The other day I made an attempt to record several clips to DV tape. All the clips were exported from Premiere using the "FAST Dazzle DV export" setting. I created a new project in FAST.forward, then imported the clips, one by one.
Most of the clips have audio, but there are some with no audio at all (color bars, black video, etc.). Now, when I choose "record project to tape", then FAST.forward pops up an error message (for all the clips with audio) saying that "the sound files are inconsistent", and skips to the next clip without recording a single frame.
I have tried this with the 1.7 (build 255) final and 1.75 (build 256) beta drivers, same results for both.
Any advice?
Have you perhaps mixed 12-bit and 16-bit audio files? Or sound files with different sample rates?
No. I used the same export settings for all clips ("FAST Dazzle DV export" or something like this), so audio format must have been the same.
But even if they were different, why would that stop FAST.forward from being able to record each clip to the tape?
Is there anybody here from Dazzle who could shed some light on what this "inconsistent sound files" error message means?
Did you check the sample rate and bit depth of the .WAV files associated with each of the clips?
Yes. According to the summary panel all of the wave files (*_a1.wav and *_a2.wav) are:
PCM
96.00 Kb/second
48.00 kHz
16 bit
Mono
Is this what it's supposed to be? Would it help if I posted the FAST.forward project file here?
I checked the exact error message, in case it matters. It goes like: "Cannot play X:\y\z.dif The sound files are inconsistent with the project." There are 3 buttons for Abort, Skip and Ignore. Again, this pops up for all clips that have audio, and it skips to the next clip with no audio whether I choose Skip or Ignore.
[This message has been edited by thonderson (edited 04 June 2002).]
The audio file data sounds OK. Is the project also set for 48 kHz/16-bit sound files in FF? Can you import the files back into Premiere and play them there?
How do I set the project properties? When I created it I was only asked whether it's a DIF or AVI project, and I can't seem to find any more project related settings in FF.
The files play fine in Premiere and the FAST DV.Player as well.
All right, I got this one figured out too. For the record: I created dummy audio tracks for the clips with no audio (such making the "audio format" the same for all clips of the project), and whoops, it played without a glitch!
The thing is when you export "black video" from Premiere, it creates no soundtrack. I added the audio track of a "bars and tone" clip and set the volume slider to zero before export. A cumbersome way of doing it, but it works.
In the meantime I figured that in FAST.forward there is no way to define project settings. The "project settings" are automatically derived from the properties of the first clip in the project. Oddly enough, if any of the clips are different from the first one, FF refuses to play it. This would be worth a mention in the online documentation.