1 Topic by Jbm_03

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I am having some trouble with the audio trigger function with my golf simulator.

Computer to golf ball area is about 20ft so to get away from more wires laying, I decided to try a wireless mic setup. Will test good talking into it but I found that even laying it by ball it just doesn't want to pickup the sound. I have to adjust it down to 1 on sensitivity to work and even then it doesn't catch it alot.

I then purchased a cheap usb mic thinking maybe the wireless delay is the issue. I couldn't get it to pickup the impact sound at all. Only talking.

Back to wireless I went but it's so sporadic it doesn't work good. Seems if I go into settings to test sound and then re save it'll work better for a few times and then won't pickup again. Very weird.

I'm looking for help. I need something reliable to pickup audio trigger. What am I doing wrong?

2 Reply by joan

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So it picks up voice correctly but not the ball impact, at roughly the same volume? I'm not sure but maybe there is some sort of clipping of high frequencies or maybe it's even a feature of the microphone to remove high pitched "clicks" which are normally undesirable in voice communication? See if there is any sort of "helpful" noise filtering that you could disable.

3 Reply by Jbm_03

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I have been all through the settings with no luck. That's exactly what it seems like. The high pitch split second sound just doesn't register.

Can talk just fine into it

4 Reply by petecrowe

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Are you using a desktop or laptop? How old is it? Does it have a modern (ver. 3.0 or above) USB or even USB C port or thunderbolt port?

The faster the transmission speeds the greater chance you'll get something with low latency, and that's going to be important for what you are using it for. And I'd recommend not going too cheap.

5 Reply by Jbm_03

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Brand new HP gaming laptop just for this. C port and all. Has tons of power

Old one was crashing when using Kinovea and Skytrak together.

Seems alot like a Kinovea issue to me. The mic sometimes just stops working and can go into settings re save or restart it all and it'll work for a bit. Having a hard time tracing down the real issue.

Just know the usb mic isn't any better

6 Reply by Reiner

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To clarify the problem, some more information is needed. How is your USB-installation build up. Do you use the same port for the camera and the micro? If so, is there a USB-Hub in between? Some other equipment connected by USB? Skytrak?
How long is your USB-cable in total? Be sure to use a 3.0 USB-Extension cable, eventually an active version. If it is longer than 3m it might be critical.

I use the „old“ micro connection since years with 3 cameras running at the same time without concern, using a cheap micro with an extension cable. The micro is located directly beside the Skytrak unit.
If your laptop still has this connection, I highly recommend to use it, because it might not interfere with the USB-port.

As a first step, I would try the micro on another computer, if available.
Next, have you already recorded to a voice recording program to „hear“, what sound really is delivered ?
There might be a ground noise that can prevent the differentiation between silence and action.
Does HP deliver a separate installation software for the USB-controller and do you use it?

You reported, that the micro sometimes work and sometimes not. Maybe there is an interference with your internal micro, most laptops have one. Try to set the external micro to the „default“ sound system or/and try to disable the internal micro.
If you have to set the micro value in Kinovea to 1, the sound seems to be overdriven by the system. In your system micro-settings, you may decrease the sound level.

What settings do you use inside Kinovea to record your swing. Try to use retroactive mode. Kinovea then exclusively uses the memory due to its constant recording and does not need to write the video file to the hard drive that might use a lot of CPU-power.
Open task manager to display the CPU-consumption during recording, it should not be over 60-70% of total CPU-power. I have seen other interferences if the CPU-consumption is over that value.

Try to test different settings inside the microphone USB-driver like „sleep mode“, „use mic exclusively“ or similar, if available.

If you run Skytrak at the same time, it might create a high load in 4K, as I have recognized on my computer. Try to reduce it to HD for testing or better shut it down during testing the micro.

Hope that helps somehow

7 Reply by pauldmartin

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I'm not sure if it helps, but I went into microphone settings (can't remember exactly at the moment - on a different PC) and changed the frequency at which the microphone was picking things up. Now, talking and other noises will generally not trigger a capture, but a high pitch, such as a clap, or the sound of the club hitting the ball start the recording and minimizes false triggers.