D2S only converts 1/2 of joined avi

[Dalboy1]

Can anyone help please
I have converted many of my old Divx / Xvid movies Using D2S,D2SRoba
and CCE 2.67 trial with no problems.But have come accross a movie that is in two xvid avi files with ac3 audio. I joined the two avi's in Virtualdub and ran them through D2S as usual. Everything seemed to progress as normal but the resulting VIDEO_TS folder only contained the first half of the appended file. I have tried reencoding the joined avi in virtualdub and running that through D2S but get the same result.I havn't been able to find any answers in the forums, can anybody suggest what the problem might be.

[Nick]

Yes, there have been a couple of similar problems reported in the past.
When vDub/vDubMod join ac3 streams there is sometimes a fault in the file at the join. This causes the multiplexing stage to fail at halfway.

Your mplex log file in the project folder will verify this.

If you let DVD2SVCD convert the audio it works fine. If you wish to keep the source audio I have an idea which you may wish to test.

1. Do a "file information" from File menu in vDub to obtain framerate of your AVI files

2. Open Notepad.
Make a script as follows
Directshowsource("C:\movies\part1.avi",<framerate>) + Directshowsource("C:\movies\part2.avi",<framerate>)

Sub the filenames and <framerate> for the approriate values and save as whatever.avs

3. Use VFAPI Converter (DVD2SVCD install folder > VFAPI > Reader to create a dummy AVI (if you havent done this before it's very intuitive)

4. Convert the dummy avi VFAPI creates in AVI2DVD.

No guarantees as I haven't had time to test but try it if you want.
If you try it, feedback would be appreciated.

Cheers
Nick

[Dalboy1]

Thanks for the quick response Nick.I will try your suggestion and report the result.It might take me a while to figure it out but it will bee a good challenge.
Cheers
Dalboy.

[Dalboy1]

Hi Again Nick
I created the dummy avi in VFAPI OK. But D2S comes up with Error:No Audio stream selected. What now?
Cheers
Dalboy.

[Nick]

Download and install ac3filter 0.70b from ac3filter.sourceforge.net.

If you have a previous version of AC3 filter, uninstall it first.

That should get your audio back on track :)

You may have to repeat the VFAPI step.

[Nick]

Scrub that! DVD2SVCD recognises the audio in the VFAPI avi as WAV, not AC3. Leave it with me - there must be a way out of this...

[Nick]

OK got it.
Presuming this is the same error as previously reported (IE it is the multiplexing that failed - broken stream error seen in MPlex_log.txt her's how to work around.

Download ac3fix (http://www.videohelp.com/download/ac3fix.zip). It is a commandline app so run it from a Command Prompt.
Syntax is

ac3fix <input.ac3> <output.ac3>

run it on Encoded_Audio_1.ac3 in your project folder.
Then delete this file and rename the ac3fix output file to Encoded_audio_1.ac3.

Launch DVD2SVCD and crash-recover from multiplexing.

[Dalboy1]

Thanks Nick
I tried your suggestion but no success I got the same result.
But you pointed me in the right direction with the Audio,I joined the two avi files with Vdub then extracted the ac3 audio with VdubMod,then ran thru Ac3fix as you described.I then muxed the fixed ac3 back with VdubMod and ran resulting file thru D2S. Bingo we got the complete file.
I presume I would have got the same result using BeSliced instead of ac3fix,any particular reason why you prefere ac3fix?
Thanks for your help nick.
Cheers
Dalboy

[Nick]

any particular reason why you prefere ac3fix?

Only that when using joined files like this, BeSliced doesn't always seem to do the trick. Also, in the event of some flaws in the AC3 stream, I seem to find greater sync problems with BeSliced.

There is no science to this - I don't know what the actual differences are in how the file is processed by the two respective softwares. It is just my own personal experience.

Meantime, glad you sorted your problem and thanks for reporting back on how you fixed it. These things always help someone.

Regards
Nick