Standalone DVD recorder - is there and easier way to ensure audio sync?

[dphirschler]

Why is it that when I rip a DVD I made on my standalone DVD recorder, the audio is always out of sync when I rip it? Here is my process:

1) Insert DVD-R disc and initialize it
2) Record episode
3) Record another episode on another day (repeat if there is room for more)
4) Finalize disc on standalone recorder
5) Rip DVD on PC using DVD Decrypter (File mode)
6) DgIndex - load VOBs 1-4
7) Save project
8) AviSynth script uses DgDecode plugin to load the D2V file
9) AviSynth script uses NicAudio plugin to load the AC3 file
10) Load the script into Virtual Dub and the audio is out of sync.

I'll adjust the sync in my script using the 'DELAY' number in the AC3 filename but I'll usually have to add or subtract an additional 100 - 400 milliseconds to get it right. It's tedious. And the next episode will be off by a different amount! Why is it that DVD recorder rips always do this? I've also found that if I edit the mpeg in any way (on my Philips hdd recorder) before writing the DVD, it contributes to audio being out of sync.

The DVD plays just fine in any DVD player. The audio is perfectly in sync. It only gets out of sync when I rip it. So the big question is, how/why does it get out of sync when it's ripped? Or, how can I predictably set the audio delay so I don't have to go through this trial and error each time?


Darryl

[hech54]

Run your rip through FixVTS. That should clear up the problem....SHOULD.

[lordsmurf]

Which DVD recorder? Some of them make non-compliant AC3 that go out of sync once ripped. The fix I've always found easy is to use Womble MPEG Video Wizard, and convert to MP2. That does it. FixVTS won't help in those cases.

[dphirschler]

@lordsmurf, it happens with both my recorders (JVC DVDR and Philips HDD/DVDR). It is not "drifting" out of sync. It's just out of sync. I can get it back by adjusting the delay offset. But I want to avoid having to do that.

Won't the conversion to mp2 cause further degradation?

The big question to me is how do the DVD players have no problem finding sync when the rip does not? That delay offset has to be known somehow. Am I just ripping it wrong?


Darryl

[lordsmurf]

Your problem is in steps 6-9 somewhere, it's not the DVD recorder.

[dphirschler]

Your problem is in steps 6-9 somewhere, it's not the DVD recorder.

I like to think of myself as a fairly experienced DVD ripper. That being said, I suppose it could be in the DgIndex part; but I really thought I had that down. What could I be doing wrong in DgIndex?

I haven't had trouble with other DVDs. I don't think the trouble is because it was recorded on a standalone either; I've ripped plenty of those. I think the key is that there is more than one title on this standalone-burned DVD.


Darryl

[hech54]

Your problem is in steps 6-9 somewhere, it's not the DVD recorder.

I like to think of myself as a fairly experienced DVD ripper.

Only step 5 is "ripping". The rest is conversion.

[jman98]

I haven't had trouble with other DVDs. I don't think the trouble is because it was recorded on a standalone either; I've ripped plenty of those. I think the key is that there is more than one title on this standalone-burned DVD.


Darryl

I don't have a DVD recorder so I have no personal experience here, but I have a suggestion for an experiment. Use a re-writable DVD and record a single show (it doesn't matter what as this is a test and you're not going to keep it) to the disc and finalize it. Use your methodology. See if that show also goes out of sync or not. If not, then you may be correct that there is something about recording multiple shows that is causing the problem. Also, I would definitely check the files after step 6 (ripping) and see if they are still in sync or not. If they are in sync, then there may be something with your other steps causing the issue.

Not trying to offend you, but your process does seem somewhat awkward to me. You'd probably be a lot better off to just record straight to a PC than use the recorder and then rip it for processing. I just record straight to my PC from my cable box via firewire and that works great. Even recording directly to a TV capture card of some kind might give better results than this. You and I have exchanged messages before and you are an experienced user and not some newbie, so I'm a little puzzled by your use of the DVD recorder as an intermediate step. It's not like you are doing that because you don't know any other way.

[dphirschler]

Use a re-writable DVD and record a single show (it doesn't matter what as this is a test and you're not going to keep it) to the disc and finalize it. Use your methodology. See if that show also goes out of sync or not. If not, then you may be correct that there is something about recording multiple shows that is causing the problem.

I should point out that it does not "go out of sync". It doesn't start off in sync and then drift. It's just out of sync. Changing the delay offset brings it back perfectly in sync. That being said, this is a good test and I will do it and report back. In fact, I already have some single show discs, so I am halfway there.

Also, I would definitely check the files after step 6 (ripping) and see if they are still in sync or not. If they are in sync, then there may be something with your other steps causing the issue.

