Audio Problems....please help!

[rwindeyer]

I have Norton Systemworks and it has never been a problem. To my understanding: when you delete a file it goes to the (Norton Protected)Recycle Bin. Emptying the bin is fine; Norton still retains many of the files for (I think) a week just in case you deleted stuff by mistake and want it back. It's extra insurance.
I generally don't bother with this feature; emptying the bin becomes a two-step procedure: Empty Recycle Bin, then Empty Norton Protected Files. After this everything is gone, and the size of the Recycled folder should not be a problem.

[Buddy Stansbury]

My experience is different. I'm working with several 120 GB disk files and I use them to create 1-2 hour videos. With all the files that get created, they get deleted and it all starts all over on the next video project. This kept going on until I noticed that 11 GB was missing, and when I checked the properties of the RECYCLER folder is was 11 GB.

The sad news is that I uninstalled norton's and made sure the REcycle bin was returned to standard, but even now, each time I delete any file on any of my disk, a Recycler folder is created, along with a NTProtect file.
How can this be if I totally removed the program.

Anyway, I'm back to step one, VS7 is still broken when I do a long movie.

[Buddy Stansbury]

GuyL,... well when I did a very short file, like 24 seconds, it worked fine. Then I went back and did the entire movie and when it finished there was no audio in the final VOB's or in the ~convert.mpg file. I'm back to square one. There must be something wrong with the VSP file that I use to create the long video. When I took one short clip and saved it as a clipped video, and then opened a new project and pulled in the saved avi file, then went on to share the video in my standard way, it worked fine.

If I play each of the .avi files via Windows Media player, they are fine, audio is good, no sync problelms at all.

I guess I will have to save each clip as a separate video, and then open a new project and load each one into that project and try to create a video that way and see if it works. This is really eating up a lot of time since it takes a long time to create a 1-2 hour video into DVD format.

If you have any suggestions I would appreciate them.

[GuyL]

I would recommend doing this anyway. Creating a DVD from a loaded project has always been problematic. I always create a video file of each project then add the video clips to the DVD wizard.

[Buddy Stansbury]

GuyL,... I started out a couple of years ago with VS5, then VS6, and now VS7 for the last year or more. I've produced dozens of DVD movies from all kinds of source content, DV camcorder, VHS tape, Digital Stills, DVD rips, etc. and I've never had a problem. All my DVD+R have worked in everyone's DVD play. Last month I produced a 1-1/2 hour movie of the Womens club Awards dinner, which was shot with two different DV camcorders, added still from 4 other camera, merged cool 3D animated clips, music, etc. and then made 10 DVD copies. Not one problem. At christmas I taped 9 different children Xmas specials, did a digital firewire pass through my camcorder to my PC, edited out the commercials in VS7 and then produced the DVDs. I put 2-3 movies on each DVD. I've never had a problem till this audio thing popped up.

I'm trying the fix again, because I forgot to restart my system after I updated the DVD folder. It is processing right now and I hope it works.
However, I still want to find out why. I just have a hard time believeing that some software DLL files written for VS8 are ever going to work in VS7. I suspect that what is working is the updated files that were part of VS7.

I understand your suggestion, but that seem a lot of time and work. If I take a two hour movie, that has been cut into 15+ individual clips to get rid of the commercials, and save each one as a trimmed clip, then load them into a new project and burn that,... that will take a lot of time. Even after a trimmed clip has been renedered to an .avi, which takes a good deal of time, the entire project will get renderend again, and converted to mpg. That takes a long time. My system is fast enough for me, a 2 GHz, AMD processor. I like the way I was working since it was quick and very accurate. I never lost any clips or audio sync. and the quality of the DVD was great.

I'll get back to you when this "Create Disk" is done.

[Buddy Stansbury]

GuyL

I still have the same problem after restart. Nothing changed. produced the full video to DVD and no sound. At each step of the process I used the preview window to play the video,... but of course, it is only playing the .AVI file, cut up in time and stored as numbers in the VSP file. I guess I must have a corrupt VSP file, as I can play the .AVI file in just about any software and the audio is fine.

