With other programs running, I've suffered freeze-frame and lost sound.

My major problem is sound and vision - it's a lottery whether the recording will end synchronised.  When they're not, either can be in front by as much as 10 seconds after an hour.  The DC60's packaging says it's suitable for Windows 2000, XP and Vista, though I note in another thread that it doesn't support Vista 64-bit.  My PC has an AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ 2.6 GHz, running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit.  I've tried it native and in XP SP2 compatibility modes but that doesn't seem to be significant.

I can retry until I get an in-sync recording but that isn't the point.  Either something isn't working or I have some settings wrong.  Can anyone - EasyCap or user - throw any light on this or make any suggestions that would cure it?  I'll be grateful for any help.

[Father Brian]

I contacted the supplier who quickly sent a replacement.  It works - most recordings so far have their sound and vision in sync.  Today I found the following, which confirms my theory about the process being very resource-hungry.  Acknowledgements to Amazon.co.uk and Ella Guru, the reviewer:

Amazon isn't (for a change!) the cheapest place to buy this but, if you haven't got a dedicated sound card and you want to put your videos onto your PC, then burn them onto DVD, then this will do the trick.  Just a few things to be aware in order to maximise results:

Its a USB connection. That means it has to share with anything else that's plugged into a USB port anywhere on your PC.  USB isn't most efficient way to transfer and, as transferring analogue data into digital is demanding of your PC's resources, its definitely best to give this product all the help it can get when you are using it.  If you don't, you might well end up with sight and sound sync problems. So...

1. unplug anything else in a USB port when you're using it,
2. close down all those programs running in the background (right click on the icons on the right of the "tray" at bottom of your screen and exit them.

I found the bundled software not very useful - except when you come to burning your movie onto a DVD.  Then it's great for building menu screens and chapters.  You are much better off using Microsoft's MovieMaker (free download if you haven't already got it bundled).  To maximise results, use Alt+Ctrl+Delete to bring up the Processes list on your PC, scroll down to moviemaker.exe, right click and select High under "Priority" (Just do this when your "capturing" video using moviemaker - you can put priority back to "Normal" after you have finished.)

[Father Brian]

There are some useful Easycap set-up videos on YouTube, particularly this one:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/NExlKDcIclQ&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/NExlKDcIclQ&rel=0</a>

Briefly, change the output file format from avi to mpeg-2 and the synchronisation and jerkiness problems will go away.  What's more, the file sizes are much smaller!