This is also a good test. I will try loading each single VOB in DgIndex and saving them to their own projects. I have a feeling that I will need to start ripping in IFO mode, each title. That will be a pain, but probably less of a pain than trial and error to find audio sync.

Not trying to offend you, but your process does seem somewhat awkward to me. You'd probably be a lot better off to just record straight to a PC than use the recorder and then rip it for processing. I just record straight to my PC from my cable box via firewire and that works great. Even recording directly to a TV capture card of some kind might give better results than this. You and I have exchanged messages before and you are an experienced user and not some newbie, so I'm a little puzzled by your use of the DVD recorder as an intermediate step. It's not like you are doing that because you don't know any other way.

No offense taken. I know I have strange methodologies at times. But I think I have valid reasons for doing it the way I do it. One big reason is that the PC is usually busy with encoding or some audio project I am working on. Another is that I love to archive my shows, but I don't always have the time to get right on it and work with it on the PC. So I keep the discs with my raw recordings on them until I can get to them. Also, my tuner box has no firewire out, and my PC sits far away from the tuner. And lastly, it's just easy to schedule weekly recordings on the stand-alones.

The JVC recorder has the digital tuner built-in so it records straight to DVD (DDD). It's probably doing some conversion internally because the audio gets resampled and is stereo instead of 5.1. And the video is getting filtered as well I am sure. So it's not a raw dump of the mpeg stream. But it makes great recordings, so I am not complaining. The video is excellent quality with a trace of temporal filtering (which I cannot turn off).

The Philips recorder is set up like so: digital tuner box > S-video/RCA audio > Philips DVD/HDD recorder to HDD > then I burn to DVD (DAD). I get great quality recordings this way and has given new life to an old analog-only recorder. And despite the analog step, I believe it gives better quality recordings than the JVC.

I do have a MythTV box, but it records analog channels only, so it converts the analog cable to digital mpeg, and then I write it to disc (AAD). I cannot seem to get the digital tuner card (Fusion HDTV 3 Gold/QAM) working in it at the moment.


Darryl

[DarrellS]

I spent most of last year trying to sync up every single program that my friend recorded with his Philips. He switched from COX to Dish Network and although it fixed his audio volume problems (he was having to raise the volume on most of his recordings), it did not fix the sync issues. Someone suggested using VideoRedo in Quickfix mode when putting the DVDs on the PC and he hasn't had an out of sync video since.

All of the DVDs played in sync when using MPC but every option we tried to edit these DVDs produced out of sync video. Just opening the files in an editor knocked them out of sync. We tried every program and every guide we could to produce an in sync video and the only way we found to insure a perfect video was to use VideoRedo in QuickFix mode.

I felt bad for recommending that he buy the DVD recorder. Had the Hauppauge HD PVR been out when I recommended the Philips then I would've recommended that instead since the other problem he has is that the Philips cuts the sides off of all his HD recordings from the Dish Network recorder.

[jman98]

DarrellS' suggestion to use VideoReDo is pretty good. That's what I edit my TV captures with, high def or standard def. It can do a pretty good job of dealing with audio that has issues. I normally get a pretty clean cable TV feed, but sometimes frames get lost and VideoReDo can handle that in an intelligent way. I'm wondering if the problem might be that Darryl's TV source keeps dropping audio frames and that's why it can't stay in sync. VideoReDo's Quickfix mode could indeed be helpful here. Then again based on DarrellS' post, maybe some DVD recorders just have issues. I don't know.

[ZQX]

Why are you loading it into Avisynth? Does it play in sync after ripping it to your harddrive (step 5)?

Personally, I would treat each episode separately, instead of trying to process them altogether. I would run each episode through VideoRedo "quickfix" and then join them, or author them, or whatever it is you are trying to achieve.

[hech54]

I should point out that it does not "go out of sync". It doesn't start off in sync and then drift. It's just out of sync.

You've mentioned that twice. Nobody addressed that issue because it is a non-issue. I've had ONE disc in my lifetime that "went" out of sync and that was due to an obvious visible burp in the recording(DVD Recorder).
Taking one VOB from the others is also an accident waiting to happen. All of the VOBs contain
information linking one to another....all the way down the line. That's why nobody does that
and that's why programs like VOB2MPEG are so popular.
Take it from an OLD Philips DVD recorder owner....FixVTS. Before it was hijacked by programs
like RipItForMe...it was initially designed to repair the odd things DVD recorders occasionally interpret
as "DVD Standard".
I also feel you need to drastically adjust your work-flow. Even discs from my dad's Cybercrap(Cyberhome)
DVD recorder can be fixed in a matter of minutes. I think your problem lies elsewhere.

[qpskfec]

I have used a couple of Philips DVD recorders for years and ripped many discs using DVDecrypter to reauthor DVDs. I don't remember many a/v sync issues. I agree that ripping isn't the source of the problem.

