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jarekom
15th July 2007, 15:27
Hello,
I have some MPEG-2 movies recorded from TV (PAL, 720x576, 25fps, between 1,5 and 2,5 hours long) which I played already on my PC with WinDVD without any problems. Now I would like to transfer the movies to my Creative ZEN Vision M player. The maximum values the player can deal with are 720x576, 30fps, 2500kbps, so I have to convert the movies to reduce the video bitrate.

First I tried the tool Super (current version) and converted to AVI (MPEG-4 XviD) with 640x480, 25 fps and 2000 kbps. The converted movies run smooth, without any delay between audio and video BUT each movie ended at about 1 hour and 4 minutes (+/- some seconds). There was no error message during or after converting.

Next, I tried Auto Gordian Knot (XviD), setting the resolution to 640x480, framerate to 25 fps and the max. size of the file to a value which leads to a bitrate below 2500 fps.
The converted movies were complete, but with a delay between audio and video of sometimes more than 1-2 seconds and very bad quality ("stripes" at fast movement). I also had the feeling that the delay increased when playing the movie for a longer time.

The third attempt was the Iriverter 1.7. The settings were 640x480 and 2000 kbps. The resulting movies (MPEG-4 XviD) were of full lenght. After copying the files to my ZEN player, there was no delay between audio and video! BUT, when the player came to about 1 hour and 4 minutes (or for some movies 1 hour and 10 minutes), it just stopped. The value of remaining time changed to 0:00 and from now on the lenght of the movie was shown as 1:04:xx (or 1:10:xx).
I tried to play the converted video on my PC with Media Player Classic, but it refuses to play the file. After loading, it shows a message "This AVI file was not prepared for sequential reading, the alternative "Avi Splitter" will now let the default one handle it. The complete reinterleaving of this file is strongly recommendet before burning it onto slow medial like CD-rom"
The message shows also a graph which I attached below.

I wanted to cut out the frame with AviDeFreezer, but I have to put in the exact number of the freezed frame. The manual says to load the video into VirtualDub and scroll to the freezed frame, but VirtualDub refuses to load the file. It opens, but with the message at the bottom "VideoSourceAVI error: file read error (8004406d)" and it cannot show any frame.

I tried to run DivFix with the file, but the error search ends with no results and trying to strip the index ends with a message saying that "...there is no index, unexpected end of file".

So, can anyone here help me?
How can I keep good quality with AutoGK without synchronisation problems?
Or how can I repair the files converted with Iriverter?
What does the suggestion from Media Player Classig mean? (complete reinterleaving)

Thanks a lot in advance
Jarek

FishTank
15th July 2007, 17:14
So, can anyone here help me?
How can I keep good quality with AutoGK without synchronisation problems?
Or how can I repair the files converted with Iriverter?
What does the suggestion from Media Player Classig mean? (complete reinterleaving)

Thanks a lot in advance
Jarek

what audio settings did you use in AGK?
since its a captured file, i take it you use mp3.
make sure you use CBR not VBR. some SAPs dont like VBR
and if it is not in sync its easy to fix with vdubmod.
i use 128-192kbps mp3 CBR. depends on your taste/ears lol.

why would you go for 25fps in AGK? leave it at default 23.9x!
that being said, leave all the hidden options at default unless
you need to crop black bars or fix the aspect ratio.

now about quality:
if you want good quality and you dont care for the filesize, then
do a quality encode @60-75%. (test with a smal file, cut from the source).

hope this helps :)

jarekom
15th July 2007, 22:22
Yes, the audio is set to 192kbit CBR mp3.
I will try a correction in VirtualDub and post about the results.
Thanks
Jarek

twolfe18
15th July 2007, 23:02
@Fishtank

he is using 25fps in AGK because his material is PAL not film. if the material was initially shot on film @ 23.976fps, then he could just change the framerate, but that would screw up his audio problems worse than they already are.

@jarekom

if you still have problems here, or you are interested in trying to convert to 23.976fps (and remove the PAL "chipmunk" factor), then feel free to head over to the audio encoding section.

FishTank
16th July 2007, 00:15
i use AGKs default setting which is 23.976 fps.

i encode PAL DVDs (RC2), NTSC DVDs (RC1) and PAL captures and i do not
have any audio sync problems.
remember that AGK mux-/demuxes for you!

@jarekom.. you need to use VirtualDubMod not VirtualDub to interleave the stream!

jarekom
16th July 2007, 08:19
@jarekom.. you need to use VirtualDubMod not VirtualDub to interleave the stream!

Maybe a stupid question... what does interleave exactly mean?
Is it like demuxing and muxing again?

I have already a little practical expierence in editing my MPEG-2 TV-recordings, but no expierence at all in the video conversion.

Can I repair the already converted AVI-files just by interleaving them again?

Thanks
Jarek

FishTank
16th July 2007, 21:11
english isnt my first language, and i cant think of a different term for it.

it basically plays the audio earlier or later, given by the ammount
you enter in miliseconds and saves the file again.

it isnt demuxing/muxing! demuxing is extracting the audio stream from the
video stream. muxing obviously attaching an audio stream to the video stream.
interleaving only changes the time (starting point) of the audio stream.

what you do is set audio and video to "direct stream copy" so it
wont re-encode neither. it will only take a couple seconds, maybe
a minute.

yes you can fix old avis and you wont loose quality either as its
direct stream copy :)

twolfe18
16th July 2007, 23:33
@ Fishtank
i would call what your talking about syncing, or just adjusting the delay. even if you dont like that term, i knew exactly what you were talking about from your description. i would say that your english is very good btw.

FishTank
16th July 2007, 23:43
syncing! now why didnt I think of that lol

thx twolfe18 :D

jarekom
17th July 2007, 07:04
Thanks!
It works! I tried it with AVIDemuxer and the files are OK now.
Perfect!

Regards
Jarek