UVS 10 MPEG-2 audio synch problem

petgray · Post by **petgray** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 8:03 pm

Good afternoon

In the last 24 hours I have been getting to grips with the well known UVS MPEG-2 editing audio synch problem, which I didn't know about until last night but I have now read about 200 postings about it and I gather it's pretty well known to everyone else.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to post about it. Seems like the general consensus is that UVS doesn't do a good job of editing MPEG-2 video, and that I should use Womble, which is better designed for this particular job and is less likely to introduce audio synch problems. So that is what I shall probably do.

But the main reason for posting this is to suggest a small workaround for this problem if it's not too severe and you are not too concerned about the order of the video clips in your final DVD. If you are assembling a long piece of MPEG-2 video from a number of shorter clips, rearrange the order of the clips putting the ones where lip-synch is most important first, and the ones where it's less important at the end, because usually (as in my case) the video starts in synch and gets progressively more out of synch with time.

Just thought I'd mention this as I don't think anyone else has.

Cheers.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 11:59 pm

Did turning off SmartRender not work for you?

petgray · Post by **petgray** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:18 am

I realise from what I've read that this is one of the options, and I'm going to try it (haven't had chance yet). However, the trouble is, SmartRender sounds as though it is something I should be using, because I don't want my MPEG-2 video, which is already DVD-compliant, to be re-rendered and thus potentially lose quality, so I'm a bit reluctant to turn it off. But I'll try it and post the result here.

petgray · Post by **petgray** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:52 am

OK. Here are the results of my tests, as promised.

Ken, thanks for your suggestion of turning off SmartRender, but the result was as I expected. The sound is now in sync. The video quality is now slightly degraded as a result of the video having been unnecessarily re-rendered.

Yesterday I (unusually) had a little spare time on my hands so I downloaded the one month fully functional free trial version of Womble MPEG Video Wizard DVD and did a little editing with it, and the result was as I expected. There were lots of things it didn¡¦t do. It didn¡¦t crash. It didn¡¦t degrade my video quality. It didn¡¦t de-sync my audio. It just edited my MPEG-2 files. Perfectly.

So I think that despite sticking to UVS from versions 7 through to 10, the time has come for me and UVS to part company, and I¡¦ve posted a message to Ulead under a new subject heading to explain why.

tyamada · Post by **tyamada** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:57 pm

I had that problem when VS10+ was first realeased, it dissapeared after installing the service pack 1.

What I found if you are doing multiple cuts, limit them to no more than 3 and save to video file with same as first clip option. Do this until the entire file is done. Then put all the clips together into a final video or make a DVD.

I may take a little longer but all my video/audio is in sync.

Womble sometimes produces the video/audio out of synd, its totaly random and I haven't found a work around for it yet.

Sektionschef · Post by **Sektionschef** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:48 pm

Have you tried this:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... highlight=
Regards
Sektionschef

petgray · Post by **petgray** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:03 pm

Thanks for those additional suggestions. Sektionschef - yes, I tried that but unfortunately it didn't work for me. Tyamada: now I've got hold of Womble and learned how to use it I will probably use that from now on, but I'm going to try your suggestion to see if I can rescue the video I have already edited with UVS, because it took me a few hours and I don't want to have to start over from scratch and re-edit the same video in Womble.

Sektionschef · Post by **Sektionschef** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:32 pm

Here is another idea:
Download the freeware pvastrumento(http://www.offeryn.de/pvas_2_1.htm), load each mpeg2 file into it and create a new "repaired" file by selecting "make PS".
Then use the new generated mpeg2 files with UVS and edit a new movie.
Does it fix any audio sync problems?
Regards
Sektionschef

petgray · Post by **petgray** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 1:19 pm

Good morning everyone

I really appreciate everyone¡¦s helpful suggestions and posts to try to fix my (and other people¡¦s) audio sync problems, so last night I worked methodically through as many as I could and listed the results below in case it¡¦s helpful to anyone else.

Some people seem to have no problems at all editing MPEG-2 files while others seem to be plagued by them. I am beginning to wonder whether there are some subtle variations in the MPEG files produced by different camcorders such that UVS can work with some but not others. So in a spirit of scientific enquiry, I have started a separate topic in which people can post the make and model of their camcorder and whether or not they have VideoStudio issues such as crashing or out of sync audio, in the hope that if enough people post their information, a pattern may emerge. The survey can be found here:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... 124#125124

Here¡¦s some technical details followed by my list of things I have tried:

Details of MPEG-2 files produced by my camcorder:
NTSC-DVD, Upper Field First, 24 bits, 720x480, 16:9
Frame rate: 29.970 frames/sec, Data rate: variable max 9100 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48000Hz, 5.1 channels, layer: None, bit rate 448 kbps

What I did: inserted 23 of the above files into the timeline, edited them there by trimming only (no transitions or other special effects), inserted a 2-second title at the start, saved the project as an MPEG-2 file with same properties as the first video clip, with SmartRender on. The resulting file had video and audio with the same properties and quality as the original files, they started out in synch but by the end of the 9-minute video the sound was about 1 second ahead of the video.

