Weird Capture Problem: WMP says 27:00, TMPGEnc says 4:42

[ToeCutter]

I captured some video from my MiniDV camcorder. I used MS Movie Maker to capture a 27:00 minute clip. The AVI clip is about 5.74 GB. I used the 25 mbps DV-AVI setting in MS MM. When I watch in WMP, the clip is 27:00 minutes long from beginning to end. Yet when I load it into TMPGEnc to encode to MPEG2, the clip length is only 4:42. DVConvertor also sees the file as only 4:42 long. I have no idea why this happening.

Any suggestions ?

[Sulik]

This typically happens when the maximum bitrate is higher than the average bitrate.

The maximum bitrate is the only information stored in the MPEG file, so a decoder that uses that information is going to find that the length is very small because it assumes CBR (length=file_size/bitrate).

A 'smarter' player will look at the actual timestamps in the MPEG stream at the beginning and end to get the actual playing time.

[ToeCutter]

I considered a timecode issue, but the clip IS 27:00 long. I watched it from beginning to end.

When I let TMPGEnc finish encoding the file, it is only 4:42 long. I simply lose the last 22:00 of footage.