Strange XVid PAL -> NTSC MPEG-4

[demon0]

I have two strange AVI files that GSpot claims are encoded with XVid. The reason they are so crazy is because if I open them in any player (Nero Showtime, Winamp, Media Player Classic, Windows Media Player 10), the program crashes. I suspected a driver problem, but then pulled out the last resort... VLC. It plays them beautifully. What I am wondering is how can I convert these to something my DVD authoring program is going to understand. They are AVI, but I fear the fact that most software players throw up it means the authoring program will not handle them either. Has anyone come in contact with files like this before or have any suggestions as to the best way to get it to DVD, painlessly? I use DVDSanta as an authoring program and don't really like to use others, as I always get audio sync problems. However, I will use another tool in this case if necessary. It is necessary to mention that the files are 25 fps (PAL) and I want to burn them to NTSC DVD. That may have additional steps required... I'm not too familiar. So my question is basically how to take this strange XVid AVI (PAL) and put it into DVD-compatible MPEG-4 (NTSC), making sure the audio is synced. Thanks in advance.

[Soopafresh]

Try installing the latest FFDshow Codec and see if they'll play in your regular players.

Will they open in VirtualDubMod ? If not, post a screen capture of your GSPOT info.

[pinovecs]

I've done the PAL to NTSC Conversion, found a how to on a website, but it is a PAIN!! As in quite a few hours on a P4 to process because it has to do each frame (size) and add frames (29.97 fps) etc. I'll try to find the link again, but it was a few years ago.

One suggestion to check. Does your DVD player support PAL? I have 2 that do and 1 that doesn't. The screen is streched a little bit but not too bad. I know I'm not much help but that saves significant time.

[Soopafresh]

You can convert fairly painlessly from PAL to NTSC by resizing to 720x480, encoding at 25fps, then running DGPulldown 25->29.97 to make the file NTSC.

[pinovecs]

One other tool you might try... Never used it on PAL files, but works ok (not movie quality, but TV) on NTSC.

https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=Avi2Dvd

[demon0]

Soopafresh, does the DGPulldown keep the audio in sync?

I installed the fddshow codecs and now, like you suspected, the files play in any player. It must have been my Xvid codec that was screwing them up.

Anyway, when I open the file in VirtualDubMod I get the following, which confirms my theory that there will be audio issues when converting this:

"VirtualDubMod has detected an improper VBR audio encoding in the source AVI file (audio stream 1). The current preference is to rewrite the VBR header with standard CBR values during processing for better compatibility. This may introduce up to 13520 ms of skew from the video stream. If this is unacceptable, decompress the *entire* audio stream to an uncompressed WAV file and recompress with a constant bitrate encoder. (bitrate: 215.4 +- 22.4kbps)

Do you still want to overwrite the header?"

I said no for now, but I am wondering if any of you have ideas as to what this could mean. I assume this complicated conversion a bit?

Pinovecs, that tool you linked to looks good. I like the fact that it burns to an image instead of a real DVD, so I can test the audio sync before burning. I may just give it a whirl on this tool, but would prefer to convert it to a more DVD-authoring-friendly format...

[demon0]

Also I forgot to mention that after pressing "no" to the question I detailed above that VirtualDubMod asks me, it does not succeed in opening the video. The lower status bar shows the error:

"Error decompressing video frame 0: an unknown error occurred (may be corrupt data). Error code -100"

That can't be good...

[Soopafresh]

Yes, DGPulldown keeps everything in sync. That's why it is by far the easiest way to do 25-29.97 conversion. You still have to resize your video to 720x480, but you encode to Mpeg2 at 25 fps. Once you're done encoding, you run the mpeg2 VIDEO portion through DGPulldown and do the 25-29.97 trick.


Regarding your VirtualDubMod Error - Run the AVIs through DivFix and try opening up the fixed files in VirtualDubMod again.

[demon0]

DivFix didn't find any errors, but I let it fix it anyway. I ran those through VirtualDubMod but yielded the same errors. VirtualDub (not Mod) also throws up on them. That's strange, but everything else seems to be able to play them now. I am in the process of transcoding to MPEG-2 with frame size 720x480 as we speak. When that is done I'll pipe it through DGPulldown and see what happens. If all goes well I should have the DVD done by tomorrow.

[redwudz]

The usual method I use to deal with VBR MP3 audio is to save it out as a WAV and use that for the audio source along with the video file when encoding. VirtualDub was telling you that. Otherwise you may have sync problems.