DV to divx problems....

[Thermopyle]

I have all of my vacation footage (nearly four hours worth) that I'm trying to convert to Divx 5.0.2.

I've had horrible problems keeping audio sync. The best I've been able to do is by the following process:

1. Export the video file from Ulead Video Studio 6.0 as DV Type-2 with Lame MP3 128kbps audio.
2. Open said video file with vdub and re-encode go through both passes of 2-pass encoding with audio set to direct stream copy. I keep divx set to 900kbps...

Ok, when I do the above I am able to keep audio sync, however, I need to encode at a higher bit rate because I'm not satisfied with the quality at 900. I've tried 2000, 1900, 1800, and 1700 kbps. At any of these higher bitrates the audio goes way out of sync. It starts out fine but goes out of sync somewhere early in the video.

The reason I can't say for sure where it goes out is that if i click the seek bar in WMP anywhere within the first 1/10th of it's length I get an error saying the file format is invalid.

I've tried outputting PCM audio and encoding the audio with vdub. In fact I've tried just using straight WAV audio with the high-bitrate divx and I get the same problem!

Anybody out there with any advice, because I'm about to go mad!

[bira]

Originally posted by Thermopyle
Ok, when I do the above I am able to keep audio sync, however, I need to encode at a higher bit rate because I'm not satisfied with the quality at 900. I've tried 2000, 1900, 1800, and 1700 kbps. At any of these higher bitrates the audio goes way out of sync. It starts out fine but goes out of sync somewhere early in the video.


How fast is your PC ? I believe the above suggests that your PC can decode fast enough.


Originally posted by Thermopyle

The reason I can't say for sure where it goes out is that if i click the seek bar in WMP anywhere within the first 1/10th of it's length I get an error saying the file format is invalid.


That happened to me a long long time ago. But I don't remember what is the problem. Something to do with file sizes, or how you save your avi in virtualdub.

One more thing. Is your DV interlaced or progressive? Remember DIVX does not support interlaced video.

[Thermopyle]

Athlon XP 1800+ with 256 megs of RAM....

I forgot to mention that I am aware that there can be problems with VBR mp3's so when I used MP3 I made sure to use CBR. But since I have the same problem with WAV audio, I don't think it's a problem with the audio.

[bb]

Do I get you right that you encode to MP3 while exporting from Ulead? You should do the audio encoding afterwards, either in VirtualDub (e.g. using the Radium codec) or via extracting a WAV file and encoding it separately through Lame. You easily should be able to mux encoded Video and VBR MP3 using NanDub.

bb

[Thermopyle]

Yeah, that's what I was saying. However, the first time I got a working file was when I used Ulead. However I've encoded the audio through vdub, at the command line using Lame, used Radium instead, use straight, un-encoded WAV, all with the same results.

The only working file was when I encoded video at 900kbps.

[bb]

If you extract your audio into a WAV file, are video length in the AVI and audio length in the WAV the same?

You should also try to export the DV AVI as type-1 instead of type-2 (and treat the audio separately, of course). Ulead's software has some problems with type-2; at least that's true for MediaStudio Pro.

What you say sounds like VideoStudio screwed something...

bb

[bira]

But what about the 900kbps vs higher bitrates thing.
Is your video 29.97fps?

I say that again because my 2ghz p4 can't handle a - 1:80 720xsomething 2000kbps 29.97fps resized on-the-fly to 1024xsomething video decoded using ffdshow.

Why don't you try encoding the video resizing it to 640xsomething or even less using a higher then 900kbps bitrate? If the audio keeps sync, then I bet is a processor power thing.

[theReal]

Check the processor usage while playing the video - if it's near to 100% then you know why it's getting out of sync.

[Thermopyle]

bb: Yes the AVI and WAV are the same length. I'll try doing as you suggested and export as Type-1....didn't even think of that since vdub won't read the audio of Type-1, which obviously wouldn't matter if I have the audio seperate...

bira: Yeah it's 29.97. You may be on to something with the processor power thing. See next...

theReal: Ahh! Yeah wmp keeps the CPU pegged at 100% usage when playing back the 17000kbps file.

I'll try resizing as bira suggested. Also will try Type-1 export from ulead. Back to some tedious encoding....

