VideoStudio 7 - No audio while playing on my DVD player

[curious_george]

Hello all

I got this VideoStudio 7 when I purchased the ADS Tech Instant DVD 2.0 device. I captured several video clips (30 minute intervals) using VideoStudio 7 and burnt them onto DVD+RW discs again using VideoStudio 7. The first couple of discs played correectly on my Terapin TT 2800 DVD player. But with the later clips only the video is playing and no audio is heard when I play the discs using my DVD player. In all cases the burnt DVD plays correctly on my PC (both audio and video). What is frustrating is the video file properties are identical between the video clips where the audio worked and the ones where the audio didn't work on my DVD player. In all these the video was captured at Variable Bit Rate (Max 3999 Kbps) and audio captured at (MPEG Audio Layer 2) 48000 Khz (16 bit). When I burnt these video clips to disc I used the Create Disc (under the Share menu) in VideoStudio 7. I didn't create the video file as described in the Recommended Practices in this forum. I just inserted the captured clips (.mpg files) using the "Add Video" option you get once you select "Create Disc". Still the audio worked correctly in the first two clips but the rest of the clips the audio didn't work on my DVD player.

After this I used the Recommended Practices document in this forum to create a Video file first for some other clips that I had captured. I did this since they too didn't play the audio on my DVD player. Here is my project settings when I created the Video file and later the DVD disc itself:


NTSC drop frame (29.97 fps)
MPEG files
24 Bits, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps
Field Order B
(DVD-NTSC), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 5999 kbps)
Audio data rate: 224 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 48 KHz, Stereo

With this still the audio is not playing on my DVD player.

Interestingly I had yet another video clip that was captured at Variable (Max 7999 kbps) and audio 48 Khz and the audio plays correctly for this on my DVD player. This one was also recorded straight onto DVD disc without creating a video file in a Video Studio project.

Any help in troubleshooting my audio problems would be much appreciated. What is frustrating is the audio behaviour has been inconsistent and I don't know in what situations audio won't play in the standalone DVD player.

Thank you very much

curious_george

[sjj1805]

curious-george
Welcome to the forum.

The first couple of discs played correectly on my Terapin TT 2800 DVD player. But with the later clips only the video is playing and no audio is heard when I play the discs using my DVD player. In all cases the burnt DVD plays correctly on my PC (both audio and video).

There are a couple of things I suspect.
DVD re-writeables do not perform very well in a computer DVD Writer unlike a purpose built DVD Recorder. I only use re-writeables when I need to test something out before burning a permanent copy onto DVD -R/+R.

Make sure that you do not burn faster than 4x even though your writer may be capable of burning faster than that. It seems that at the higher speeds the burners laser is unable to burn a very strong signal to the surface of the disk which many standalone DVD players are then unable to read or have difficulty reading. Again, a re-writeable has a weaker signal than a DVD -R/+R disc which compounds the problem.

Not all standalone DVD players support DVD RW.
Having said that you do get the odd "lucky" disc that will play in such a DVD player. I remember playing quite a few in a Playstation before I found out that particular model wasn't supposed to be able to do so!!

[maddrummer3301]

Using mpeg audio on a NTSC player depends on the player.
I have a Sony that plays mpeg audio and a similar problem playing some dvd's.
Not just dvd+rw but also dvd-r in that Sony unit.
With that unit problems pop-up only with dvd's that are using mpeg audio.
Playing the dvd in other consumer players works OK.
I decided to shelf that dvd player. Although commercial dvd's play good.

The files your recording are dvd compliant settings and don't need to
be re-rendered.

As an experiment try LPCM (pcm) audio instead of mpeg on the same
type/brand of dvd+rw media. That will tell you if it's the dvd player.
The bit-rate is low enough to use lpcm audio.

Hope this helps,

MD

[curious_george]

Hello MD and sjj1805

Thanks for the quick reply. I burnt a DVD-R disc but that the audio still didn't work on my DVD player. But the disc had MPEG audio. I had another DVD+RW disc that had LPCM audio and that too didn't work. Now I am going to try LPCM audio on a DVD-R disc (taking both of your suggestions) and see what happens. I hope I don't have to recapture the video clips using LPCM audio but just convert the existing clips and render them to with LPCM (by changing the MPEG settings while rendering).

Thanks

[curious_george]

Hello all

Tried LPCM audio on DVD-R disc. I did this by selecting a movie clip wose audio was not working, created a video file of it in VS 7 and chose LPCM audio from the MPEG settings. It rendered a video file with LPCM audio. Created a disc using the rendered video file on a DVD-R disc. Played it on my DVD player - video worked fine but no audio came out. Changed the audio settings on my DVD player to use PCM (my DVD player doesn't have an option to set LPCM audio) and the audio still didn't work. I am currently lost of ideas here. Any further help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[curious_george]

Problem solved !! Turns out to be the problem with the way I had connected the audio from my DVD player to the TV. I have an old TV that has no A/V inputs. Had to connect the A/V output from the DVD player to a R/F modulator. In doing so I had connected the output from only the right speaker to the R/F modulator. Used a different cable and conneted the output from both the speakers to the R/F modulator and then onto my TV. Now I get all the audio from the DVD's I converted. Hope my experience helps with someone else in a similar situation.