I did do a test using your process of saving each vidoe clip as a trimmed clip and it was saved as an avi file. Then I opened a new project and dragged in two clips. Then I went to "Share" and created a DVD disk file.
It rendered the new project and it works fine when play on PowerDVD player. Since all of this works, I can only assume that something in my orginal VSP is bad???? I'm now saving each clip as a trimmed video and will attempt to load all of this into a new project and try again.

In your note you indicated that the way I create DVD's out of one large avi file is problematic. Could you expand on this as I think this is the way the program was designed to run. What I do exactly is to record a high quality tape of a DirectTV movie via S-video. I then play back this tape through my Sony DV camcorder using Firewire passthrough. This converts the video to DV (.avi) on the fly. This is captured as a DV .avi file on one of my 120 GB hard drives and is automatically saved as a .VSP project. Then I view the video and cut out each commercial at the "Fade to black" built into the video. The particular movie is about 1-1/2 hours long. Once I have it clean, and have played each section, I play it as a Project in the preview window to make sure I didn't miss a cut somewhere. After that I go the the "Share" mode, and select "Create Disk. On the next page I verify DVD mode, and the compression I want to use, deselect "Create Menus", and select "Play fisrt clip". On the next menu I play the video in the preview window to veryify everything is there and there is no audio problems. Once that is OK, I go to the next menu where I turn "OFF" record to disk, and select "Create DVD folders" and make sure the destination is OK. Then I select "Output" and sit back and wait.

As I mentioned before, this process has been working for me for more than a year, and about 50+ movies and personal videos.

What I don't understand is why I can't just reload all of the orginal VS7 disk, apply the updates that I was using and get back to what I had. I have done this and still no success. I've also applied the .zip fix you used, and still no luck. Something else is screwed up.

Maybe someone else out their can read this and help with a suggestion.

[GuyL]

I think I may have misunderstood your original comment.

I have read and experienced problems when I create DVD directly from the project. I create a video file for each project I create and add each video individually when creating a DVD.

One difference is that you use AVI files so maybe something is happening in the conversion. I capture in MPEG, Edit with same properties for the project and produce the video file the same. Nothing changes throughout the whole process and there is minimal rendering. I produce the DVD based on the same settings.

[Buddy Stansbury]

GuyL,.. I see that your process is quite different. I've always know there is the ability to capture into MPEg, but never felt this would give good quality. To do this, VS7 must compress the input DV file coming over firewire to MPEG in real time and this takes a lot of processing power, since the DV camcorder is not going to slow down or pause, or anything else. To get up to mpeg compression at 8 Mbit/sec I think there would be lots of dropped frames and also run the risk of audio sync problems. In the transfer of AVI over firewire, there is no way to loose 1 byte of data and/or audio sync. It is just a file transfer. Once on my system, the MPEG compression can take all the time it needs to create a high quality file.

When you capture from Video in to direct MPEG, what are your settings, i.e., 740x480, 8000 kbs, LPCM 48 kc audio, ???. The AVI audio is at 38 kc
and to get it into DVD compatible rate it would have to be converted in real time to 48 kc. Are you using VS7 to capture or do you have some hardware assist card to capture for you???

[GuyL]

Your concerns are valid. Most in here will recommend caputuring in AVI format. I capture from an analog camcorder through an ATI All-in-Wonder. The capture has to be digitized anyway and I haven't had any problems really. It uses a lot less disk space. I have configured a dual boot system and the one boot runs only Video studio and no other applications or processes. My system runs Windows XP on 1 GB of RAM and a P4 2.4GHz. I capture at 740x480, 8000kbs, LPCM 48 Audio, Field Order B.

[Buddy Stansbury]

GuyL,..

