the everything AUDIO/VIDEO sync thread

[DawnP]

Reposting this from the old forum:
I've compiled a list of solutions proposed by forum members and Ulead staff regarding the 'famous' DVD Movie Factory audio/video sync problem.

I hope by posting all of our findings in one thread we can get answers faster.

Note that I have not resolved this issue myself yet

Please feel free to add to/correct this information. Many thanks to all who have endured this problem or provided their assistance.

Audio/video sync problems likely occur during audio/video multiplexing - the stage that occurs after captured files are converted and before the VOB file is created. Some users report that the captured MPEG file is fine, the converted files are fine, but the VOB files show the audio being out of sync with the video.

CONFIGURATION & SET-UP:
1) From Ulead Tech Support: check the settings in your DVDMF.ini file
~~a) Close DMF. Locate DVDMF.ini file in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Ulead Systems\Ulead DVD MovieFactory\2.0. (or 3.0 depending upon the DMF version you have)
~~b) Open it and add three flags in the VIODRIVER section as shown below.
[VIODRIVER]
CloseAudioDTR=1
AlwaysAudioSeek=1
AlwaysVideoSeek=1
~~c) Close and save the ini file. Re-run DMF.
2) From Ulead Tech Support: Be sure that DMA is enabled for IDE hard disks.
~~a) Control Panel: System: Hardware tab: Device Manager.
~~b). Click "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
~~c) Double click on Primary IDE Channel: Advanced settings.
~~d) Be sure Current transfer mode is DMA. (Transfer mode should be DMA if available in default.)
3) Install the latest product updates from http://www.ulead.com/tech/dmf/dmf_ftp.htm
4) Check your analog adapter or recording device to see if there is a format setting for frame rate. In the US the standard is NTSC Drop-Frame, frame rate is 29.97. In the UK the standard is PAL Non-Drop Frame, and the frame rate is 25 exactly. MF3 apparently defaults to Drop-Frame. If you're not sure if your recording device frame rate matches that of DMF, then go to the advanced features in template settings, to the compression tab and change the selection from Drop Frame to Non-Drop Frame or basically reverse whatever settings are currently chosen. Re-capture & check.
5) From Ulead tech support: uninstall & reinstall DMF. Clean up temp files in C:\windows\temp before re-installing.
6) From Ulead tech support: Make sure that you have installed the latest version of Direct X in your system. You can get it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/directx


CAPTURING:
7) From Ulead tech support: Where possible, capture input using AVI file format instead of MPEG. MPEG files are compressed so MovieFactory has a more difficult time reencoding this file type than with AVI format. (My note: I believe AVI format is only supported when capturing from a digital source such as a digital camcorder.)
Set audio capture speed to 48khz (in MPEG Settings).
9) Try checking or unchecking the "Do Not Encode MPEG compliant files" checkbox in MPEG settings.
10) Try capturing at a lower bit rate, supposedly the reduced sample rate might reduce the possibility of video dropped frames.
11) When capturing from digital camcorder or importing digital video check to see that the audio properties are set to It 16 bit 48khz mono or stereo, many camcorders default to 12bit 32khz. If source audio is NOT 48khz you will need to use another program to extract and split the audio from the video. Load the audio into an editor and re-sample the audio set to 48khz pcm audio.Then re-combine audio & video and try loading and converting them in DMF. This can be done by:
~~a) In the ADD/EDIT MEDIA step, click on the video clip you wish to add audio to, and then click on ENHANCE VIDEO.
~~b) Click on the AUDIO tab in the ENHANCE VIDEO dialog, you will see the MIX AUDIO part to be appeared. Click on the SPEAKER icon after the ORIGINAL edit box, this will mute the audio part of the video clip.
~~c) Click on the ADD AUDIO button and select the audio file you wish to add to the video clip, then you will see the ADDITIONAL edit box to be enabled. Click on OK. You have replaced the audio part of the video clip with the separated audio file in DVDMF.


