MeGUI: General Questions and Troubleshooting Thread

[Dayvon]

As more and more people (such as myself) are venturing into the wonderful world of MeGUI and AVC codecs, I find myself running into little problems here and there. Being that it is best not to hijack the MeGUI Bug-Report Thread, it might be time to start up a general questions/troubleshooting/help thread where those with MeGUI experience can lend a hand and noobs can help each other struggle through the learning process. This way us noobs can keep out of the developers hair, and let them develop, not field each persons 20 questions and simple-settings-screw-ups.

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So, to kick it all off, I just ran an encode of "The Island" through MeGUI. I used the audio, video, and muxing tool to get a MP4 file. Sounds great except the audio was out of sync So I'm not sure what happened. I think it might be a problem with my d2v rip or something, because I ran the movie a few days ago (video only) and tried to mux using YAMB with a AC3->AAC BeLight converted file, and have the same problems. I've never heard of DGIndex screw ups though. So is that the problem, or is it in the AC3->AAC conversion, or the MP4 muxing? Either way has anyone heard of audio sync problems with MeGUI using the auto-encode mode?

And more to the point, does anyone know how best to figure out how much I need to delay the audio? At this point, it might be best to demux the tracks and try to remux them with delay. I don't know, anyone got any ideas?

[Doom9]

But either way has anyone heard of audio sync problems with MeGUI?

Many times.. one would be AVC in AVC and the delay you get from b-frames, other would be an incorrect fps set during muxing (that's why we have a logfile so that you can see it and reproduce the results even after exiting the software.. if there's no fps set.. mp4box assumes 25 fps). These are the two most common reasons.

[Dayvon]

So how is it in MeGUI that you set the frame rate for the video before the muxing (using auto-encode mode)? or compensate for the b-frame delays? Or is that stuff yet to be done?

EDIT: I think you meant AVC in AVI.... And I totally understand that.

[lexor]

when you say you ran an encode, what was the source? if you have DGIndex in your chain and you created a .d2v project file for use with mpeg2source, you'd have audio demuxed for you, and the file name should contain the delay.

having said all that I never re-encode audio, and I use mkvmerge to mux AC3 into mkv and I set delay in mkvmere's main window, but if when you re-encode delay changes, than this is of no help I suppose.

[Dayvon]

Well I'm trying to use the MP4 container (which is giving no end of troubles...), but to answer your question, yes, I did have audio demux with 0ms in the file name using DGIndex. I tried converting this via BeLight and then muxing to video, and have tried it now using MeGUI's audio tool, and both have the audio and video out of sync upon muxing.

Using YAMB I can see that the video is 02:16:02.662 and the audio is 02:16:01.045__ Does this look like a fps issue or b-frame issue, or something else?

[lexor]

well remuxing is fast, so just try what doom said about setting fps manually, that should give you a quick answer if it's an fps issue

[bond]

maybe megui's muxer should force the user to set a fps when converting raw .264 to .mp4 so thats finally solved...

[Dayvon]

Ok. So here's what I did.

I extracted the raw streams from my file (using YAMB) and set them to mux with the video frame rate forced to 23.976. This is the log that I got from Mp4box....

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AVC-H264 import - frame size 872 x 360 at 23.976 FPS
Adjusting AVC SizeLength to 16 bits

Stream uses B-slice references - max frame delay 2
AAC import - sample rate 48000 - MPEG-4 audio - 6 channels

Saving E:\Temp Video\The Island - RAW Mux.mp4: 0.500 secs Interleaving
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But the file still is off sync. I'm gonna try and manually fix the delay, to see if its a progressive delay or an initial delay.

BTW: does everyone have this much trouble with MeGUI, MP4 stuff or am I just cursed, or just stupid?

[Richard Berg]

What are you using to test? I've sometimes had sync issues using VLC that didn't repro with Haali + ffdshow.

[Dayvon]

Media Player Classic -> Haali Splitter -> Core AVC -> FFdShow
Media Player Classic -> Haali Splitter -> FFdShow Audio

[Dayvon]

Ok this is cool... or not.

