Solving audio skew problem in Scenarist

[PaulJBis]

Hi all:

I'm authoring a DVD with a few short films we just made at a film/TV school I've been attending. The school, in their infinite wisdom, has given us the films in a quick-and-dirty DVD made with a set-top DVD recorder (giving us the original DV masters? Oh, no, we're just humble students, no way), so in order to make some nice menus and so on, I have to rip the DVD, extract the M2V/AC3 streams and import them in Scenarist.

The problem I'm having is that, when I open the original VOBs with, say, Virtualdub-MPEG2 (or VobEdit), I can see that the audio is skewed (by 0.1 - 0.2 sec.), but when I import the M2V/AC3 files into Scenarist, I can't find a way to make the audio stream start *before* the video, so the sound is of course out of sync when playing the final DVD. I've the read the thread just below about Scenarist's track editor and tried adding the AC3 with the blue checkmark both checked and unchecked, but without success: Scenarist always forces the video and audio to start at the same time.

How can I solve the problem? I don't understand much about the embedded timecodes in the M2V/AC3 streams; in my case, the video has an initial timecode of 00:22:26:10, while the AC3 seems to be starting from 00:00:00. Again, the audio should start *before* the video. (I just tried to edit the "Start time to video" field in the audio stream, but it won't let me add a value lower than the initial one of the video stream).

[bigotti5]

In track editor edit "Start time" for "- delays" and "Start time to video" for "+ delays"

[PaulJBis]

Sorry for being dense, but where do I adjust the "- delays" and "+ delays"? I don't see any options for that in the track editor; all I see below, in the Property browser, are the "Start time" and "Start tiem to video" fields, but Scenarist won't let me edit them.

Here's a screencap:

[bigotti5]

e.g
If audio starts 120 ms before video (= -120ms delay) you have to edit "Start time" in "Property Browser" to "00:00:00;03" (for PAL, 1 frame = 40 ms).
Mark audio and scenarist will let you edit "Start time".

[PaulJBis]

That's what I was trying, but when I tried to edit "Start time" Scenarist kept reverting it back to 00:00;00 (both in audio and video). Now that you mention it, though, I've tried delaying the video by 120ms... and it worked (at least in the video track). Am building the DVD right now, will report back with the results.

[bigotti5]

This results in cutting video and audio but not in correcting delay

Edit:
Do not attach pictures, take long time to approve, upload external and link to the picture

[PaulJBis]

Okay, sorry for taking so long to respond, but I had to meet a deadline. Now, as for the DVD, my problem(s) were:

-I'm deeply stupid and thought that the "Start time" in the Audio track referred to the start time *of the video track* where the audio would kick in (i.e., I thought that by putting 00:00;04, I'd make the audio start at the point 00:00;04 *of the video*, and thus I'd be actually delaying the sound). Now I see that I was wrong, and that "Start time" refers to the point of the Audio track itself; I tried putting 00:00;03 in "Audio", and sure enough, the audio starts before the 00:00:00 point, which is what I was trying to achieve.

-I'm deeply stupid (part 2), and had forgotten that, in Scenarist timecodes, the part after the ";" refers to FRAMES, not 1/100ths of second. That's why I couldn't get the video and audio to sync, compounded with...

-...the fact that I was using Virtualdub-MPEG2 to read the video/audio delay in the original DVDs, and it was giving me wrong data. Don't use Virtualdub-MPEG2, people; use PgcDemux.

All of which I'm writing down here for the education of future generations who might use the "Search" feature. (In the end, BTW, I just used DelayCut to cut the AC3 files to the exact length).