I'm extremely new to video capture/editing/DVD creation and seem to be having trouble with Pinnacle Studio 9. I'm trying to convert an analog VHS tape to DVD with a hi-fi analog VCR. When I capture the video, the picture turns out beautifully when I render the video and burn it onto DVD. The problem I seem to have is that when I play my newly-authored DVD on a standalone player, the audio is distorted. It seems as if the audio is recorded too loudly during the initial capture. I'm not sure which adjustments to make to obtain proper audio volume on my authored DVDs. Would anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

Does the DVD play correctly on your computer DVD-ROM?

Yes. The audio volume plays correctly if I use my DVD-ROM drive. It's just when I try to use a standalone player that it sounds distorted. Thanks for the reply.

Please describe all your project settings.

Please forgive the length of this post

Let me start with my Windows XP settings. My Master Volume and Wave Volume is set at the second mark from the bottom in the Playback Volume Control Panel. My Recording Volume settings are at or below the third mark on each of the bars available from the Recording Control Panel.

Now to my Capture settings. I'm capturing an analog VHS tape using a Pinnacle Studio Moviebox Deluxe USB capturing device's composite video/audio interface and a Daewoo Hi-fi analog VCR. My capture format is NTSC AVI (Best) using PCM/16-bit/48 kHz audio compression. I'm not sure if CD audio makes a difference, but I have it set to digital (rip) without Discrete 5.1 Surround sound enabled. No background rendering is selected. During the actual capture phase, I use the volume slider bar on the right fly-out menu and set it about 1/4 of the way up from the bottom, making sure the indicator bars don't go past the blue limits during capture (I've noticed some improvement from when this slider bar was set to maximum, but the final playback volume on a standalone still seems too loud).

Next to my Edit settings. From the Audio Toolbox (stereo mode), I've kept the Master Volume knobs for the Original Audio Track, Sound Effect Track, and Music Track at max (12:00). The decibel (dB) slider bars have remained at 0 (I tried reducing to -20 once, and seemed to have problems with the volume sometimes being too loud and sometimes being too soft, so I opted to leave these bars alone).

Finally to my Make Movie settings. I'm outputting to DVD with Best video quality using PCM audio compression at 7500 Kbits/sec and VBR (not sure what this is).

Though I've played around with these settings, it seems as if there are so many variables in play that I haven't been able to pinpoint the source of my problem. I'm not sure if the problem lies within my Windows XP settings or within Studio itself.

Thanks again for replying. Please let me know if you need any other info not listed above

You could try raising up the volume in the Windows Mixer and lowering it in Studio (at capture and editing).