So I use YAMB to remux the raw h264 and aac streams, and I set the delay for the difference in the file length. Well, needless to say, it seems the delay setting in YAMB is not working. I ran the remux with 1617ms in the delay spot as well as 0ms, and both files are identical. So I don't know what the heck to do anymore.

I'll post again if I come up with something.

[JarrettH]

There's too many MeGUI threads!!

[Dayvon]

The point of this thread is to cut down on those threads by keeping the general troubleshooting under one thread instead of a new one for every person who doesn't know what to do.

[Doom9]

maybe megui's muxer should force the user to set a fps when converting raw .264 to .mp4 so thats finally solved...

It does just that.. always has.

[Morte66]

When I set the program location for BeSweet, MeGUI says "Make sure bse_FAAC.dll and faac.exe are in your BeSweet directory (etc)".

I found faac.exe, but does anyone know what the correct version of bse_FAAC.dll is and where to download it?

[Dayvon]

Originally Posted by Morte66

When I set the program location for BeSweet, MeGUI says "Make sure bse_FAAC.dll and faac.exe are in your BeSweet directory (etc)".

I found faac.exe, but does anyone know what the correct version of bse_FAAC.dll is and where to download it?

If you have the Nero AAC codec (NAAC), then you shouldn't need to worry about it because you can use that. Sorry I don't know where to find the .dll youre looking for.

BTW - I finally figured out how to solve the a/v sync problems. YAMB wouldn't delay the audio when muxing even though it has the option listed, so I checked in BeLight to see if I could set the delay there where the aac file is made. Thankfully, BeLight did make an aac file with the delay and then when I muxed using YAMB it worked great. So temp solution to my problem is fixed.

I'm running another encode right now. Same process, DGIndex -> AVS file -> MeGUI (auto-encode mode) to see if the same problem crops up again, or see if it was just a weird one-time issue.

[Morte66]

Originally Posted by Dayvon

If you have the Nero AAC codec (NAAC), then you shouldn't need to worry about it because you can use that.

I wanted to compare sound quality -- I may not be much of a video encoder, but I'm a hi-fi nut like you wouldn't believe.

Sorry I don't know where to find the .dll youre looking for.

Got the bugger, it's included in the BeLight install. Now I can compare Nero to FAAC to iTunes to AutoUV's Ogg encoder.

[lexor]

Anothe question:

When I load AC3 int meGUI full, is there a way to just make it mux into mkv, it always seem to require bitrate setting and I'm thinking that's for re-encoding. But I never need to mess with audio, so how would I just go about setting it to mux without re-encode?

becouse right now I use mkvmergeGUI to mux ac3 after meGUI completes the video job.

[Morte66]

Originally Posted by lexor

Anothe question:

When I load AC3 int meGUI full, is there a way to just make it mux into mkv, it always seem to require bitrate setting and I'm thinking that's for re-encoding. But I never need to mess with audio, so how would I just go about setting it to mux without re-encode?

becouse right now I use mkvmergeGUI to mux ac3 after meGUI completes the video job.

On the "Tools" menu in MeGUI there is a submenu called "Muxer", which does MeGUI's mux control without the encoding part. That will let you set up a job to mux the AC3 audio and MPEG4 video, and put it in MeGUI's job queue. You need to finish the video encode first -- it won't mux files that don't exist yet.

Which brings to mind a feature request...

[Doom9]

But I never need to mess with audio, so how would I just go about setting it to mux without re-encode?

becouse right now I use mkvmergeGUI to mux ac3 after meGUI completes the video job.

Go to the tools menu - muxer - mkv muxer. This is your access ot the mkv muxer. And the next time you're encoding, make use of the autoencoding mode.. then when you're in the window where you define the name of your final file, you can check a checkbox at the bottom.. then when you press queue, the muxer window comes up again, with certain things already filled in.. then you can select your AC3 file.. that way it will only be muxed.