Seek problem on playback

[pyxis225]

Hello All,
I have been trying to create an mpeg-2 file from a DVD-video that I recorded from a DVD recorder.
I have read some suggestions to simply change the file extension from .vob to .mpeg. This just crashes my computer.

Instead I demultiplexed the vob files by chapter using smartripper to produce an m2v and an ac3 file. Then I multiplexed the two files using TMPGEnc's mpeg tools to create the mpeg-2 file.

The resulting file plays perfect in every way.
The problem is when seeking, the player responds in the following way:
- Seeks to about 5 seconds before the position I set it to seek to.
- Fast-forwards through those 5 seconds of video.
- Plays the rest of the video unsmoothly (like it is only playing every 4th or 5th frame).
- The audio gradually goes out of synch, but the audio sounds fine.

If I mulitplex the m2v file without audio, the video plays perfect and seeks perfect.

I have tried various de/mux tools to do both multiplexing and demultiplexing.
I have tried various players.
I have tried converting the audio from ac3 to mp2.
None of the above has worked.

I read somewhere that a similar problem to this occurs because the file uses VBR. I expect if this was the explanation for my problem then many others would have the same problem. This does not seem to be the case.

Does anyone know what the problem may be?

Feel free to ask for more information. As I do not know what the problem is, I am also uncertain as to what information I can give that may be useful to help solve the problem.

Any help appreciated.
Thanks.

[guns1inger]

VBR is compliant, and in fact, pretty much industry standard for commercial disks. Just watch the bitrate meter on your DVD player next time you watch a commercial disk.

That said, if the bitrate peaks higher than the allowable maximum (or on cheap, non-compliant players, approaches this amount) you can get playback problems as the player can't feed the data through fast enough. Given you are not reencoding the output from your recorder, bitrates should all be legal.

I am unclear about where you are seeing the problem. It is when you watch the mpeg back on your PC, or when you watch the authored disk on your player ?

If it is on the PC, what do you use yo view it ? (Windows Media Player, Virtualdub etc)

If it is the authored output, what do you author with ?

[pyxis225]

Thanks for your quick reply.

I have been trying to view the mpeg-2 file on my PC.

The players that I've tested on are:
- Windows media player (32 bit version, version 6.1 and version 9)
- VideoRedo is also having the same problem.

I've just tried PowerDVD and it does seem to seek fine on that.
So I guess my problem isn't so much a problem now as it is a curiosity as to why this occurs on Windows media player.

I find it odd that it seeks as expected without audio, but not with audio.