In the extremely rare cases where there have been a/v issues, Videoredo quick stream fix has fixed the problem and is my tool of choice to cut/join mpeg.

I don't know what the goal of the OP is, and I don't use any of the sw in steps 6-10, but it does look needlessly complicated to me so I'll second the comments on work flow.

[dphirschler]

Numerous people have suggested Video Redo. That is next on my list after I try some of the other suggestions above. I have tried FixVTS and initially thought it did the trick, but further testing proved me wrong. But I still think it might be useful if applied to a single IFO. It did seem to change something because my frames were in different places. I had to adjust my script to match.

To answer why I do it the way I do it... I bring it into AviSynth because I tinker with it. Of the numerous things I sometimes have to do, I do the following:

- I remove pulldown, restoring progressive frames. I am very picky about this so I do it manually and fix the sections where the pattern changes.
- I crop off the CC data at the top of the frame.
- I sometimes have to reconstruct a section if it got cut out somehow. So I'll take parts from other recordings and put them in place. I even wrote a script that adds the "TV 7" logo in there so it will match up.
- The JVC recorder's audio is very low, so I boost it.
- I am very picky about which frame to cut on (at the commercial breaks). I cut the commercial breaks using the trim command in my script.
- The Philips recorder has great video quality, but has some darker lines that I have written a script which hides them. Here is an example. Notice at the bottom, several darker horizontal lines. Also along the left edge and one line at the top.



Here is the fixed image.



FWIW, I think it's my tuner that makes those lines darker, not the Philips recorder. But I deal with them because I see them when I view it on my TV. I realize they are in the "overscan" area, but it appears that the new LCD HDTV's show the whole frame without cropping. At least mine seems to.

When I am done, it gets encoded to xvid and put on my media server. But if I want, I'll sometimes make a video DVD.

I would be interested to see how the "proper" workflow goes. I am assuming not everything I am doing is possible, but I'd like to see it nonetheless. I might be able to work something out with my Fusion HDTV Gold 3/QAM card. Maybe I can put it in my Windows box and dump the digital stream directly to the hdd with no conversions. However, in the past when I have done that I did suffer from audio sync drift, most likely from dropped or lost frames. But I'd like to see how the usual workflow goes if I continue using my DVD recorder.


Darryl

[dphirschler]

Looks like ripping in IFO mode is the method that works. I've ripped two so far and they both worked.


Darryl

[DarrellS]

Make sure you are getting the whole video. My friend and I were using DVDdecrypter in IFO mode with no file splitting and on most of the DVDs from the Philips recorder, we were missing the 1st GB of data. We didn't seem to have as many sync issues but we were missing a lot of the recordings. We didn't realize that we were missing the data until after we had erased most of the recordings. VOB2MPEG2 got all the data but all the files were out of sync. It's almost like all the DVDs were corrupt til a certain point, causing the sync issues. Something wrong with the index.

VideoRedo was the only program that worked. We tried Womble MPEG Video Wizard but we still had the same sync issues.

[dphirschler]

I have DVD Decrypter set the same way - no file splitting. And I noticed that DVD Decrypter listed the same pgc's twice. I chose the second ones to rip.

No video is missing as far as I can tell.


Darryl

[vhelp]

So is the sync cleared up already then ?

I was going to blame your post-edits and things, but you said that IFO cleared that up. I find it hard to believe that because its still data being ripped. But then you mentioned vaguely something about not getting the whole video when you demux, I think.

My understanding is that if you don't get the whole (GOP section(s)) during the cutting/demuxing, you will probably get audio sync issues because parts of the audio is in the section of GOP you missed in that cutting process.

Glad you got it resolved, I hope.

-vhelp 5286

:P *~*!*~*!~* HaPpY HoLiDaYs *~*!*~*!~*

[dphirschler]

OK, well, I just ripped a pgc in IFO mode, single file, and I experienced the dreaded missing 30 min section of video problem DarrellS experienced. And DgIndex would not even finish with the file. It just hangs there. So I am back to ripping the whole disc in file mode and manually adjusting the audio sync. I may try VideoRedo, but I want to make sure there is not a freeware answer first.


Darryl

[DarrellS]

OK, well, I just ripped a pgc in IFO mode, single file, and I experienced the dreaded missing 30 min section of video problem DarrellS experienced. And DgIndex would not even finish with the file. It just hangs there. So I am back to ripping the whole disc in file mode and manually adjusting the audio sync. I may try VideoRedo, but I want to make sure there is not a freeware answer first.


Darryl

I'm afraid your only two options are spendings hours, days, weeks, months fixing each and every DVD or paying for VideoRedo. I never pay for any software if I don't have to but this is one software that I would not have a problem with buying.

You can try it before you buy it. VideoRedo TV Suite is $75. VideoRedo Plus is $50.