DivX playback problem

[Cereal]

Not quite sure where this post is supposed to go but here goes.
I'm fairly new to the DivX scene but by reading the guides and other peoples posts I have been able to sort out *most* problems that I have come across... except this one.

Sometimes, when I create a DivX movie using Gordian Knot I can play it in the DivX player but when I try to fast forward the audio starts from the beginning again. I have tried the solutions in the other posts I could find like creating a CBR encoded MP3 instead of VBR.

What I have found is that this only happens when the audio track is delayed by a negative value (eg -80ms) in the interleaving options. If I set the option to 0ms or some positive value it fast forwards fine.

Has anyone got any ideas on how I can fix this?

[manono]

Hi, and welcome to the forums-

Have you tried other players, such as the BS Player or WMP 6.4? Does the same problem occur? I bet not.

[Cereal]

Thanks for the welcome manono

Ok, now I am confused!! I tried both WMP 6.4 and BSPlayer 0.85 and I could get the video to play in both but not the MP3 or AC3 audio.
I tried loading the audio into BSPlayer independent of the video using the 'Open Audio' function and it played correctly - both MP3 and AC3 formats.

I have had another thought though. When you run a .vob file through DVD2AVI you get a AC3 file for the audio, which reads something like:

"Episode 1 AC3 T01 2_0ch 192Kbps DELAY -80ms.ac3"

In this instance, if I chopped off 80ms from the start using Sound Forge I could then set the Audio Delay to 0 in the Interleaving options, which should solve my problems.

Do you agree?

[manono]

Hi-

So, the same problem doesn't occur with the other players? A different problem occurs.:)

However, are you sure you have the right filters installed? Maybe get the Audio Filters (http://www.doom9.org/software2.htm#filters) from Doom9's Download page, or get them from Nimo's Codec Pack (http://www.btinternet.com/~nimosiro/).

Edit: I was just investigating this in the Audio Forum since I've never encountered your problem, and the FAQ says that installing the Morgan Stream Switcher can cause the kinds of problems you describe. So, if you have it, get rid of it. Audio's not really my specialty, so perhaps someone else has a suggestion. Good Luck.

[W98SD]

Aw man I am having the same problem, I am rather new also. I just posted about the very same thing, hope I don't get flamed. So you have found out that it is only movies with a - Delay, well that saves me some time. I had no idea what was F*ing up my movies before I saw your post.

[Cereal]

I have not been able to solve this but I have found a rather painful way to get around it. This is what I do.

If the track has a delay of say -100ms I convert the AC3 into a WAV using HeadAC3he and then chop off 100ms from the WAV in SoundForge. In essence, this will just remove the 100ms of audio that is playing before the video starts, this is generally just blank audio anyway.
You can then load the modified WAV file into Gordian Knot in the usual place and set the delay to 0.

As for BSPlayer, I have tried it and it does cope with negative delay values. Trouble is, it only plays the audio once every ten attempts for me :confused:

This method works fine for me, but it can be a real pain when it comes to doing CD spanning.

[Cereal]

Ok, so now I have figured out my problem with BSPlayer, WMP6.4 and ZoomPlayer. They all exibited the same behaviour. If I was trying to play a DivX rip encoded with a VBR/CBR MP3 then I would get no audio.

I have found out that my SonicFury soundcard was the culprit, if I turn off it's internal MP3 exceleration then the audio plays fine.

Still no luck with the file spliting though. The audio on the second or third still won't play correctly. I have tried it on both AMD and Intel based systems... no joy.

Can anyone out there please help??? I am desperate. I have a 4 disc 'Lord Of The Rings' to split up and I really would like to be able to play it with the standard DivX player.

[Hiro2k]

In ZoomPlayer see what audio decoder is being used to playback your mp3's. If you see the morgan stream switcher you should disable it. Oh and you can fit LOTR on 3 CD's just fine. Also if your into trying new things, you might see if you have the same problems using Vorbis audio stream. FYI it's not exactly newb freindly as Gknot since you have to use a combination of programs.

[Cereal]

I've got the audio working now but I am really desperate to get the standard DivX working properly. When I skip to position on a multi-cd rip the video progresses fine but the audio either starts from the beginning or the whole program crashes and gives me a false 'out of virtual memory error'.

I am thinking it must be something I am doing wrong in Nandub. It first part I split works fine.

Normally I wouldn't be bothered and just use ZoomPlayer or WMP from now on but the perfomance I'm getting from them is unsatisfactory. Even on my Athlon 1100 it's very jerky in full screen. Unfortunately, BSPlayer won't work on my VAIO laptop either so I'm stuck with DivX player.

If anyone wants anymore info on my specs, here they are:

Win2k SP2
Athlon 1100MHz (200FSB)
512Mb SDRAM (133)
GeForce 2 GTS (30.82)
SonicFury soundcard
IBM 80Gb ATA100 HD (7200 GXP120)
Pioneer 16x DVD

Thanks for the help everyone, I really want to get this sorted.

[W98SD]

Question Cereal how did you disable the internal MP3 acceleration, was it VIA jumpers on the card itself or by drivers. I don't have a S.F. Sound card but this info may help me with my Sound Blaster Live!
I also am getting the same problem with splitting movies that do not have a negative delay the 1st half plays great but I lose sync on any part after it.

PS: Sice you posted your rigs specs it would be best if I did the same.

CPU: AMD Athlon 1.4GHz T-Bird
MOBO: Asus A7M266 BIOS ver.1007
RAM: Crucial 512MB DDR-SDRAM
HDD1: IBM DeskStar 30Gig'er
HDD2: WesterDigital 30Gig'er
Vid Card: Nvidia GeForce 3 w/ latest Detonator Drvs
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Live!
OS: WinXP Pro w/ SP1 and NTFS as my file manager
DVD ROM: Lite on

[Cereal]

W98SD, the MP3 acceleration is within the SonicFury control panel but I doubt this will be a problem with the SBLive. The SonicFury has a chip on board that performs hardware decoding of MP3's - like its really useful! I used to have a SBLive and I know they don't have MP3 acceleration.

Over the last few days I have tried these "problematic" DivX rips on several other machines, all with mixed specs and they have ALL had the same problem.

This leads me to beleive that I must be doing something wrong in Nandub... although what I don't know.

[Cereal]

Ok, now this is getting really interesting. After I read W98SDs last post I decided to have another go with it. I have found that if you do this split in VirtualDub instead of Nandub the problem is solved... you can jump to any part of the movie and the audio stays in sync.

Works for me anyway. This leaves just two things: either VBR MP3s aren't working too well or Nandub is configured incorrectly.

Anyone got any ideas?

[W98SD]

OK, so if my sound card dose not have any MP3 acceleration then what do you think would be the cause of my system being unable to rip movies with negative delays

[Cereal]

You could try using BSPlayer or Windows Media Player 6 that should allow you to play the segments without any problems.

Like I have mentioned in the posts above, if you split them with Virtualdub the problem goes away (for me anyway) - the downside is you have to used CBR MP3's which takes up space.

I can imagine that it has something to do with VBR MP3's since Virtualdub uses CBR, I'm sure I've read something about the standard DivX player having trouble with VBR. It could be the way Nandub splits them up.