Help a newbie under time constraints. Audio out of sync

laiels · Post by **laiels** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 7:25 pm

Hi. I've been having so many problems with DVD workshop2 that I'm almost regret purchasing it. I have some AVi files. They are episodes of a television show that I want to put together on a dvd with motion menus and give to my brother as a birthday present. I am having some audio sync problems. IT seems like each episode after I convert it to dvd format using DVD workshop, the audio starts out in sync with the video, but then later on in the video, the audio starts getting out of sync. I have noticed that by the end of each episode the audio is out of sync by maybe 1/2 second to a full second. What can I do to remedy this? Please explain in a newbieish way. I'm pretty new to any type of audio video work, so all this talk of "multiplexing, encode to mpeg2 first, sort of confuses me." I looked at the video properties of my avi videos (By right clicking on the thumbnail for the video and going to "video properties"

Please help, I need to get this done by Saturday and I have about 6 hours of video that I have to do. Any help would be appreciated.
Using DVD workshop2

Here are my disk template properties that I used for burning

Oh and I burn to a dvd folder first rather than straight to disk.

Using P4 3.2 with 2gigs ram

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 9:08 pm

...under time constraints...

That's really bad news. This common-nasty problem seems to have several causes and several solutions. Search the board for "sync" and you'll find lots ant lots of suggestions.

In my case, the sync problems were caused by corrupted MPEG-2 files. I think you have corrupted files too. The corrupt files may play-back fine before they are re-coded to the DVD format.

Your AVI/MPEG-4/MP3 capture settings look strange to me. You normally shouldn't capture to MPEG. But, my capture card only does MPEG-2, so I'll let someone else give you some recommendations.

- Here's what can happen -
- The audio and video are multiplexed (woven together in one file).
- They need to be de-multiplexed, re-coded, and re-multiplexed to the DVD format.
- If the audio or video portion hits a defect during re-coding, the length can change. For example, some video frames may be thrown-away.
- Now, the audio and video files have different lengths.
- When they are re-multiplexed they are out of sync.

laiels · Post by **laiels** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 9:24 pm

Thanks for the reply. I didn't do the capture myself. Anyways, I was looking at videohelp.com and I came about an article which talked about my problem. I'm basically taking some tv episodes that have the commercials already cut out and putting them on dvd. Here's the link to the article
http://www.svcd2dvd.com/Guides/AVSync/default.aspx . Anyways, according to the article I need to use http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html. THe only problem is, the download link isn't working right now. Do you know of somewhere else I can get this program? Does it looks like this article applies to my problem?

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 10:53 pm

The link works for me... maybe the site is back up now. Or just search for TEMPGenc. I think you can find it all over the Net. That procudure sounds like it's worth a try. I don't know if that software will work with your MPEG-4 files.

Here are some other programs that are supposed to repair MPEGs:

PvaStrumento (Free)
VideoReDo ($50 after free-trial period)
Womble MPEG Video Wizard ($120 after 30-day free trial) Or Womble MPEG2VCR ($50)

Again, I don't know if they are supposed to work with MPEG-4, and I have not tried any of them. (I own Womble MPEG Video Wizard, but I have not used it for this purpose.)

laiels · Post by **laiels** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 11:31 pm

Again. Thanks for the reply. From reading these forums, I have noticed that in a few of your posts you have mentioned that you do all encoding of video files to Mpeg2 with Womble and then import these into DVD workshop (Rather than letting DVD workshop do the converting). With this method, you state that you don't have any audio out of sync issues. Is this something that may help my problem? Can I take my avi files into womble, and then convert them to mpeg2 in womble and use these files in DVD workshop? Also could you clarify whether my file is a .AVI file or a Mpeg4 file? Again, I'm a newbie so this is all greek to me. The file extension is .AVI, but in the "properties" box, it states that the compression is Xvid-Mpeg4 codec. I know, I have a lot to learn. Thanks again for your help

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:25 pm

Also could you clarify whether my file is a .AVI file or a Mpeg4 file?

Well, it looks like its both. AVI/MPEG is unusual, but the AVI format seems to allow it.

This is from VideoHelp.com:

AVI -
Audio Video Interleaved - A multimedia file format for storing sound and moving pictures in RIFF format developed by Microsoft. An AVI file can use different codecs and formats so there is no set format for an AVI file unlike for example standard VCD video which sets a standard for resolution, bitrates, and codecs used.

If you can get your hands on the tapes, and if you have a capture device, the easiest thing to do now would be to re-capture in a more-normal AVI format. I'll let someone else recommend the "standard" codec. I'm not an expert on AVI... I'm stuck in an MPEG-2 world.

Or you might search the Net for an "MPEG4 Repair" or "AVI Repair" program. I found VideoRepair. I don't know what the free-trial limitations are. It would be nice to at-least find a program that will confirm if your file is corrupted!

Can I take my avi files into womble, and then convert them to mpeg2

As far as I know, Womble can only work with regular MPEG-2 (DVD format) files. But, it might be worth a try.