Lip sync issues are frustrating

[JHL]

I am doing something a little different than most people here, archiving laser discs to DVD. Unfortunately this seems to create a different set of problems because I have not been able to find a solution by reading all the FAQs and looking at other posts. Perhaps I just need to read more carefully :)

Here is what I am doing:
1) Dub the laserdisc (including side breaks) to DVHS for easy transport to my PC. Since I am dealing with older movies that don't have AC-3 soundtracks, I am perfectly happy with the MPEG-2 audio.
2) Edit out the side breaks and any other unnecessary footage and save the file again as a TS.
3) Demultiplex the TS into audio and video streams.
4) Encode the video again at a lower bitrate, suitable for DVD.
5) Multiplex the new video stream back with either the original audio stream or one created during the encode process.

Unfortunately I see a wide variety of results:
1) The audio/video match up nicely
2) I tweak the audio with BeSweet (or other tools) and it syncs up again nicely.
3) Sometimes nothing seems to work. In fact, it actually seems like the audio is out of sync a different amount in various places. So if I use a tool, I can only fix part of the problem.

I suppose I could solve 3) but creating multiple files (1 for each side of a laser disc) and editing them separately. I could splice them together at the end, but I worry that the splicing will simply introduce lip sync issues again. Is there a better way to solve this problem?

[echooff]

Have you compared the audio and video time lenght after seperating?

[JHL]

I had not looked at that.

The video is 1:11:05
The audio is 1:12:46

That seems to be a big problem :)

I split the file using MPEG Video Wizard, a commercial application.
Why is there such a big difference?

[echooff]

Probably dropped frames. You can use a audio app like cool edit with its time stretching filter to matching the two times. This always works for me with a mpeg or avi file. I have never tried to capture a laser disc. Why are you dubbing to dvhs instead of directly capturing to your pc?

[JHL]

I may want to start the entire process over. Initially I was trying to splice out the side breaks with HDTV2MPEG, but I don't think that is accurate to the frame level. I will probably have better results using MPEG-VCR from Womble to splice exactly at the frame.

I thought it would be easier to dub the files since the PC is not located close to the laser disc player. If I was trying to capture a digital surround sound format, it would probably make sense to move the LD player.