No audio when importing from DVD

[jloughery]

I have made a few DVD projects (home movies) and have attempted to import video titles from them for other projects but I am not getting any audio after import. I don't want to have to go back to the original files and redo all of the transitions and effects if I can avoid it. The clip appears to play normally but I get no sound. I have tried to import into VS 9 SE and MF5 with the same results. What am I doing wrong?

[PeterMilliken]

Do the home movies have their sound in Dolby format?

I imagine that VS 9 SE doesn't support Dolby (no idea about MF5) but I imagine this is most likely the problem.

Peter

[jloughery]

Peter,

I edited multiple clips and added transitions and effects using VS 9se. I then created a MPEG2 file of the finished work. This MPEG file was added to others, which were similarly prepared, using MF5 to burn the finished project. MF5 output the audio as Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 2/0(L,R).

[PeterMilliken]

John, from your description I doubt you are doing anything wrong - VS 9 SE probably doesn't support Dolby capture but you say you have attempting reading the DVD in using MF5 as well? Because if MF5 is capable of producing dolby sound then I would assume that it is capable of capturing/reading it back again!

Do you still have the original project and files? Why are you trying to read it back in? If you have the original files then you could try getting MF5 to create the DVD in (whatever the default sound format is - LPCM or something like that ).

Otherwise I am stumped here - I can't think of anything that would stop you from reading it back with MF5...

Peter

[jloughery]

Peter,

Yes, I still have the original, unedited, files. I just wanted to avoid the extra work. I deleted the edited files because I needed the space and figured I could always import them back from DVD if necessary. It is strange! When importing, it seems to recognize the audio as Dolby digital. After import, it will even let me split the audio but I still get no sound.

Anybody else got any advice?

[Ken Berry]

Have you tried installing the free AC-3 filter which can be downloaded at http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=AC3_Filter ? That should at least allow you to play the Dolby audio, though I don't think it will allow you to use Dolby as your output format.

[PeterMilliken]

Hi John,

I can't give any advise to recover from your trouble - but for future reference I made a similar "mistake" with my very first videos - sure you can re-import them but if you have transitions etc you can nolonger separate them from the underlying video clip (assuming you overlaid your transitions over the video clips instead of creating a solid colour insert and put the transition over that). Same with titles etc - so in essence I found I was "losing" information when I read back from DVD and attempted to make a new DVD from that as input.

So now when I finish a project I archive all the input files + project file etc to DVD blanks - that way I don't have to read back the DVD (and not be able to separate the title etc from the video clip ) and just make the required changes. I do this by keeping all of the files for a particular project in a dedicated partition of my hard drive - then I use Image for Windows (shareware) to snapshot an image of the partition to DVD blanks. Then if I need to re-edit, it is just a matter of restoring from the archive and making the required changes.

Just a thought for the future

Peter