BURNING:
12) From Ulead tech support: Make sure to no other applications are running in the background when running MovieFactory. Close all other unnecessary applications especially if you have a lot of programs loaded on your system tray. (The system tray is beside the Time window oposite the start menu). Right click on the program icons on the system tray and choose "close" to close the programs. (The logic here is that overtasking the CPU results in dropped frames so the converted file has missing video frames so result is for audio file to be out-of-sync.)
13) Free up resources by booting your computer with minimum background tasks - use MSCONFIG command from Start > Run to deactivate unneeded tasks. The website http://www.liutilities.com/products/win ... sslibrary/ has lots of information about Windows tasks, what they are and whether they are necessary.
14) From Ulead tech support: Try lowering the burner's speed to burn.
15) From Ulead tech support: Choose the 'BURN-Proof disc protection' check box if your burner supports these features.
16) From Ulead tech support: If you have some hardware devices that are currently connected via USB port like compact flash card reader, removable drives, etc., then please just unplug them and close all running applications like screen saver and memory-resident applications (system monitor, anti-virus application, etc.) as they may cause error as well before performing a data write/system conflict.
17) Update the burning engine stored at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ulead Systems\DVD using Ulead updates from http://www.ulead.com/tech/general/burning_engine.htm

OUTSIDE PROGRAMS FOR CORRECTING AUDIO/VIDEO SYNC PROBLEMS:
18) Try VideoReDo (http://www.drdsystems.com/VideoReDo/) for audio sync issues, for fixing MPEG2 source files. Try out the free trial to see if it fixes your problem. VideoReDo can be used to trim/cut MPEG2 files or the QuickStream fix option can be used before burning to ensure audio behaves.


edited to add: ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS: 19) After creating your project, click the "create DVD folders" option on the Output menu and click Output. Then exit the program completely and finally restart DMF and burn the DVD. Separating the tasks of creating the DVD files and burning the DVD may rectify audio/video sync issues.
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My follow-up post a few days later:

OK, I've had some recent success burning DVDs using DMF 3 where the audio & video are in sync (yeah!). I think the keys were using a different program to capture my MPEGs, updating DMF 3 & Ulead's burning engine updated with all patches & not editing the MPEGs at all.

Here's what I did:
1) I upgraded to DMF 3 and downloaded all of the patches. I downloaded the DVD burning common engine patch per the instructions on Ulead's website.

2) I uninstalled ArcSoft software that was on my PC.

3) I captured MPEGs using a different program - the program that came with my analog capture device, ADS Instant DVD 2.0. The program I used was called CapWiz.

4) After I had captured my MPEGs I imported them into DMF. To do this, in DMF I clicked the "Add Project" main menu selection. Then I clicked the second icon, "Add Video" and browsed to the MPEG location on my hard drive.

5) When chaptering the DVD and making the menus I did *NOT* edit the MPEGs in any way. No splitting of the video clip, no mark-in or mark-out to shorten the clip.

6) I added chapters and picked formats for the menus. I did not change the thumbnails on any of the menus (DMF 3 has motion menus and the thumbnails are all actively scrolling through film anyway).

7) I saved the project file before burning the DVD. I have also read that you can try clicking the option "create DVD folders" and outputting, then exit the program completely and finally restart DMF and burn the DVD.

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Hope this helps.

Dawn P.

[joe]

I have Ulead DVD MF 2.12 SE and share my solution to the AV sync problem.

I use MF to edit, trim, and combine MPEG videos and to create DVD menus. The DVD created has audio and video in time sync for playback of the entire disc on a stand alone DVD player.

My source files are from a Hauppauge PVR-250 TV card. These files are of video type MPEG-2, Field B, which is Upper Field First. Ulead DVD MF defaults to Field A, which is Lower Field First. After I change MF field order to use UF First, the audio and video are in sync after burning the DVD.

How? I enable the Advanced menu in Project Settings, and change the field order.

Edit the DVDMF.ini file (a hidden file in Windows) and type Advance=1 under the [VIODRIVER] heading. An Advanced button now appears in Project Settings under the Compression tab. In the MPEG Output Settings pop-up menu, click the Fields drop-down list arrow and change the attribute to Upper Field First. After closing the Advanced menu, on the Compression tab I also change the Audio Settings to MPEG Audio at 384 kbps, to match my source.

I hope this works for you to enable AV time synchronization.

[orlcam2002]

I've been successfully creating DVD's using videoredo. I do all my editing and joining of mpeg files with videoredo before I start creating DVD's. Many thanks to everyone who mentioned this product.

