Audio problems with Casablanca 4 Studio-2 2019 model

[GeorgeJ]

I am running a Sony mini-DV camcorder into the Casablanca through the firewire port. When recording into the Casablanca the audio is muted. No audio on the monitor when recording. Don't see that I have anything muted on the Casablanca.. Never had that problem with my old Casablanca Avio. The audio IS being recorded but you can't hear it when recording. It's there on playback.

Even though the audio is there on playback it sounds like crap. Lots of noise in it. When I record on the Sony I use a mono attenuating patch cord and bring line-level down to mic-level. But it is only on one channel. With my old Avio I would take the one good audio channel and feed it to both channels on my DVD recorder and I got a good sounding DVD in mono. I spent several days editing a 2-hour video on the Casablanca Studio and made a DVD with Arabesk. My plan was to take the good audio channel and transfer the project to another DVD. But the audio on the Arabesk DVD was crap. It was pulsing and the level going up and down, up and down so it was unusable.

Any idea what is causing these audio problems?

It turns out that my old method of recording audio is NOT the problem. The last 3 tapes I recorded on the Sony were recorded with stereo audio and they have the same noise problem when dubbed into the Casablanca by firewire. The problem is not with the monitor either...

[CKNewman]

It sounds like the tape drive assembly in your Sony camcorder may have gone out of alignment. I had this happen to my Sony VX-2000 years ago and I ran into a similar problem: audio Swiss cheese! Luckily I had a friend that had a Panasonic AG-DV2000 deck that was able to play my problem tapes and track the audio so I could make a usable copy. I had my VX fixed and the problem went away.

You may be able to get your Sony fixed, but you might consider purchasing a new camcorder that uses cards as a storage medium along with a number of other benefits.

Good luck!

[bethklinger]

Firewire is also getting to be obsolete and causing more issues than not. Try importing the audio through a USB converter cable. Sounds like you got a brand new upgraded editing system, now you need to upgrade your camera to handle it.
Beth

[alex]

Hi George I had the same problem with FireWire and tried several players via FireWire and still sound was crappy, I have two Sony HD camera that record on a Memory card but after I down loaded a video that was 35 minutes long it the sound goes out of sink and I have to re adjust sound forward on audio track. I’m also running Bogart 11.2 but still have that issue with sound going out of sink on long recording not on short clips.

[Franklinbencosme]

Alex are you shooting 30p or 60p ?

[alex]

Frank I’m shooting on 1080 60P I was told by Joel which he has been producing the instructional videos for Casablanca to shot on 30P and I think Macrosystem is working on the glitch. I hope they will find a fix soon.

[garymcnally]

Sorry, but these problems are way upstream from MacroSystem as they usually are. If you put old garbage into any editor you are going to get garbage out.

Sony discontinued the can of worms 1996 DV Tape format over 15 years ago. They would have done it sooner but they needed to design something better. HDV tape replaced it, but it was not much better, and SD cards replaced it in 2008.
When the tapes were new they even had problems. Add 20 to 30 years and be thankful you can hear or see it, let alone it be in sync. The top issues are:

Whether it was analog tape or dv tape, all tape required a control track to stay in sync with the deck or camera. Loss of control track creates the sync issue. The pros would use very expensive TBCs (time base correctors) to run the signal through. I couldn’t afford 10K, so I would put the lens cap on my camera, and record black the whole tape which lays down an uninterrupted control track. That way when I started and stopped the camera during the shoot, I didn’t get gaps in my control track or audio sync problems.

The pros also used expensive tape, and the pro camcorders ran at higher speeds. Basically the more magnetic particles on the tape, the better chance you would get a good recording. But it was never intended to last 20 to 30 years, and proper storage was critical. Certainly you don’t want to store them on top of a speaker.

Also the American NTSC TV format records 29.97 frames per second. So every second the audio sync lags by one 1000th. So after 17 minutes your audio will be off one second. This is the key to the workaround. Only record or import 13 minutes at a time and you will be fine.