Smart Track stops recording after first track

[taco]

Hello,

I have 3 MiniDiscs with recordings from a conference (I was the speaker <grin>).

Now I want to convert these MiniDiscs to mp3.

I bought the Power Pack to accurately split the recordings into multiple tracks. I took the track-lengths from my first minidisc (3 tracks) and disabled the Auto Start and Auto End checkboxes.

When recording, Auxiliary Input records Track 1, but then it switches off. Meanwhile, my Minidisc player happily playes on.

What am I missing?
I've tried several times, but I can't get it to work properly.

Thanks for any help, this is my xth effort to get this audio in digital format. Very frustrating all together.

Bye,
taco

[ChristinaS]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

On a hunch, how about you don't use the Smart Track feature, but disable Auto Start and Auto End. Do your own starting and ending of the recording phase.

[taco]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

Hello Christina,

On a hunch, how about you don't use the Smart Track feature, but disable Auto Start and Auto End. Do your own starting and ending of the recording phase.

Thanks for the idea, but that would bring in much more manual work. There's about 15 tracks for just this conference. If I have to start and stop all of them by hand I'm not happy.

Smart Tracks should actually be a pretty convenient way of splitting a continuous stream of analog music/speech into multiple tracks. Pretty good for my purposes anyway. If it would work

Bye,

taco

[Wayne]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

What happens if you turn on Auto Start and Auto Stop together with the Smart Track feature?

Are you inputting accurate times for all the tracks, not just the first one, when using the Smart Track feature?

Wayne

[ChristinaS]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

Ok, this is what the doc says about the Smart Track thing:

Smart Track Length is a Power Pack option which will enable Auto End to more accurately function. Each track length can be set and dMC will only look for the end track quiet spell after that time has elapsed (minus 5 seconds), why do this? well if you had set the dMC to Auto End after 3 seconds of silence and you happened to have a music piece which had 3 seconds worth of silence in the middle of the track then it will end incorrectly! To type a Smart Track Length, select the first track (was called Track 1) and type the length:


To jump straight to Track 2 simply press Enter after typing your Seconds and it will jump down. Smart Track Length can also be used with the Auto End option switched off and the resulting recording will be exactly the Smart Track Length specified. Tip: If using Smart Track Length and Auto End the auto end detection period can be reduced from 3 seconds to more accurately pickup a track ending.

Another enhancement Power Pack offers is correct adding and removal of Auto Start / End sound data. Let me elaborate - taking Auto Start first, if the recording was set to begin after 750 ms (3/4 second) worth of sound then the Power Pack is smart enough to remember this 750 ms of sound data so it appears at the beginning of the file being recorded. The opposite is also true for Auto End, if 3000 ms (3 seconds) of quiet is required to end a recording then this quiet bit is removed.

Ok, if you don't want to record your tracks individually you can try setting just Auto start.

I am trying to use this with a playlist of short audio files, some as short as 20 seconds. Some have no quiet time at the end, some have extra long quiet time. The actual pause between entries is whatever WMP inserts, a little fraction of a second. Therefore it's hard to rely on auto start and end. But I set auto start to 10ms and no auto end. It sort of works but I still tend to get the start of the next track on the previous track for a couple of seconds - so they are also missing from the beginning of the next recorded track.

But I did end up eventually getting all the tracks recorded. Messy, though.

What is happening is probably due to there not being a uniform pause between tracks.

[Unregistered]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

Hi Christina,

This is what I was trying to do:

Smart Track Length can also be used with the Auto End option switched off and the resulting recording will be exactly the Smart Track Length specified.

As I have these tracks on MiniDisc, I know for sure how long each track is going to be. And I do not care much about the pauses between the tracks.

But I'll try if it will work when I do use autostart/end with micro-seconds.

Thanks,
taco

[taco]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

Hello Wayne,

What happens if you turn on Auto Start and Auto Stop together with the Smart Track feature?

I'll try that in a minute. I'll specify mini-pauses and see what happens.

Are you inputting accurate times for all the tracks, not just the first one, when using the Smart Track feature?

Yes.

Thanks,
taco

[ChristinaS]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

Hi Christina,

This is what I was trying to do:



As I have these tracks on MiniDisc, I know for sure how long each track is going to be. And I do not care much about the pauses between the tracks.

But I'll try if it will work when I do use autostart/end with micro-seconds.

Thanks,
taco

I don't have a MiniDisc, but, like I said, I made a WMP playlist of several audio files with varying recorded lengths, some with quiet at the end or the beginning, some without, pretty similar to what I'd expect a hodge-podge of live recordings to be. Like I said, it works almost ok with auto start (10ms) and no auto stop (actually I leave it unchecked). If I specify any auto stop at all it gets totally messed up.

[taco]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

Hi Christina,

Thanks.

If it doesn't work this time, I'll try again with no auto-stop selected.

Take care,
taco

[Spoon]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

Give the new dMC R11 a try (in beta section this forum), just uploading it now, I say try this one as it contains a new Auxiliary input and there have been a few bug fixes. If still no go, I will have to try the exact test you are doing to reproduce any problems.

[taco]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

Hello Spoon,

Give the new dMC R11 a try (in beta section this forum), just uploading it now, I say try this one as it contains a new Auxiliary input and there have been a few bug fixes. If still no go, I will have to try the exact test you are doing to reproduce any problems.

Thank you. I'll do that and will let you know if it works.

From tomorrow on I'll be on vacation, so it might take some time, but I'm definitely motivated to get this to work

Bye,
taco

[taco]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

Spoon,

Give the new dMC R11 a try

I've installed the new version. These are some of my observations:

1. I specify seven tracks using Smart Track. The last track is 70 minutes. After recording the sixth track, it will say that it expects the entire process to last another 30 minutes (instead of the 70 that I expected). I canceled the recording and capture the last track by hand.

2. So I specify one track to be recorded and name it "Track 07". After pressing the 'record' button, it says in the upper window: "Action: Recording Track01". Confusing for me. The lower window has the right filename. And all goes well.

3. When I use the Smart Track feature, I have to check the "Auto Start" feature, otherwise it will not work. I specify a very small value, like 1 ms. But still this shouldn't be necessary, according to the documentation. And according to me

4. I would love to see in the upper window the remaining length of this track, as specified by me using Smart Track. This will help in accurately see what is happening. I can confirm this with my Minidisc, if I want to be shure about track-lengths.

5. When I press the Record-button, the lower window starts counting elapsed time, while the recording hasn't yet begun. I find this confusing too.

6. If I close Aux-Input and restart it, all the trackinfo is gone and I have to retype it. Especially when running into problems, this seems too much work.

7. When I change the number of tracks (from 3 to 4 for instance), all track-information that I already entered is lost.

8. 20 tracks seems to be the maximum, but for MiniDisc this may well be too short. A MiniDisc can contain somewhere about 5 hours of recordings. Especially when I want to use the AutoStart/AutoEnd feature, I cannot know in advance how many tracks there will be.


I hope you can fix these issues or educate me on what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks to all of you for all your support.

I'm off on vacation,
taco

[Spoon]

Re: Smart Track stops recording after first track

You can type any number in to the track box, so if you need 30 tracks, type 30.

I have just run a test, I set Aux Input to record 5 tracks, each had a smart track length of 1 minute (select track 1 type 1 minute, select track 2 type 1 minute...). I set the auto start like yours (0% and 10ms) and it recorded as expected each of the tracks of 60 seconds each.