GK, large 3cd DivX's and Audio going nuts

[aris]

Hi all

When doing "Three Kings", I got a lousy compressibility test - 56% for a 2-cd version. I thereby opted for a 3-cd one.
What I got was a 2.1Gig DivX which can be played just fine if viewed from the start, but if I move the slider in WMP to anywhere in the movie, the sound goes all wrong - I suddenly find myself watching one part of the movie but listening to the soundtrack that was supposed to run 40 minutes ago.

Further, I sporadically get some codec error from WMP (referring to the AC3 codec I believe).

The way I got the AC3 track - I ripped everything - "Stream Processing" was not enabled", then demuxed the AC3 in DVD2AVI as per Doom9's guide.

Anyone have a clue as to this weird behaviour? Is the problem in my player or in my avi file? Does the avi file size have anything to do with it?
... this could very well be a problem, someone not too bright having used a signed int to store filesize in some part of WMP, and it did a rollover at 2G.. Who'se resposible for the actual code of the "audiofilters" AC3 codec? Is it private code or M$?

solution? If my theory above is correct, solution would be keeping below 2G if you're using AC3... :-)

Thanks!

[CaPPyD]

I have absolutely no idea what is causing this issue, but I can tell you that I have had the exact same issue with all of my AC3, 3CD rips.

However, after you split the file to hit 3CDs, each part works fine.

So I just didnt worry about it. You just gotta watch the whole movie to check your sync

[jggimi]

I am guessing, but only guessing, that this is an .avi audio interleave issue. Symptoms like these occur frequently with .ac3 files. There are general guidelines to use for preload and interleave intervals in the Audio forum.

[aris]

No, It's almost definitely not an interleave/preload/whatever mux-setting, as it works perfectly both if I split it up and if I just watch from the start.

More likely (MOST likely, actually), some y2k-bug-writer in Microsoft said something on the lines of "Hell, who'd need a >2 Gig media file anyway?" and put a signed integer to hold filesize in the code. Or just accidentally wrote "int" and didn't bother checking if the default is signed or not. PTUI.
Can someone please confirm the AC3 decoder (as is installed with audiofilters) is indeed Microsoft code? Because if *not* we might ask and thereby get this fixed. If it is, we might still get it fixed - we just need to ask more nicely ;-)

Cheers.

[jggimi]

Well, I've had the same difficulty before with ac3 audio -- problems when cut but not when whole -- and I managed to eliminate it by re-interleaving with different values.

In my case, it was 1.4GB, not over 2, and I was using ac3 audio filters rather than a DD compatible soundcard.

YMMV