It is very strange,.. we both use the same ATI card for capture. My Camera is a Sony TRV-740. My system is not as fast as your and I dont' do Dual boot. I just have much faster hardware. I have 4 disk drives. I use C for system only, and I have two 80 GB drives for just personal data. Then I have two 120 GB drives I dedicate to video production. One for Editing, and one for capture. They are on indvidual ATA 100 mbs busses on an RAID motherboard. If you go thru the ATI board, you are using their direct MPEG compression assisted hardware. If you have ever spent any time on the VCDHelp web site, or now the DVDHelp web site you will have seen hundreds of people with all kinds of problems doing that. I went down that road for about a year and was ready to jump off a cliff because of all the problems, including a dual boot system that I spent a year building. I still ended up with terrible videos and dropped frames, changing updates from ATI that never worked, problems, problems, etd.

I finally gave it all up and pruchased a Digital Camcorder and firewire cable to my system. My Camcorder can read all my old 8mm analog tapes and converts them to digital internal to the camera and then transferes them without loosing a byte to my system. This puts no strain what so ever on my system since it is just direct transfer.

The mpg compressor in the ATI hardware and software is OK, but it is no where near the quality of what is in VS7. I will stick to AVI transfer and use the process I have used for more than a year. All my DVD videos are of the best quality. I also have the TMPGen mPEG encoder and have tested and compared it to what I get out of VS7. Only in the absolute high speed scenes, like an explosion in "Saving private Ryan" can I see the difference, and then only if I view each DVD in stop frame motions on a large screen TV. The TMPGen encoder has been rated as one of the best mpg compressors on the market.

When I do a one and half hour movie in VS7 compressor, it takes about 4+ hours and up to 6 hours on my system,.. which is a 2GHs processor with very high speed dedicated disk system, which is the key to performance. You can't create the video faster than you can write it to disk. without getting overruns. I have 312MB of ram, but the high speed RAID disk system is what gives me the performance. Each disk on my system is on a separate 100 MBS buss, but is not in raid mode, just point to point data transfer with 8MB cache on each transfer.

When I first start this effort 2+ years ago I use the ATI card to direct capture in MPEG using I frames only to get the best quality. It was still not good enough. When you capture in AVI. there is no compression, translation, just transfer. This gives the software all the time it needs to optimise the video compression, and to maximise the use of varible bit rates. I set my system to the MAX for each video, ie. 740x480, at 8000 kbs, 48kc, at 384. You can't get better than the orginal, and I have found no one who can tell the difference in my DVD's from the orginal.

In the mean time, I used your process to render each video clip and rebuilt a brand new VSP project with those clips. It is now in the "Create Video Folders" process. I think that somehow my orginal VSP file got damaged, and has remainded damaged, even though I've updated the software. The VSP is still bad. The orginal AVI I transferred is still ok and that is what I'm using to create the new clips and the new DVD. I sure hope this works cause I'm really getting tire of chasing this dog.

[Buddy Stansbury]

GuyL,... I just finished the process of saving each of the 9 clips of the video and then I created a new VSP project and dragged in all the clips, tested it, and then created the DVD folders for the VOB files. It all tested fine and now I'm burning the DVD.

I'm still searching for why this didn't work in my orginal VSP file, so I will try a completely new movie and see if I just really had a corrupt VSP file.

Who knows,... it could be as simple as that.

Thanks for your help.

[GuyL]

Buddy,

Yes the video capture in ATI's software is crap. I can't capture video anywhere near the quality that I can with VS7. I'm goint to purchase a much larger hard drive soon and retry the AVI capture to see if it makes a difference. My dedicated video drive is only 30GB currently so it doesn't take long to fill it up using AVI capture.

[Buddy Stansbury]

Guyl,.. Good news, Once each clip was saved to a new project VSP, Create disk, Create Video Folders, tested in PowerDVD, burn in Nero,.. just perfect output. I'm getting convinced that the orginal VSP file was bad, and I will test an all new movie. If you get another hard drive, make sure you put it on a separate IDE buss and get one that will support 100 MBS ATA.

Bud