[bb]

You're not using WMP 8, are you? If yes, drop it and try WMP 6.4 instead, because WMP 8 is nothing but CPU hogging bloatware. WMP 6.4 is available on Windows XP, too, and you'll find it searching for mplay32.exe in the Windows directory.

You should also verify your post-processing settings. If set too high, they can max out the CPU.

I encode my video at 640xYYY and set the monitor resolution to 640x480 for smooth playback (no resizing needed during playback).

Regarding your "17000 kbps" file: I guess you mean 1700 kbps.

bb

[bira]

Originally posted by bb
You should also verify your post-processing settings. If set too high, they can max out the CPU.


Try that first. It might solve the problem.

[Navellint]

hi, just some personal info:
I encode dv to mpeg-2 using TMPG 2.58 and mpeg-2 to divx 3/4/5 and encode vbr/cbr mp3 with Lame (mono/stereo) or just use ac3 or pcm and never have ANY async problem. A friend's athlon 1500+ also is NOT too slow for anything concerning this business. I can play at any resolution and any bitrate (9 Mbps mpeg-2, 1500 kbps divx 5.0.2) and still no async. I hope the above info is useful for excluding some issues for you.

BTW I only use PowerDVD and WMP 6.4 (NEVER 7/8!) as it demands only 60% of the resources the other players use.

I capture with pinnacle studio 7.11 and MGI videowave III (type-1, because type-2 couldn't be imported into Scenarist) via firewire.

I have a p3 @450 MHZ and 192 MB (just last week upgraded to 448 MB). I remember a few years back i gave up on dvd-ripping, because i had 2 sec of async after 2 hours of movie on EVERY dvd i tried to backup. I still don't know why, but later i tried again with the same computer and everything worked miraculously.

GL

[Thermopyle]

Sorry for my inexperience, but I just started encoding video within the past few months....

What post-processing settings are we talking about?

[Navellint]

post-processing settings:
when using wmp 6.4 (see help -> about) richtclick on the video-area when playing -> select properties -> advanced -> divx codec -> properties. Then you can change the slider of quality settings. That is the post-processing of the codec. It removes certain blockiness at different levels. These settings look different for DivX 3/5/xvid, but work more or less the same.

Then, divx 5 has a new feature called film effect which adds some grain or something to the divx-movie. I don't use it.

I don't know how to change it in wmp 7/8, that's the other reason i don't use wmp 7/8.

Don't apologise for being new: we're all learning here ;-)

[Thermopyle]

Ok, still fooling around with this.

What I'm now trying to do is use a video editing program to export all the audio as a wav. Then open the Type-1 DV file in vdub and divx it. I'm using Lame to encode the wav. Then I use nandub to mux them together.

That's what I'm trying to do, however it's not quite happening. :p

When I try to export the wav file with almost every program after a while it gives me an error about not being able to write the file. Finally PureMotion's EditStudio was able to export the wav, but with a problem. Maybe about 2/3 of the way through the wav just starts repeating an approximately 1-second length of audio all the way to the end.

This all will encode and mux just fine, it's just that the last 1/3 of the video will have a repeating sound over and over, which is of course unacceptable.

The original DV file plays just fine past this point, so I would think this would rule out a bad capture.

Does anybody know of any good utilities or programs to extract the wav with? I've tried the following:

Ulead Videostudio 6 Trial
MGI Videowave
PureMotion EditStudio Trial

Thanks for any help

[theReal]

I'm just right now extracting PCM audio from a type 1 DV file with Ulead Media Studio Pro 6.5 :)

[Thermopyle]

Well, I finally got this thing encoded with perfect audio sync. Here's what I had to do:

1. Export video as a Type-2 DV with PCM audio from ulead video studio.
2. Open in virtualdub and save wav.
3. Encode with LAME to a VBR mp3.
4. Encode the DV into Divx 2-pass 1900kbps with vdub.

Virtualdub is the only program that was able to save an uncorrupted wav file from that DV. Even though ulead was able to export the audio just fine when it was part of the DV file, it couldn't just save a WAV, nor was any other program.

If I just tried to encode the audio from within vdub, no matter what audio codec I used, I'd still lose sync.

Why did this method solve the problem? I'ts beyond me...just trial-and-freaking-error.

Hope this helps somebody in the future.