SuicideTaxi
16th June 2003, 21:07
Okay. First of all, HI! You guys are great and have educated me beyond belief over the past few months. I've never posted here before because I've never had to, and because I'm still very much a novice at DVD authoring. But now I have come across a problem that not only can I not fix myself, but is multifaceted in what may be causing it. It might not actually be an authoring problem so this might be the wrong forum for all of this, but screwit, I'm posting it here. My problem is rather complicated, and I will do my absolute best to explain this as painlessly as possible.
I'm producing my first professional video project. (It's an hour-long video focused on the sport of paintball featuring world champion paintballer Marty Bush.) I dont consider myself an "expert" at anything, but I'm pretty sure I fall into the "advanced" category in alot of things, such as editing, computers, etc.
This project consists of digital footage shot by myself, edited in After Effects and assembled in Premier. Before this project I had zero experience authoring DVDs, and when I began the project I figured that when the video was assembled, "Guess I'd learn how to burn a DVD..." (Oh that sounds so simple when said... little did I know...) Needless to say, the DVD authoring part of this project was ten thousand times more complicated than any other aspect of it. For the past three weeks I've been doing battle with the entire process, and during that time I think I have used every single authoring program on the market, including Sonic's DVDit!, Ulead Movie Factory, Ulead Workshop, and a host of other lesser-knowns. I eventually settled on DVDLab, which I found to be the most comprehensive, intuitive, and flexible programs of the bunch. I've also used TMPGEnc, and although I barely know what a tenth of the toggles and switches are, through the help of this website I've managed to configure it to suit my purposes. (I cannot thank you all enough for the help I've gleaned from this fantastic website!) I also use Nero to burn the actual copies onto disk.
I've managed to get my video burned to DVD-R with functioning menus and satisfactory appearance. HOWEVER, I have one slight problem that I cannot solve and that I don't know the cause of. What happens is that in one section of my video, the audio quality suddenly goes "underwater", meaning - at one point in the video it sounds very muffled and murky. Then once that part of the video passes, it goes right back to normal when the scene changes. This occurs when playing on a Sony DVP-NS300 stand alone player. When I play the DVD on another standalone player (I forget what brand, doesnt matter I dont think), the audio problems are even worse and it sounds like Alvin & The Chipmunks. :( Also, that player seems to be playing at a slightly increased speed as well. (Which I would guess causes the high-pitched Alvinesque audio.)
Originally I thought it might be a problem with the DVD itself. I was burning all of my initial copies on a Sony DVD-RW, so I went ahead and burned a copy on a single-sided Memorex DVD-R (part #3203 5526), but I still experience the exact same problem.
To make this even more frustrating, when I play these same disks (both the DVD-RW and the DVD-R's) on my computer DVD player, I do not experience the audio problem at all. It plays back perfectly.
So after trying the disks on various players and also using different disks, I decided to look into the actual video sources to see if they were at fault. Let me explain how the video was assembled-
- All of my footage was captured with Premier on my Pinnacle DV500+ card, using all of Pinnacle's defaults - 720x480 NTSC, 48K audio.
- The footage was then used to create many sections in After Effects, sections that were then rendered/exported from After Effects in the same Pinnacle codec.
- The After Effects sections and raw footage sections were then assembled in Premier into their own sections. I have 8 sections altogether, each one of them a seperate Premier project.
- When all of the individual sections were completed in Premier, each section was then exported to a single intact file in the same Pinnacle codec. (Leaving me with 8 seperate video files.)
- The 8 sections were then put together in Premier into a complete video. The full video was then exported using the same Pinnacle codec, leaving me with the one, 15 gig, 71 minute video.
- The 15 gig file was then put through TMPGEnc and encoded down to a reasonable 4 gig file, which was then assembled and compiled in DVDLab and burned with Nero.
So when I went back to the source footage, I had two things to look at. 1) The individual segment in Premier, and 2) the full, assembled video in Premier that consists of all of the segments. In both cases, the video plays back fine in Premier! There is no distortion or effects or settings with the audio whatsoever, it plays back with no "underwater" problems at all. But just to be sure, I re-exported the individual section anyway, then I re-exported the entire 15 gig movie with the new section, and then re-encoded it again in TMPGEnc, but I still get the exact same problem when I finally burn it to DVD - underwater audio at the same exact spots when playing on the Sony, and Alvinesque audio when played on the other standalone. And, yet again, each disk I burn plays perfectly on my computer DVD player.
