QuEnc 0.61 - transferring from DV to DVD-R Video and Audio too fast

[neo squidward]

I am transferring DV from my sony camcorder to the PC hard disk via firewire port, using WinDV. I end up with a 14.2gb Type 2 AVI file.

I don't edit it at all.

I use the following .avs file

AviSource("I:\xyz.avi")
converttoyv12()

I installed the panasonic DV codec.

In QuEnc 0.61 I have selected the following options

MPEG-2, Bitrate 9800, UseVBR, High Quality, all others unchecked.
All advanced options default except I selected 4:3 aspect ratio, max Bitrate 9800. I tried both AC3 256kbps audio and MP2 256kbps audio selected in QuEnc advanced options with same result.

This results in a 3.0gb .mpg file, which plays perfectly on my PC.

Next I author the DVD using either DVD Styler or EasyDVD Creator 5.0
(results the same with both). I burned 2 dvds, one with the AC3 audio and one with the MP2 audio.

This results in DVDs which played fine in PowerDVD on the same pc.

The strange problem I have is when I play back the DVD in my xbox or my laptop. I plan to try on more DVD players.

On the laptop using WinDVD I get no audio at all, the video looks to be playing at the correct speed.

On the Xbox using dongle free DVD player, the video and the audio play too fast. The audio sounds like "chipmunks". The dongle free DVD player always plays back commecial dvds perfectly.

On the Xbox I also tried Xbox media center and it played perfectly. XBox media center reports:
audio(AC3-liba52) VBR br:128000
video MPEG 1 or 2 (libmpeg2) fps:29.97 720x480.

Since its acting differently on different players I am quite confused.

I used an older version of QuEnc about a year ago with excellent results and never had any issues like this. I successfully transferred DV video following the same process. Unfortunately I lost my old version of QuEnc (don't remember the version) and my working .avs file due to a hard disk crash.

What could be going wrong, please let me know if you need more info.

I am guessing it has to do with using VBR? Should I re-encode with VBR disabled?

Thanks

[dragongodz]

well for a start 9800 + audio is too high for dvd compliance. the 9800 is really the max for video but can be considered video only in reality. so the first thing you should do is reduce the 9800, for both average bitrate and also maximum bitrate, by the bitrate of the audio plus a bit more for safety. so try something like 9400 or even 9000. really the authoring programs should have complained about that to start with.

see if that has the same problems.

[Mug Funky]

also, 128 kbps for ac3 is terribly low. it's personal preference of course, but i never go below 224 - ac3 does peculiar things to the stereo image, sort of moving chunks of audio between the speakers in a way that can be quite annoying.

playing too fast is just weird though... i can only assume this is an authoring/muxing problem, as quenc simply returns the framerate of the input file. maybe the xbox is trying to play 25fps PAL in 30fps NTSC and speeding up the audio?

[neo squidward]

Dragongodz thanks for the reply. I re-encoded at 2500 kbps and got the same result again - video and audio playing fast in XBox dongle free DVD player. As expected, the file was smaller, this time the output file from QuEnc was just 1.36gb. Since I am now using DVD-RW media I can keep experimenting :)


Mug - thats a good observation that it could be thinking the mpg is PAL for some reason. If that is whats happening it might have hapened in the DVD authoring process. I tried again using IfoEdit to author DVD. I still got the same issue of video and audio playing fast. I guess its not in the DVD authoring process.

Not sure what to try next.

Thanks

[dragongodz]

video and audio playing fast in XBox dongle free DVD player.
is there any way to show what that thinks the framerate etc is ?

the only other thing i can think to suggest at the moment is try a different authoring program, such as muxman, and see if that also shows the problem.

[mikeytown2]

I've had minor problems with QuEnc and ac3 with certain DVD hardware players (CyberHome). But for me the video and audio was playing too slow. I don't have the problem when i use mp2.

What advanced options are you using in QuEnc?

You could try the Author DVD button in the advanced options of QuEnc and see if it will play correctly. You could also try a different encoder like HC. And if I'm not mistaken the default for DVD Styler is PAL, but i don't think thats the problem. Good Luck.
-Mike