GOP too long; Out of Sync Audio; Blank Screen ! Sigh!

[Mickey79]

Ave,

Nothing is working out... i'm trying all the solutions, all the advice, but it just isn't working out.

I've been trying to convert PAL Video to NTSC and author to DVD as NTSC.

Firstly, TDA says "GOP is too long". Wether i ignore it or try DVD Architect, the video is Blank! After authoring, you can see the motion menus/chapters.. but clicking on any gives you a blank screen with Audio playing. This video is a 352 X 240 video.
The second video in this DVD is a 704 X 480... the video works great, authored from either TDA or DVD Architect.... but the audio is out-of-sync no matter what i do. Leaving it as it is, or using BeSweet's presets, it's just not getting in sync.

Following all the advice, here's what i have been doing:

Taking my PAL fps Video (352 X 288) and encoding it to PAL 25 fps Progressive 4000 Bitrate 352 X 240 using the MPEG Output in TMPGEnc Xpress. I put the resultant M2V in DGPulldown and encode it with setting 25 -> 29.970

Using BeSweet i convert the AVI to AC3. The time length of this AC3 is different from the resultant M2V that i have. So i run the AC3 again in BeSweet using Preset (PAL -> NTSC : 25 -> 23.976) .. and now the AC3 and M2V are of equal length. If i check them in DVD Architect preview before authoring, they are in Sync.

Wether i author this in TDA or DVD Architect, the screen is blank and only the audio plays. Burn it, play it in my DVD player, and still the same.. Blank Screen with Normal Audio.

Taking my second PAL fps Video (640 X 520) and encoding it to PAL 25 fps Progressive 4000 Bitrate 704 X 480 using the MPEG Output in TMPGEnc Xpress. I put the resultant M2V in DGPulldown and encode it with setting 25 -> 29.970

Using BeSweet i convert the AVI to AC3. The time length of this AC3 is different from the resultant M2V that i have. So i run the AC3 again in BeSweet using Preset (PAL -> NTSC : 25 -> 23.976) .. but this time the AC3 comes out distorted and horrible, as if corrupted. So basically i'm not able to get the correct lengt, in-sync AC3 out of the original AC3 because a second encode is corrupting it.

I don't know what i'm doing wrong.. where i'm going wrong, but this so frustrating.

Would appreciate any help i can get.

Thanks,
Mickey

[Abond]

Firstly, TDA says "GOP is too long". Wether i ignore it or try DVD Architect, the video is Blank! After authoring, you can see the motion menus/chapters.. but clicking on any gives you a blank screen with Audio playing. This video is a 352 X 240 video.
The second video in this DVD is a 704 X 480... the video works great, authored from either TDA or DVD Architect.... but the audio is out-of-sync no matter what i do. Leaving it as it is, or using BeSweet's presets, it's just not getting in sync.

I am sorry to hear that.

Taking my PAL fps Video (352 X 288) and encoding it to PAL 25 fps Progressive 4000 Bitrate 352 X 240 using the MPEG Output in TMPGEnc Xpress. I put the resultant M2V in DGPulldown and encode it with setting 25 -> 29.970

Correct.

Using BeSweet i convert the AVI to AC3.

I assume then that your original audio was not AC3. What is it? If it is mp3 VBR this step is wrong IMO.

The time length of this AC3 is different from the resultant M2V that i have. So i run the AC3 again in BeSweet using Preset (PAL -> NTSC : 25 -> 23.976) .. and now the AC3 and M2V are of equal length. If i check them in DVD Architect preview before authoring, they are in Sync.

What are you using to determine the lenght? Are you sure it reports the correct lenght? Runing the audio again through besweet with this preset is wrong. I would not trust DVD Architect on it. Last question - did you try to author the video with the first AC3 ignoring the reported lenght difference?

I don't know what i'm doing wrong.. where i'm going wrong, but this so frustrating.

I believe it is frustrating. I may suggest you to try muxman for simple authoring to check if the results are correct. So good luck.

