AVI sync; tearing my hair out!

[Rekusu]

Hi there,

First time to post on this forum. Although not experienced with finer niceties of video conversion and editing, I have been using DVD Shrink and some other freeware programs for some time.

I am trying to reduce some TV shows from VOB so that I can get the entire season onto one disk.
I have spent way too long trying to reformat VOB files to AVI, with reasonable quality, reasonable file size and audio sync.

I can achieve the former two, but lip sync is never happening. I have tried VirtualDUB, Super and a host of other software, and clicking the 'Sync audio with video' button achieves zilch.

There has to be an easy way; if so, what is it?

As a follow-up question, I would ideally like to hard code the sub-titles into the AVI, but that seems to be almost impossible as I cannot find the subtitle file. How do I extract it from a VOB?

Thanks

Rex

[hech54]

First things first....never work from a VOB File.....you need to be starting at the VIDEO_TS folder level. You start playing with VOB files and you are usually in for heartache....one of them being sync issues.
Second....you are going to burn these "AVI files" onto one disc....and what will you play this "disc" in/on?

[transporterfan]

I learned a long time ago that free software usually equates to crap software.
There are many exceptions to this rule but, in general, it's just the way it is.
My advice (and it comes with many years of my own hair pulling) is this:
invest in some decent editing, converting and burning software.
It will pay for itself in the long run.

For editing VOB's and general mpg use VideoRedo
For ripping, resizing and converting to AVI use DVDFab
For compressing files to disc, menu making and burning use ConvertXToDVD

With these three programs (wherever you may source them ) you can rarely go wrong.

[Rekusu]

Thanks for the replies. Hech54, I will probably be playing the AVI files using VLC on the computer. Other AVI files that I have, play well; including those burned to DVD. What do you mean by starting at the VIDEO-TS level? Do you mean that I should convert the VIDEO-TS.IFO first? Will that even open in a converter? Transporterfan, I hear what you are saying but can't totally agree; DVDShrink has been working well for me for years; DVD Fab Decrypt (my older, freeware version) does a very good job too. However, will look into the links you have posted. Many thanks. Rex

[hech54]

Thanks for the replies. Hech54, I will probably be playing the AVI files using VLC on the computer. Other AVI files that I have, play well; including those burned to DVD. What do you mean by starting at the VIDEO-TS level? Do you mean that I should convert the VIDEO-TS.IFO first? Will that even open in a converter?

The best way to say this is look into FREE software called VOB2MPEG. That will give you one, giant lump of MPEG2 video and should drastically reduce the sync issues you are experiencing loading VOB files into stuff.

[manono]

Or, assuming you decrypted the DVD properly (if it has advanced copy protection you have to use an up-to-date decrypter), open an IFO in AutoGK and let it convert it to AVI for you. Try the single-pass quality percentage setting. In the Advanced Settings you can set the width (640, maybe) if you don't want the default 720. AutoGK will also accept VOB input and if there is more than one VOB, opening the first will also open the rest in the sequence automatically (VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VOB, etc).

There are very few episodic DVDs that have any advanced copy protection. Then you can use DVD Decrypter set for IFO Mode to decrypt each individual episode to the hard drive.

[hech54]

The very inexpensive MPEGVCR is a MUST HAVE tool in my arsenal as well.

[awgie]

I know I'm coming in a few months late on this, but I'll say it anyway. I convert my DVDs into AVI files so I can play them on my TV using the WDTV media player (although there are many other media players that will also play them - even many newer DVD players have a USB port to connect an external storage device). I use DVD Decrypter to rip them, then pgc.NET to extract the movie from the ripped DVD, then I use avi.NET to convert them into AVI files. On the rare occasion I have a problem with audio sync (only twice out of several hundred DVDs), I edit the temporary audio file that was created by avi.NET (be sure to uncheck the box for temporary files so avi.NET doesn't delete them after conversion, otherwise you'll have to re-index them with index.NET) using Audacity, inserting or deleting milliseconds of audio wherever necessary to make the audio match up. It's a long and laborious process, especially if there is more than one spot where the audio and video lose sync. Then I replace the audio stream in the AVI file with the edited audio file using AviDemux.

Now, all those are free programs, and you can find them all right here (index.NET is a part of avi.NET). However, if you want to keep the original AC3 audio stream (for instance, if the DVD has 5.1 surround sound), Audacity is the only free AC3 editor I know of. You can import the AC3 file into it if you have installed the FFmpeg import/export library. Unfortunately, I found it won't export it back to a 5.1 channel AC3 file, it will merge all 6 channels into a single mono AC3 file - which is pretty much useless. So I have to export each track separately, and I re-combine them into a 5.1 channel AC3 using Sony Vegas Movie Studio, which is not free.

[transporterfan]

Audacity will export 6 channel AC3 if you use the custom mix settings.
In fact, if you push it, it can even export 8 channel.
I am making a supposition on the last comment (because I have nothing to test it on!), but it will definitely let you output a 7 channel mix.

[awgie]

Should I need to edit another 5.1 file, I'll give it a try. It just didn't want to cooperate with me on the last one.

[Phat J]

The method I have used multiple times with great success is:
- DVD Decrypter to extract the original VOB files
- DGMPGDec to index the VOBs and extract the audio, it will make a d2v file and ac3
- Load the d2v and ac3 in Xvid4PSP (as I usually do MP4 nowadays), or even VirtualDub to AVI

I find as long as you're not doing anything strange with the video, like changing the framerate, the resulting video will be in sync.
I have had issues when I skipped the DGMPGDec step and loaded the VOBs directly, however.