Odd Audio Problem - Phantom Menace

[cboyd1]

Hello Guys,

I've used Doom9's guides to learn how to backup my DVD's to DIVX format and have successfully backed up many movies, I love the software and the guides were perfect. I recently came upon my first problem which I can't seem to solve. The movie I'm working with is Star Wars Ep. 1 - The Phantom Menace.

I have ripped the movie, and when I load up the movie using the .vobs and the .ac3 audio files using my copy of PowerDVD, everything is perfect...entire movie looks fine and audio is in sync all the way through, etc..

I use GordianKnot to encode the film to divx5, just as I have done countless times before but I get the following issue when the movie is fully encoded. At a certain point in the movie (it's the exact same point every time I try to re-encode) the audio goes completely off-sync...I mean one moment it is perfectly in sync...then boom, the audio bounces about 10 mins ahead of time...literally just "skipping" out on a chunk of the audio. I can't figure out what causes this, as the "raw" data when viewed is perfect.

I tried rebuilding my project file (.dv2) a few times and re-encoding, no luck.

Any suggestions anyone?

Thanks in advance.

-Charlie

[manono]

Hi, and welcome to the forum-

How did you decrypt the vob files originally? Did you use DVDDecrypter? And if you did, did you rip in IFO Mode as you should have, and not in File Mode? The default is File Mode, so you have to change it.

You can test something. Open the .avs (or the final .avi, or both) in VDubMod, Go Edit->End and take note of the exact length. Then get HeadAC3he (http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Audio/headac3he-0.23a.rar) if you don't yet have it. It's an audio encoding program that shows the exact length of the source audio, where BeSweet doesn't. Open the original AC3 in it, and then the MP3 (if that's what you used), and make sure that both the AC3 and the MP3 have the same length. And then compare those audio lengths to that of the movie itself as given by the .avs. Are they all the same length?

When you play the audio alone (the AC3 or MP3) is the audio also missing that same 10 minutes? If not, what happens if you mux the audio and video manually in Nandub or VDubMod?

Those are just some things to check to try and figure out where the problem arose.

[cboyd1]

manano,

you are correct, I did as you suggested and the length of the audio using headache is about 10 mins shorter than the total length of the .avs file (i don't use .mp3, just ac3 by the way). Here is what I simply dont understand. When I use PowerDVD to view the movie using its raw data vob and ac3 there is no problem, all the audio is there, the film views perfectly from start to end. any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

-charlie

[cboyd1]

oh yes, and I do use the IFO option. Also, this is the first problem i've had in over 40 successful backups.

[manono]

Hi-

I'm sorry, but what you're describing is impossible. It simply can't happen. Hehe. So, the audio is coming out of DVD2AVI 10 minutes shorter than the video? When you open the .d2v in GKnot, it's already 10 minutes longer than the audio?

Speaking of which; there's no chance that the audio is the correct length, and the video is 10 minutes too long, is there? You can put the DVD back in the DVD-ROM and reopen DVDDecrypter to see the movie's length. And while you're at it, go into Stream Processing, enable Stream Processing, deselect everything but the Audio you want, and get a second copy of the audio, and then see if it's also 10 minutes too short. If you're in IFO Mode as you say you are, and both audios (one from DVD2AVI and the other from DVDDecrypter) are the same length, then I'd begin to suspect the video.

Anyway, do you have the .avs for us to have a look at, and the log file? You can cut and paste them here. And for the .avs, please cut out all the lines beginning with "#", as they don't do anything.

[cboyd1]

Heya Manono,

Sorry it took so long for me to get back to this thread, but I thought I'd post what I did to solve the problem. In DVD-Decrypter I had to set the "retain angle 1" setting. I don't remember the exact name of the setting but I'm sure you know what I mean. I told it to always use angle 1 for the VOBs, as Phantom Menace is a multi angle DVD. After re-ripping / re-encoding all is well. This was just my first multi-angle rip.

Here is what I don't understand and likely ever will. As you may recall, on my first rip, the one I had problems with, when I viewed the movie via VOBs and AC3 file in PowerDVD (raw version) it was 100% fine, then encoding fouled it up at spot "x" towards the end of the flick. Oh well, just thought you'd like to know that I solved my little issue. Still new to the art of Divx...have about 50 perfect rips under my belt now.

Have a good one,

Charlie