Ripped DVD video and audio out of sync in Premiere

[westbrookmedia]

Here is what I am trying to do:
Quickly back-up five years worth of DV tapes to DVD. Then be able to use those DVD's or portions of those DVD's for creating and editing home movies in Premiere Elements. I've been testing and trying to figure out a process that works on one tape before I do the other 45.

Here's what I am doing:
Using a Pioneer DVD recorder DVD-210 to back-up the DV tapes to DVD. This is so easy and fast and produces excellent quality.

Using DVD Decrypter (per excellent instrutions I found on this web site) to rip all or a portion of the DVD to MPEG2 and AC3 to my hard drive.
Premiere will not read the AC3 files.
I then use Besweet and BeLight (again per excellent "How to" I found on this web site) to convert the AC3 MP3 or Wav.

When I open the video and audio files in Premiere Elelments to do my editing, the sound and video are severely out of synch. For the test clip I am using, the Video is 20 minutes and the audio is 15 minutes.

I have been trying to figure out a quick way to back up all my DV tapes to DVD and then get the clips I want from the DVD's to edit in Premiere Elements. I would be embarressed to admit how many months and hours I have been trying to get it all to work. I am not very knowlegeable and get confused if there are too many tools or too many steps.

IF A REASONABLY efficient process exits to do this, please point me in the right direction.

I do not want to back up to DVD in a format that I cannot go back to rip and edit at a later time. I do not want to go back to the tapes to get the clips due to wear and tear on the tapes and my camera.

Terribly frustrated,

Donna

[guns1inger]

Mpeg is a poor choice for editing. You would be better off transferring what you need directly from the DV tapes in DV avi format, editing in elements, then outputting for DVD. Your current process introduces an extra level of compression early in the process, gives you video and audio you can't use without further conversion, which in turn is creating headaches. To me this syas your process is over complicated and flawed.

DV is designed for editing. Use DV until you need to output at the end of the editing process. This will be much faster as it cuts out; transferring from DV to DVD, transferring from DVD to the PC, transferring video and audio to a usable format, and replaces all thiswith a single step - copy DV to PC.

You say you get confused by complicated processes - this is a simple as it gets.

[pijetro]

Since you helped yourself, let me see if i can help you back...

Two choices...There's good and bad in both..

1)Import the Vobs into VirtualDub-Mpeg2, and save out your desired portion back out to .AVI, with DV compression for video, and .WAV for audio..Drop on the Premiere timeline and edit..

2) Buy the Mainconcept mpeg plugin, and edit away using your Mpeg file (i believe you'll still need the .wav audio)..It will treat your Mpeg like an .AVI, without rerendering..

Good luck!!!

[westbrookmedia]

your process is over complicated and flawed.

DV is designed for editing. Use DV until you need to output at the end of the editing process. This will be much faster as it cuts out; transferring from DV to DVD, transferring from DVD to the PC, transferring video and audio to a usable format, and replaces all thiswith a single step - copy DV to PC.

Thanks for the post and yes, I see your point and I agree. However, I need to back-up the tapes now and edit later, much later. It would take too much time to capture the DV tape into Premiere just to burn a DVD and it ties up my computer for hours to render and burn a DVD.

To back-up the DV using the Pioneer, it takes 1 hour to create and finalize the DVD. When I use the PC (capture via Premiere and burn to DVD) it takes hours and hours and ties up my PC. Am I missing something? Is there a quick and easier way? Then how would I take the DVD that Premiere burned to get pieces for editing at a later time?

One of the movies I will create will be a movie of pictures and video for my daughter of the 'First five years', which will contain small portions from many of the tapes (DVD's). I don't have the room on my hard drive for all those AVI files, or the time to do that editing in the near future. I can sit and scan through 15 DVD's on my DVD player in my living room and figure out which ones I want to get clips from. It will kill my camera if I keep using it to do that. Perhaps at some time in the future I may want to put something together and the tapes may have noticably deteriorated, but the DVD's will not.

Am I missing something fundamental here or just trying to do something that doesn't make sense?

Donna

[jimmalenko]

Am I missing something fundamental here or just trying to do something that doesn't make sense?

IMHO you're making things waaaaay harder than they perhaps need to be due to your current computer setup and time restraints. As mentioned, you're also putting your source through a couple of extra conversions that you don't really need to do either.


In an ideal world you'd probably get yourself a couple of large hard drives (200GB + ) and archive all tapes onto your computer in DV format. A 200GB drive holds roughly 14 hours of footage, and with a removable hard drive tray, makes operations such as this much easier.

[pijetro]

It's sort of a catch22...
IMHO, i would have captured as much video as possible onto the hard drive...
Do a few simple cuts and drop away material you definately don't need..

Once you've done this, simply export back to tape (another fresh tape of course), and you'll have a master copy of important stuff.
From this point on, you can retransfer your rough cut back to PC and edit for the final outcome..

Good luck!!!

[westbrookmedia]

1)Import the Vobs into VirtualDub-Mpeg2, and save out your desired portion back out to .AVI, with DV compression for video, and .WAV for audio..Drop on the Premiere timeline and edit..