My goal was to reduce time to create DVD's from home videos. Previous attempts to capture video (VHS) straight to the computer resulted in dropped frames, crashes etc.
I ended up capturing my video's to a dvd recorder by connecting my vhs to the dvd recorder. This process for me, reduced the time to capture all the video I wanted. Since deleting and re-capturing was as quick as you can control the remote controls! Now all I needed was to create cool menus.

My problem started when I tried to use MF to extract my DVD into it. By this time everyone reading this should know what happened. After months of frustration, I started seeing people mentioning videoredo among others (TMPengc is one of the others). I gave vrd a try and within a couple of hours I got my final product. I chosed vrd because of it's website and believed they may have the better support.

One of the beauty's of vrd is that it can read VOB's. Which gave me another task. Getting the best of my dvd collection into one (or more) dvd's. That's for another forum.

links to videoredo and tmpgenc
http://www.drdsystems.com/VideoReDo/
http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

[jcwallace1]

I have experimented quite a bit and have come up with something that worked, at least in my situation. As background, I have MovieFactory 3.5SE and VideoStudio 8SE and the latest patch for VS (no patch available for DMF3.5SE).

I captured MPEG2 files using CapWiz (a beta version) on my ADS DVD Xpress. I wanted to take multiple files, multi-trim to remove junk, and merge into one file. My first attempts using the defaults in both DMF and VS failed miserably. I did things this posting talked about, such as setting the Advanced flag and the audio and video flags, patches, defrag disk, etc. No dice. So the experiments started. The files were captured with MPEG audio and upper field first. Used different video bit rates, but that does not seem important since I had the same sync problems even if I used just one file, and it did not matter which one; results were the same.

I started out just trying to make another MPEG file where the audio and video were in sync using VS. VS 8SE and DMF 3.5SE seem to have the same multi-trim editing capabilities under the hood, with mainly slight user interface differences.

In VS leaving video at upper field first and MPEG audio, could not get them sync'd. Having VS change to lower field first and MPEG audio worked, as did LPCM audio with either upper field or lower field first. After that I stuck with the LPCM audio files since the DVD spec officially says that NTSC DVD discs must have at least one track with LPCM audio; DVD players may be more forgiving, buy why tempt fate?

Then I tried doing my editing with DMF. I used LPCM audio and played with the "do not convert compliant MPEG" and "treat MPEG audio as non-compliant" flags. The only combination that worked was to have both flags off (i.e. unchecked).

Then I tried a few of the trimmed and combined MPEG files I had generated in VS to see if I could create an in sync DVD. The only ones that worked were ones where I had both those "do not convert compliant MPEG" and "treat MPEG audio as non-compliant" flags off. Lower field first and MPEG audio worked, lower field first and LPCM audio worked. Upper field first and LPCM audio did NOT work.

So the keys for me were to (a) make sure that my original upper field first captures were converted to lower field first, either before sucking them into DMF or in DMF itself; (b) making sure the "do not convert compliant MPEG" and "treat MPEG audio as non-compliant" flags are off. I made one DVD with lower field first and MPEG audio which worked fine in my DVD player, so LPCM versus MPEG audio may not be a problem; but LPCM seemed to work in more combinations. The bit rate and whether it was constant or variable did not seem to matter, but did not rigorously try may combinations.

Hope this helps.

[maddrummer3301]

DawnP,

Hi,
>I hope by posting all of our findings in one thread we can get answers
>faster.
>Note that I have not resolved this issue myself yet >

>Please feel free to add to/correct this information. Many thanks to all who
>have endured this problem or provided their assistance.

>Audio/video sync problems likely occur during audio/video multiplexing -
>the stage that occurs after captured files are converted and before the
>VOB file is created. Some users report that the captured MPEG file is fine,
>the converted files are fine, but the VOB files show the audio being out of
>sync with the video.

Dawn,
I have fixed the multi-plexing problem on my system. I see you and many
others are still experiencing this during the multi-plexing stage.
I can make it occur or stop it from occuring by using the correct version
number of files (one dll links to another so they must match).

Please contact me via email to verify a possible fix.
The bug affects VS8, should also affect MF3.

MD