H.264 audio sync problems remain

[markalway]

Since the release of H.264 I've been desiring to encode several DVDs in that format. I was originally using an earlier version of ffmpegX but upgraded to 0.0.9u on a PowerMac G4 450 Mhz box (yes, it was painfully slow clocking in at about 18 hours per disk.) Regardless of the original DVD (NTSC film, NTSC, etc.) every encoding had an audio sync problem that gradually got worse during the length of the DVD. By the end it was a good second or two off.

I figured it might have to do with my computer, so I recently upgraded to the brand new 20" iMac core-duo intel. Thankfully encoding takes less than an hour now, but the same audio sync problem remains. The final H.264 encoded file has different lengths for the video and audio tracks when viewing in the Quicktime Movie Properties window. I use the standard presets for H.264 with mencoder and occasionally do a crop. With or without the crop I receive the audio sync problem. I tried the x264 encoding option and that seemed to work better, but I don't know how to merge all the individual files (because it uses .VOB files instead of a VIDEO_TS folder) back together.

I know Major had found a problem with the mencoder engine earlier that created this sync problem, but I figured it was solved. I've never been able to have an h.264 file that didn't have the sync issue. Suggestions?

[major]

Email me some detail (process output, screenshot of the summary tab..) to major4@mac.com for further analysis.

[markalway]

No changes yet. Sync problems still remain. Looking forward to any information you can provide based on the screen shots and process logs I sent.

[DeusExMachina]

Just shooting in the dark, but might this be an inverse Telecene 3:2 pulldown problem in the player related to incorrect data in the files' header information? This would cause the movie to be playing back at 29.97 fps, but the audio to be thinking it was at 30fps (23.976/24 for NTSC film conversion) thus getting further out of sync as the movie progresses. This would only be evident in a long video file, such as commercial DVDs of full-length films.

[major]

Apparently your source was really NTSC FILM and you used NTSC to encode. Try to encode to NTSC FILM and check if it does make any difference.

[markalway]

Apparently your source was really NTSC FILM and you used NTSC to encode. Try to encode to NTSC FILM and check if it does make any difference.

I tried recoding with NTSC FILM and the same problem persists. That's not it. Do you want the process log for the latest encoding to see if you see anything?

[major]

Sure, you can email it too.

[mactsk]

also i have a sync problem with h264
i am converting from .ts (mpg2 ts from satellite television capured with a dreambox)
i have the sync problem only with the newer version, of ffmpegx with the previous version (i not remember the version letter ) all was fine.

what informations can i send that you can use?