Buzzing Noise During Some Transitions

Ferd07

Newbie Location: Maryland Joined: Dec 22, 2015 18:26 Messages: 7 Offline

Solved by

Dec 22, 2015 18:45

I've created my first Blu Disc with Power Director 13 and during some transitions on the disc there is an annoying buzzing sound. It happens during some transitions and not others (about 50-50). And, it's not consistent - when using the same transition it happens sometimes but not other times. I got the buzzing noise once when looking at one of the transitions on the timeline, but when I replayed the same transition again (on the timeline) there was no buzzing. I have not heard any of the buzzing sound when previewing the disc in the create disc menu.

Has anybody else ran into this problem and know how to fix it? The only option I appear to have at this time is to delete all of my transitions! Yikes, that's going to be a lot of work and I won't be able to produce the kind of video I was hoping for.

Thanks.

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Dec 22, 2015 19:35

Without knowing more about your project it's hard to say what's going on. One thing to try is to use the Produce menu instead of Create Disc and see if the finished video has the noise or not. If it's now gone, try burning a disc with the finished video rather than the project.

If the noise is still present in the produced video, uncheck the Enable box for all your audio tracks and then produce that. If the noise is now gone, re-enabling the tracks one at a time to see if you can ID the problem track or clip. You may also want to individually mute clips to isolate any that might be causing the problem.

Also, make sure you're not fighting some ground loop gremlins in your A/V setup. Buzz/hum like that can come and go at random and can easily make you believe it's on your source when it's actually unrelated. Immediately pausing/resuming when the buzz is there is a good test to show if the sound is on your media or caused by external factors.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Dec 22. 2015 19:36

Ferd07

Newbie Location: Maryland Joined: Dec 22, 2015 18:26 Messages: 7 Offline

Dec 23, 2015 15:55

Thanks for the suggestions optodata. I'll try working in the Produce menu to see if that fixes the problem.

My biggest problem is that the buzzing is not present when I look at the video on the timeline or in the preview mode within PD. The artifact appears to be introduced during the authoring process. It's not my AV equiment - the buzzing is present when I view the disc on my computer as well as my AV system.

I have a short video that shows the problem but I can't figure out how to add the video to my posts. I tried attaching the file earlier today when I typed out a reply similar to this, but my post never showed up in the forum. Perhaps the file is too big (6M).

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Dec 23, 2015 16:02

Ferd07

Newbie Location: Maryland Joined: Dec 22, 2015 18:26 Messages: 7 Offline

Dec 23, 2015 19:12

Thanks again optodata! Ok, I've published my short video sample to YouTube, and you should find the video here: Buzzing Noise During Transitions.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks.

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Dec 23, 2015 19:36

Thanks for linking to the video. The noise doesn't sound like typical hum to me, it sounds much more like a square wave during that transition. Obviously nothing like that should be happening so it's important to try the diagnostic steps I listed earlier to see if you can narrow down the cause.

We've already eliminated ground loop hum and A/V issues with your equipment, so now the focus should be on your project and what's going on with the timeline.

Another possibility would be to pack up your project, put it in a zip file and then share that on the forum. To do that, create an empty folder on your computer (or even better, one a cloud service like OneDrive, DropBox or Google Docs) then use the File, Pack Project Materials and place the content there.

PD will copy all your project's source clips, transitions, and the PDS file to that location where you can zip it (to attach here it it's on your hard drive) or share the folder link if it's in the cloud. The best/quickest results would be for a fairly small project - something with a few short clips - that can be uploaded/downloaded easily.

If this project is pretty big, save a copy as another name and remove as much content as possible from the media library and timeline that still preserves at least one of the "noisy" transitions. The more the better, but not if each one is between GB-size clips ;

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Dec 23, 2015 19:38

Ferd07

Newbie Location: Maryland Joined: Dec 22, 2015 18:26 Messages: 7 Offline

Dec 23, 2015 20:04

Thanks again optodata. This appears to be a random problem. I have two disc image (iso) files I've made from this one particular project. The first image file has a menu problem (something I created - I forgot to highlight the chapters when selected). I corrected the menu problem and made the second image. I went back and looked at the disc I created with the first image file and it has no nosie problems. The buzzing only appears on the second disc - and again, it's not in all transistions - it occurs in about 50% of them.

My project is huge (22G) so I won't pack up the entire project. And I'm not sure I can create a project that has the noisy transitions since the problem appears to be random and does not occur when looking at the video within PD. I can provide Parts A, B, and J - I'll try and work on those tomorrow.

In the mean time, I'm going to create another image file, burn another disc, and see what happens.

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Dec 23, 2015 20:15

I understand. You might be able to recreate the problem with just one source clip that's trimmed and placed on the timeline multiple times. If that works it would be easy to pack, but I don't have any way of knowing if you could get the problem to show up in a project like that.

BTW, are all your clips on one track or do you have any layered on deeper tracks? As I mentioned earlier, see what happens if you mute one or the other, and then both of the clips on one of the transitions that gives you the buzzing. That may at least change the problem which would give us a clue to what's going on.

Lots to work on for tomorrow

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Dec 23, 2015 20:24

Ferd07,

You noise is all multiples of 50Hz, very strange if your location is indeed Maryland USA, should be 60Hz. As such it's almost always equipment related, it's call Mains hum. Any strange transformers or dimmer switches in the same room as computer?

Another thing rather strange is fps of your mp4 file is 29.808fps from MediaInfo and PD info, how was this clip created?

Jeff

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Dec 23, 2015 20:32

Quote: ...Your noise is all multiples of 50Hz, very strange if your location is indeed Maryland USA, should be 60Hz...

Thanks for the additional analysis. From what I'm hearing in the clip, it's more like something's gone wrong in PD when it mixes the two audio streams and they beat against each other out of phase so we get 100% modulation instead of the expected smooth blending.

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tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Dec 23, 2015 22:07

Quote: Thanks for the additional analysis. From what I'm hearing in the clip, it's more like something's gone wrong in PD when it mixes the two audio streams and they beat against each other out of phase so we get 100% modulation instead of the expected smooth blending.

That is a good analysis. I wonder if someone close was blowing a dog whistle at times while the filming was going on. These saturated sounds would be outside the hearing range of some human hearing but would cause the im distortion.

If the above is the case then changing the transition type overlap to cross would be a good workaround for now.

Ferd07 - Try changing the transition type to cross and see if that fixes it on the uploaded YT clip.

Ferd07

Newbie Location: Maryland Joined: Dec 22, 2015 18:26 Messages: 7 Offline

Jan 15, 2016 10:08

Hello everyone - sorry, I've been away for a while. I ended up re-authoring the project and out of 100 some transitions in the project, now only 2 have a slight "buzzing" problem, so I'm going to just live with it for now.

To answer some questions:

- all of my clips are on one track
- I do not believe that the hum is externally generated
- I created the clip on You Tube by playing the video on my TV and recording it with my tablet - hence the strange frame rate
- I can try playing around with the transition settings, but since I can only see (hear) the problem in the finished disc, and the buzzing appears to be random (in terms of which transitions have then problem), I'd end up burning up a lot of discs...

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and ideas!