My review of Neuros Mpeg4 recorder

[GT]

Okay like I said I'm thrilled with the over all performance of this little box, even with the missing green light.

Even if the remote is dodgy when controlling the box, I really don't mind. 

The picture, and the sound are really good for the file size.  Also motion is perfect at 30fps, no jerky video, good job Neuros.

I have a little recording studio, and I'm using the Neuros recoder for my video music recording.  Like I said this box does a great job on picture and sound. 

The sound level however must be adjusted, so as not to overload the input on the Neuros recorder.  I would advise that anyone using the box for whatever, make sure you can adjust the audio level going into the box, this can be done cheaply with say a 2 channel mixer, and a little experementation.  Coming straight out of my dvd player, without being able to adjust the level to the Nearos box resulted in audio overload, and distortion. 

NOW THE BAD, and to me, for what I'm doing, it's pretty big.  THE VIDEO LAGS BEHIND THE SOUND, BY ABOUT 1/2 A SECOND.  This happens during playback on the Neuros box, and on quicktime in my computer.

If this has allready been fixed, please let me know.

GT

[ChadV]

It shouldn't be too difficult to re-sync the audio with the video if you've got a studio...  If a simple transcode of the video doesn't solve it, almost any video editor will let you "nudge" the audio track.

[GT]

It shouldn't be too difficult to re-sync the audio with the video if you've got a studio...  If a simple transcode of the video doesn't solve it, almost any video editor will let you "nudge" the audio track.

Hey Chad,

Thanks for the reply, I will probably just let it go, as it's not really that big a problem, and the whole idea of this box is not having to convert, and I think nudging the audio would constitute a conversion yes?

I wonder if the powers at Neuros know about this very slight 1/2 second video lag, and if so come up with a downloadable fix for the box itself?

If you want to see this bug for yourself, look for drum hits, hand claps, and see if you can see the video lag, it's very slight but it's there.

Would love to here someone from Neuros address this thread. 

GT

[ChadV]

Any editing would constitute conversion, and since you said "Studio", I presume you're doing some editing at some point.

The R2 is discontinued, so I doubt you'll see a fix.  But I've not heard of this problem before...

[GT]

Any editing would constitute conversion, and since you said "Studio", I presume you're doing some editing at some point.

The R2 is discontinued, so I doubt you'll see a fix.  But I've not heard of this problem before...

No editing for video, my studio is all stand alone hardware.  The computer's in the living room.

Really, discontinued, I think the problem is so slight that it may have gone unoticed, 1/2 second lag is hard to catch.

Is this product on the way out?  That would be a shame.

I suppose I will look for editing software to sync audio vidio, any ideas of what's good, and cheap?

GT

[GT]

Ok, I told you I was having out of sync video/audio, playing through Quicktime player.

So just for the heck of it I changed to windows media player, and NO MORE OUT OF SYNC PROBLEM!!  YES!!

I didn't even know mpeg4's would play on WMP, but they do, and flawlessly.

I'm thrilled to have found this fix!!!

So for anyone having a sync problem with the Quicktime player, switch to the Windows player, and odds are it will play perfectly synced.

What a relief!!

GT

[heyrick]

Old thread, but it would be interesting to compare this with the OSD.

I can detect an audio sync error of around 150ms. You sometimes get this with fansub animé which has been through numerous transcodes. It is a doodle to nudge this during playback with SMPlayer, though this isn't a permanent solution. Having said that, some software will allow sync to be altered without a transcode. It is easy with XviD files using VirtualDub, just tweak the offset and make a video copying the input (no processing), but sadly it doesn't understand mp4 files, even if the video data is similar.

With regards to the line level, this seems to be a modern problem. Both my satellite receiver and DVD player overload the OSD and my video recorder unless I knock the volumes down to around 85% in each... Though something tells me that even having a volume control on a supposedly "line level" output shows something of a lack of understanding about what that output is meant to be!