Encoded Video Shorter Than Original

[oook]

Hi all,

I hope someone can give me some advice on an irritating problem I'm experiencing with TMPG:

I am trying to convert a 23.976 fps, 184302 frame XVID movie to DVD using TMPGEnc. Unfortunately the final m2v file is about 8 seconds shorter than the original avi, although the de-muxed AC3 is spot-on. Obviously this causes some severe audio/video sync issues when authoring the final DVD.

VirtualDub, GSpot and even TMPG reports the AVI as 02:08:07 long (which is correct for 23.976 fps) but CCE strangely enough reports the duration as being 02:07:59, which is exactly the duration of the final m2v created by TMPG. This means that the movie is actually 24.000 fps.

For TMPG I choose 23.976 fps and 3:2 pulldown when encoding.

Since I live in a PAL country this is the first time I had to deal with NTSC, so please be patient if I make no sense.

[Kika]

Did you set Encode mode to 3:2-Pulldown when Playback and Framerate to 23.976 fps (internally 29.97 fps)?

Don't use Advanced -> 3:2 Pulldown!

[oook]

Yes, I did set it for Encode mode and not under the Advanced tab.

I did try with and without the "Do not frame rate conversion" option, but it made no difference.

[davexnet]

open the avi in virtualdub and select video/frame rate.
Look at the top, it should give the current rate, and also notify
you if the audio and video durations are slightly out.

Dave

[oook]

Thanks,

I checked the frame rate as you suggested and VirtualDub reports 23.976 and doesn't show any audio/video duration errors.

After reading some more, I now believe that my problem is related to Drop Frame and pulldown. What I tried was encoding the movie as 23.976 interlaced, and then using pulldown.exe.

I ran it twice, once with DF enabled and once without. DVD-lab showed no difference in the total length of the movie in both cases. Is this correct, or should I be looking for different authoring software?

[Erik_Osterholm]

Well 23.976fps video is almost always progressive rather than interlaced, so I don't think encoding it as interlaced and then running pulldown.exe is the solution.
You might try frameserving the video through AVISynth. I've had many encodes have timing issues because the decoding in TMPGEnc wasn't working well, but frameserving through AVISynth would yield perfect results.
Important settings for nearly all of my AVI->DVD encodings:

Frame Rate: 23.976 (internally 29.97 fps)
Video format: NTSC
Encode mode: 3:2 pulldown when playback

Is the source video progressive or interlaced?

[davexnet]

Erik is right. To make sure, you should check the AVI in virtualdub.
Drag the slider to a scene with movement and step through 1 frame at
a time. You should see constant movement (unique frames)
and no tooth comb effects.

If the video looks like this, simply set 23.976 with pulldown
in tmpg and set advanced/video source type (non-interlaced) progessive
Dave