So now, I have to turn to you guys. I don't know how to solve this problem and I haven't a clue as to what causes it, and I'm already three weeks past deadline just trying to get this fully completed video off my editing machine. (Grrrr!)
Any help is appreciated, and thanks for your time.
I'm producing my first professional video project. (It's an hour-long video focused on the sport of paintball featuring world champion paintballer Marty Bush.) I dont consider myself an "expert" at anything, but I'm pretty sure I fall into the "advanced" category in alot of things, such as editing, computers, etc.
This project consists of digital footage shot by myself, edited in After Effects and assembled in Premier. Before this project I had zero experience authoring DVDs, and when I began the project I figured that when the video was assembled, "Guess I'd learn how to burn a DVD..." (Oh that sounds so simple when said... little did I know...) Needless to say, the DVD authoring part of this project was ten thousand times more complicated than any other aspect of it. For the past three weeks I've been doing battle with the entire process, and during that time I think I have used every single authoring program on the market, including Sonic's DVDit!, Ulead Movie Factory, Ulead Workshop, and a host of other lesser-knowns. I eventually settled on DVDLab, which I found to be the most comprehensive, intuitive, and flexible programs of the bunch. I've also used TMPGEnc, and although I barely know what a tenth of the toggles and switches are, through the help of this website I've managed to configure it to suit my purposes. (I cannot thank you all enough for the help I've gleaned from this fantastic website!) I also use Nero to burn the actual copies onto disk.
I've managed to get my video burned to DVD-R with functioning menus and satisfactory appearance. HOWEVER, I have one slight problem that I cannot solve and that I don't know the cause of. What happens is that in one section of my video, the audio quality suddenly goes "underwater", meaning - at one point in the video it sounds very muffled and murky. Then once that part of the video passes, it goes right back to normal when the scene changes. This occurs when playing on a Sony DVP-NS300 stand alone player. When I play the DVD on another standalone player (I forget what brand, doesnt matter I dont think), the audio problems are even worse and it sounds like Alvin & The Chipmunks. :( Also, that player seems to be playing at a slightly increased speed as well. (Which I would guess causes the high-pitched Alvinesque audio.)
Originally I thought it might be a problem with the DVD itself. I was burning all of my initial copies on a Sony DVD-RW, so I went ahead and burned a copy on a single-sided Memorex DVD-R (part #3203 5526), but I still experience the exact same problem.
To make this even more frustrating, when I play these same disks (both the DVD-RW and the DVD-R's) on my computer DVD player, I do not experience the audio problem at all. It plays back perfectly.
So after trying the disks on various players and also using different disks, I decided to look into the actual video sources to see if they were at fault. Let me explain how the video was assembled-
- All of my footage was captured with Premier on my Pinnacle DV500+ card, using all of Pinnacle's defaults - 720x480 NTSC, 48K audio.
- The footage was then used to create many sections in After Effects, sections that were then rendered/exported from After Effects in the same Pinnacle codec.
- The After Effects sections and raw footage sections were then assembled in Premier into their own sections. I have 8 sections altogether, each one of them a seperate Premier project.
- When all of the individual sections were completed in Premier, each section was then exported to a single intact file in the same Pinnacle codec. (Leaving me with 8 seperate video files.)
- The 8 sections were then put together in Premier into a complete video. The full video was then exported using the same Pinnacle codec, leaving me with the one, 15 gig, 71 minute video.
- The 15 gig file was then put through TMPGEnc and encoded down to a reasonable 4 gig file, which was then assembled and compiled in DVDLab and burned with Nero.
So when I went back to the source footage, I had two things to look at. 1) The individual segment in Premier, and 2) the full, assembled video in Premier that consists of all of the segments. In both cases, the video plays back fine in Premier! There is no distortion or effects or settings with the audio whatsoever, it plays back with no "underwater" problems at all. But just to be sure, I re-exported the individual section anyway, then I re-exported the entire 15 gig movie with the new section, and then re-encoded it again in TMPGEnc, but I still get the exact same problem when I finally burn it to DVD - underwater audio at the same exact spots when playing on the Sony, and Alvinesque audio when played on the other standalone. And, yet again, each disk I burn plays perfectly on my computer DVD player.
So now, I have to turn to you guys. I don't know how to solve this problem and I haven't a clue as to what causes it, and I'm already three weeks past deadline just trying to get this fully completed video off my editing machine. (Grrrr!)
Any help is appreciated, and thanks for your time.