[Mickey79]

Ave,

I can't figure out the blank screen issue at all. Its' wierd. I take my 352 X 288 PAL AVI and encode it to 352 X 240 25 FPS M2V using TMPGEnc Xpress. I played this M2V individually in InterVideo WinDVD 6, and it played absolutely fine.
I ran it through DGPulldown with setting 25 -> 29.970 and again played the resultant M2V in InterVideo WinDVD 6, but this one is blank.. it doesn't play. The timeline is there and the time bar progresses, but nothing is visible on the Screen. So basically after DGPulldown, the video is going blank!

I assume then that your original audio was not AC3. What is it? If it is mp3 VBR this step is wrong IMO.

Well you may have something there then. Yes, the audio was not AC3 and yes indeed, it is MP3 VBR. Now come to think of it, i had used VirtualDubMod to extract WAV for my First Video file and then converted it AC3 using BeSweet and it's preset 25 -> 23.976 ... and it was in Sync! (In DVD Architect's Preview Mode... the video is blank on this one). But for the other video, where the Audio has been either out-of-sync or corrupted, i have been trying to do AVI to AC3 using BeSweet. I think i should extract WAV first and then do the WAV to AC3 like i did with my first file. That might fix the Sync problem.

What are you using to determine the lenght? Are you sure it reports the correct lenght? Runing the audio again through besweet with this preset is wrong. I would not trust DVD Architect on it. Last question - did you try to author the video with the first AC3 ignoring the reported lenght difference?

Yes, i did try to author with the first AC3 ignoring reported length difference. It came out of Sync.
Yes, i do thing running the audio again through BeSweet is ruining it, i think i'll go with Wav to AC3 option.
Thus far i have been using DVD Architect to determine the length... can you suggest something else?

Lastly, last night i re-encoded my first video (which is about 35 minutes length) with GOP structure as 1/4/2;I/P/B for NTSC.... and indeed it got rid of the "GOP too long" error in TDA. Now TDA accepts the M2V without any errors. Still, the video is blank upon authoring.

Thanks,
Mickey

[mats.hogberg]

I take my 352 X 288 PAL AVI and encode it to 352 X 240 25 FPS M2V using TMPGEnc Xpress.

I'd rip the audio out first, then patch the AVI to 23.976 fps using AVIFrate, and encode to 23.976 m1v. I think lastly run it thru pulldown.exe (not sure on this last step, as I do the opposite conversion mostly).
Decode ripped audio to wav, do a "framerate conversion" on the wav to 23.976, encode to AC3
Author.
Done.

/Mats

[Mickey79]

Ave,

I'm not sure i followed everything you said properly.

and encode to 23.976 m1v

What's the difference between M1V and M2V, and why choose M1V ?

then patch the AVI to 23.976 fps using AVIFrate, and encode to 23.976 m1v. I think lastly run it thru pulldown.exe

If the AVI is already patched to 23.976 ... why do you need to run it in DGPulldown? After you've patched it to 23.976 in AVIFrate, does that change the fps of the video to 23.976 ? And If you do have to run it in DGPullodwn, what setting do you use?

Decode ripped audio to wav, do a "framerate conversion" on the wav to 23.976, encode to AC3

In which software do the framerate conversion on WAV?

Thanks,
Mickey

[Abond]

I don't know if I can help you as this type of conversion I didn't done and I am not familiar with Xpress. But it seems the fault come somewhere in outputed m2v either from Xpress or from DGPulldown.
What I would do if I am in a such situation, firstly is to load in VirtualDubMod the m2v produced from Xpress and to look at file-fileinformation if I get what I expected - 352x240 at 25 fps. Then I would load the output from DGPuldown and look the same (this is because VDubMod doesn't respect pulldown flags - it will show you the source framerate).
Afterwards I woul load both files one after the other in ReStream and will look the same info, but here Xpress output should be 25.000 and DGPulldown output - 29.97. If it is correct then I am lost.
mats sugested pulldown.exe not DGPulldown (but it has the same functionality regarding regular NTSC 23.976->29.97 pulldown)
Ah, I assume m1v is a typo as mpeg1 doesn't support pulldowning
And, yes, patching the framerate change it in this case a little slowdown.