What I did to try to fix it:

1. Doing weird stuff with the UVS configuration files as described here:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... light=sync
No effect

2. Installing Service Pack 1 ¡V no effect

3. Doing the video editing with Womble MPEG Video Wizard DVD instead of UVS10: complete success as described above.

4. Using the Ken Berry method and turning off SmartRender: partial success as described above (audio synchronized but video slightly degraded due to unnecessary re-rendering).

5. Using the Peter Gray method: re-ordering the video clips within the project so that those requiring more lip-synch came first and those requiring less lip-synch came at the end. Partial success: it made no difference to the amount by which the audio was out of synch but it looked a bit better.

6. Using the Steve method to re-synch the rendered output file, as described here:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=11524
No success. I understood what I was supposed to do, and I thought I did it, but despite several tries the end result still looked and sounded the same. Steve ¡V in order to use your method, does SmartRender need to be turned off? Because in order to shorten the video file by 1 or 2 seconds and then re-attach the audio, presumably the whole thing would have to be re-rendered, resulting in the loss of quality issue which I described in (4) above.

7. Using VideoReDo Plus to re-synch the output file. Unable to do because I only had a trial copy, the license had expired and if I¡¦m paying the full whack for a new Womble MPEG Video Wizard my wife would hit the roof if I also paid for a licence for VideoReDo. You know women; they just don¡¦t understand.

8. Using the Tyamada method described above. I edited each individual clip, saved it as an MPEG-2 file with the same properties as the original clip, then re-inserted all the edited clips to the timeline and created a new MPEG-2 file, again with the same properties as the first video clip. Yes ¡V this worked. Audio and video in sync, no loss of video quality. But boy, did it take a long time. I had to load the edited project into the timeline, delete all the clips in the project except one, save that clip, then re-load the project into the timeline and repeat the above process again for each clip, 23 times. It took me about an hour.

So overall, the best method (i.e. the shortest time to produce the best results) was Method 3. Take a bow, Womble.

tyamada · Post by **tyamada** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:17 pm

As I suggested before about seperating clips, you could probably use up to five (5) clips without going out of sync. I used 3 before but you might experiment with more to see when the out of sync starts.

Using more clips would cut down on time spent.

petgray · Post by **petgray** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 2:37 pm

As I suggested before about seperating clips, you could probably use up to five (5) clips without going out of sync. I used 3 before but you might experiment with more to see when the out of sync starts.

Using more clips would cut down on time spent.

That's true - but I suspect there's probably no one point at which the out of sync starts. It's a gradual process which just becomes more noticeable the longer the final rendered file. In fact, I suspect that even the short rendered files may be out of sync by just a little bit, but only if you look very closely, and probably not noticeable to a casual viewer. I'm very keen to ensure that the final version of my project is as good quality as I can make it (limited only by the quality of the original camcorder footage) because I've learned from experience that what looks passable on a small computer screen can look b****y awful when magnified 20x on to a big plasma TV screen.

tyamada · Post by **tyamada** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 6:10 pm

I found during my experiments that only one clip contributed to the out of sync problem and it was usually the last one in many. I too am aware of the out of sync problem because Video Studio 8 had the problem no matter what you did. I never had the problem with Video Studio 9 and sometimes use it to create my DVDs because it is a lot faster than VS10+.

Sektionschef · Post by **Sektionschef** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 9:10 pm

Peter, you haven't tried my method by running each mpeg2 file through pvastrumento, have you?
It will not be a final solution but if the sync problem disappears then I could be that the problem comes from the last open GOP that most camcorders do not close????
Regards
Sektionschef

Jerry Jones · Post by **Jerry Jones** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:47 pm

Here's the fix a Ulead engineer gave to me:

http://www.jonesgroup.net/media/mspfiveb.htm

It worked for me in connection with a Panasonic VDR-M30 DVD-RAM camcorder's standard definition MPEG-2 files.

Apparently, you tried it and it didn't work for you?

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

petgray · Post by **petgray** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:10 pm

Sektionschef - sorry, you're right, I didn't try your method. I was intending to, I downloaded pvastrumento, but by the time I had finished trying all the other methods it was 11pm, I was totally video'd out and exhausted and I couldn't face any more! Also, by that time I had found two methods which worked so I was disinclined to try any more.

I found that the video was about 1 second behind the audio i.e. the audio finished first, whereas if the video was losing frames in the editing process, this is rather odd because one would expect the video to become shorter and finish first?

Jerry - that's right, I tried that and it didn't work for me.

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UVS 10 MPEG-2 audio synch problem

UVS 10 MPEG-2 audio synch problem

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