dvd-lab, sync, demultiplex

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

hello,

ive been visiting this site for a looong time now. ive gotten some really good advice so far. it severly raised my expectations on the outcome of my private dvd production!

i have a major problem! and i havent yet found any answer on this, here.

i really want to use dvd-lab! its fun, its great, i love it! i hate nero!

first of all i transformed my avis to vob, using winavi. then i demultiplexed in lab, did all the menus and everything. dvd worked fine, except for the sync problem!
in the progress of watching the movies, the audio gets out of sync with the picture. the vobs from winavi are still synchronized though!
so the n i decided to demultiplex manually, using rejig. once with the sync correction toll. once without. still same problem.
then, i decided to try not demultiplexing the vobs. result: crappy dvd. useless. menus work, but picture is severly damaged.
then i tried that tricky thing putting svcds on a dvd via lab. still sync problems. now i know that i can manually put a little delay on the audio with lab. but thats useless, because, its not that the audio is set the wrong position. its that the audio is stretched, kinda.

theres gotta be a way to use this great program, without ending up having sync problems! please help!

i can't use tmpgenc author, because it crashes when i wanna start authoring...

[Safesurfer]

Sounds to me like Winavi is not producing compliant vobs. DVD-Lab is a stickler for DVD compliant MPEG2 files, or it won't work correctly. The fact that TMPGEnc Author is also crashing on you would seem to point to this conclusion as well. I would try converting your AVIs to MPEG2 with another program.

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

thanks for the advice safersurfer!

do you have an advice which program to use?

tmpgenc seems to be really good. but its soooooooooo slow!!!

i used winavi, on the one hand cos of that speed issue, on the other, cos u can choose the outcome quality, which i always chose real bad, cos i wanted to put like 3 films on one dvd...

[Safesurfer]

If you've read some of the encoder threads here, this seems to be such a subjective question. I would advise you to try some of the trials of the encoders (see https://www.videohelp.com/tools?s=40#40 ), and go with what works for you. My video editor Editstudio comes with a plugin version of the MainConcept encoder, and I've been pretty happy with it so haven't tried many of the others.

[Jonas_Vedder]

You're right about TMPGEnc being too slow...I do all the time exactly the same thing you want to do with DVD-Lab and never got any sync problems...

Try encoding the avi's with CCE!

Only 4 hours to encode a 1h45 movie!!


Great tool!

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

cce and mainconcept are both pretty fast. (not as fast as winavi!)

but they lack the lovely feature of downsizing the output quality...
i have many really wack-quali snowboard videos from back in the days and i want to put more than just 2 hours on one dvd.

jonas, you said you do exactly the same thing as i? with winavi? how come u dont have any sync probs? damn... im frustrated

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

i ended up encoding my files via nero vision express, the tricky way. just pretended to produce a menu-naked dvd9 and later stole the vobs from it. hehe. but thats no solution either, cos nero crashes every now and then. it just doesnt like certain files.

[Jonas_Vedder]

Yes I do all the time what you said!
I never got sync problems but I use CCE to encode avi's!! Try using CCE.
I just demux the audio from the avi first, encode the video with CCE and then add it to DVD-Lab Pro, the m2v and ac3 file and DVD-Lab does the rest...Simple!

[thomseye]

I'm not sure why people prioritize speed over quality.

Just set it up to encode over night. You have to live with the quality of the encoded file forever, you might as well let it encode a few hours longer.

In a couple of years when you have that HDTV, you'll wish you didn't side-step the quality issue. But do as you want, of course.... and good luck

thomseye

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

thomseye,
see, the videos, for which i dont have such a big quali expectation, are videos that are of a really bad quality anyways.
when i want to encode videos with a good quality, like dvd rips or whatever, i usually use tmpgenc.


jonas, i will give it a shot!
how do you demux the audio fropm the avis though? cce can do that???
explain please!

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

YES!!!! i found the problem! all the files are originally ntsc. i encoded them to pal via winavi, since i sit in europe.

now i found out, if i let them stay in ntsc, dvd lab leaves them perfectly synchronised after authoring!

so now, at last, i can actually use my beloved winavi and dvd lab to produce my dvds in whatever quali i want! yes!!!

con: compatibility extremely downsized!

whadeva! as long as i can watch em! my dvd player can read both formats anyways.

[thomseye]

Good for you "Astra"!!!

I meant that people in general seem to discount the quality. Still, the better the encoder the better the result.

Bad encoders may make poor video quality sources even worse still because the artifacts in the source can really trip out the lower-end encoders.

IE... if you had a bad sounding audio file, you'd still be better off with a higher bit-rate mp3 than making things even worse by encoding it to a low bit-rate mp3... although, people have argued this point in the past.

anyway, congrats on finding your problem!

thomsye

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

yeah, i see what you mean...

im just too lazy to encode all my stuff with super high quality. also, i really like to put like three surfing movies on one dvd instead of putting them on three dvds. its propably also because i like to play around with all the menu stuff in dvd-lab so much. höhö.

[Jonas_Vedder]

Yes...I'm from europe too, and I never convert from NTSC to PAL or vice-versa...my standalone DVD player can play both so, why worry?
If you converted between those formats, the audio stay out of sync unless you treat audio correctly...but that's other story...

About your questions, I demux audio from the avi's with virtualdub!

Stay cool

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

yo jonas.

i created a dvd today and guess what? theres a sync problem again on one of dem films...
damn!

i think im just gonna use tmpgenc... ill just have to be patient.

tmpgenc is really great for chosing the output quali at least.

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

winavi is hella fast and reliable! but it sucks fat ass, cos it produces massive sync problems!

[Jonas_Vedder]

Try using CCE!
In a night you can convert two avi's. In the morning you'll have two encoded videos ready to author.
No sync problems too

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

sounds great... but! u cannot chose the output quality with cce, can you?

ever tried tmpgenc express? its such a nice program! it really is the best, i think! reliable, so many options... you can even easily correct sync problems beofre encoding. and you can choose the quality in the nicest of ways! it projects the output size for you. so you can for instance say: i want these three movies to come out at exactly 95% of what a standard dvdr would have to offer. really nice!


but!: its sooooooooooooo slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

[reboot]

Learn how to do audio and video separately, and you won't get sync problems.
Apps like Winavi aren't the best.

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

by now, i got to the point where i do aud and vid seperately actually.

jonas, i even switched to cce! i didnt know how much u could do with it. its fast too.

[Jonas_Vedder]

Yes like I said, i think CCE it's the best!
CCE can do those things you said TMPGEnc do! You can also adjust the output size, and many many more options, although I don't understand some of them

Extract audio before encoding, treat it separately, and just encode the video. Import the ac3 and m2v in DVD-Lab and voilá, no sync problems at all

[reboot]

Exactly!

[ASTRAlerscheinung]

yo! cce is really nice, i must admit.

it would be even a little nicer, if they had like a preview bar for how much percentage of a dvd the output is going to be using. just to visualize it, like tmpgenc.

due to its speed, i judge cce higher than tmpgenc though...

[focuspuller]

I'm dealing with the same issue, I am however slightly confused. I have burned a few projects now. In Most case the avi file I started with was PAL. I had such a file and using Winavi I told WINAVI to make a dvd file as NTSC (without actually converting it to NTSC) Took it into DVD Lab Pro (which I love!) And of course it was out of sink, now at first I thought may have something to do with subtitles, because I believe I read somewhere that there's in issue with subtitle lag, subtitles were fine. I then figured to convert the AVI from PAL to NTSC using VirtualDub, (saved the wave file with BEsweet, some time the sound would be 23.976 or 23.970 or even 23.977, etc, but I would keep the picture at 23.976, it would stay in sync) then make the new avi file into a dvd file using Winavi. Now if I remember correctly instead of telling Winavi it was NTSC I would put it of auto, and I believe most time would the file was demux in DVD lab pro, instead of NTSC it would refer to it as a Pulldown.

Anyway I did all this and it worked! for at least 4 or 5 projects. Since then I reinstalled my windows, reloaded everything, now I seem to be following the same steps, but it isn't working! I don't know why, maybe I had plugins before on that I don't have on now or something, I don't know.

Can anyone help me?

[reboot]

focuspuller. I have no idea if it's a plugin issue, although something as simple as a different version of the same software can make a difference.
Because you are changing the framerate of the video, you must also do something to audio, or it will not be in sync.
Simply put, it is always best to rip the audio from the source, encode ONLY the video, then transcode audio. Load the separate streams into dvdlab.
Most encoders seem to have one problem or another with varying types of audio.
If you rip audio using virtualdubmod to .wav, then transcode to AC3 using ffmpeggui (or belight for DD5.1), it all seems to work much better.
If you need to timeshift audio (correct delay, frequency, etc.), a simple application such as Goldwave is perfect.

[Jonas_Vedder]

reboot...after converting the avi to m2v, is there a way or a program that would let me see if the converted file (.m2v) is in syncro with the audio I've ripped previously from the avi?
How can I be sure that after authoring in DVD-Lab there ain't gonna be sync problems?

[reboot]

DVDLab doesn't have that option (next version will).
Compile and test on a good software player first.
You could also remux the files in tmpgenc to see if it's sync.
If not, you can use audio delay in dvdlab to adjust it easily.

[focuspuller]

DVDLab doesn't have that option (next version will).
Compile and test on a good software player first.
You could also remux the files in tmpgenc to see if it's sync.
If not, you can use audio delay in dvdlab to adjust it easily.

I have figured out how to use the audio delay feature on DVDLab Pro, but I find that it doesn't work, at least not for me.

Keep in mind that I use WinAVI for making an avi to dvd file, and yes I'm aware that winAVI apperently has issues with lagging, however this should not, I think effect DVDlab Pro's audio delay feature, right? Now matter what agree of change I tried to ajust the delay, the delay remained exactly where it was, unchanged.

I assume this a problem with the feauture of DVDlab Pro, yes? Or is it Win DVD? Or is it both?