Thank you. I just went to obtain the VirtualDub-Mpeg2 and it has displayed on the main page "This version of VirtualDub-MPEG2 cannot decompress AC-3 audio. If you need AC-3 support, try AC-3 ACM Decompressor.".

Bummer. I couldn't find an older version and I'm not sure whether I can still use it or not, but I downloaded both programs and will now give them a shot.

Donna

[NoodleMaps]

The problem, if I understand what you are trying to do, correct me if I am wrong. You are capturing video of your daughter now, and when the time is right, when she is older, you are going to edit a video together of her as a gift or a this is your childhood type of thing?

How would I tackle such a project?

Here are a few ways I would try to do it.
1.) Buy an external Hard drive. Large Capacity Hard Drives. 200GB+ and capture the DV tapes directly to these drives. As time goes on and the drives fill up, buy more drives. (The con in doing this, is if the drive fails, you are back to relying on the DV Tape, which may not be a bad thing if stored properly)
You could then hook up your DV camera to your Pioneer Recorder via the Analog inputs, turn on the displays, so you can see the timecode counter and burn a disc to reference in the living room. You could then make notes using the timecode burn, now showing on your DVD burn to use when you access the AVI files on the external Harddrive.

2.) Buy a dedicated DV player if you are worried about wear and tear on your camera.

3.) Make multiple copies of the original tape using a firewire connection, not analog. Borrow a friends camera and make copies.

The main thing is, if you aren't going to be working with this footage for 5+ years, you are going to want it to be the best quality you can, and working from a real time recording made on your Pioneer isn't going to cut it. Even a 5 pass encode on a computer to DVD isn't going to give you the quality that you will need to make the video you need in 5 years. It may look fine and even good for today standards but in 10 years you will really notice and you will wish that you had worked from the original tapes. Take things that people shot in EP on VHS tape.

But then again, I may of completely misunderstood what you were going to do and just wrote jibberish.

[westbrookmedia]

Thank you for the post, definately not wasted jibberish.

The problem, if I understand what you are trying to do, correct me if I am wrong. You are capturing video of your daughter now, and when the time is right, when she is older, you are going to edit a video together of her as a gift or a this is your childhood type of thing?

Yes, that is true, that is the type of thing and there are definately things I will want to do for my children and other family at later dates. There are some things I will do for different family members that will use different parts of the same tapes over time, like for the grandparents, for example. I'm just busy working and chasing children right now to do any editing or long PC captures and burning. However, I am worried about my tapes and the desktop recorder is so easy and fast.

Here are a few ways I would try to do it.
1.) Buy an external Hard drive.
2.) Buy a dedicated DV player if you are worried about wear and tear on your camera.

I probably have over 75 hours of tape, and another 10 so far from this year. Hard drive expense adds up and a DVD reader is expensive, but DVD's are under a dollar.

I am creating DVD's on the Pioneer using a firewire and the highest quality setting (which I think claims to be closest to DV quality) and only records one hour on a DVD. Does this make any difference?

Thanks so much for the additional options.

Donna

[NoodleMaps]

Well, I guess, that may be your best option then. So with your sync issue. Here is what I do for when I want something from a DVD to use within Premiere.

I Use DGIndex Now there may be other ways than how I explain, but, for what I do, when I need to do it, this is what works.

1.) File - Open
Select the VOB files from the VIDEO_TS folder.

2.) Under Audio - Output Method Select Decode AC3 Track to WAV

3.) Scrub the video and select an In point and an Out point for what you want to use. (Remember to leave some room if you plan to use dissolves and such in your final product.)

4.) Select File - Save Project and Demux Video
4a.) repeat steps 3 and 4 for all the clips you want from this DVD.

5.) open what ever program you are using to convert MPEG files into usable AVI files. (I use Canopus Procoder) select the m2v file that was created from DGIndex and convert it.

You should now have a converted m2v file (which will now be an AVI file and a WAV file that DGIndex created from the embedded ac3 file on the DVD.

Give that a try and see if things are in sync now.

[westbrookmedia]

Noodlemaps -

YES, it worked! I followed your directions and for step 5, I used Virtualdub to save the MPEG file to AVI. Dropped them both into Premiere and, viola, worked like a charm.

My only issue was that the video was 4:53:288 and the audio was 4:53:21, so about 7 frames longer than the audio. However, easily fixed in Premiere with time stretch on the audio. This is great because I also have some video on DVD of which I do not have the source.

Thanks for all the good advice and help.

Donna

[westbrookmedia]

Many thanks for all the advice and input.

In the end, after performing this overcomplicated process and heeding the good advice offered in this forum, I am going to do the following:

1. Copy some of my DV tapes to DVD using the stand alone recorder.(quick, easy, cheap)
2. Purchase a 300GB (under $100 online) and start backing up my DV tapes (the right way) to hard drive. Over time, purchase new drives as I fill'em up.

This way, the kids can play the (unedited) DVD's and see the family parties, the trip to Disney etc... and I'll do my back-up the right way. If I want to put something together without pulling and running the tapes again (if not backed up yet) I can rip the DVD and use that.

I was going to use Premiere to capture the DV footage via firewire to hard drive.

Recommendations on a faster, better or more efficient way?

Many thanks,

Donna

[NoodleMaps]

Your welcome. Glad to help.

I still hope that you store your original tapes In a cool dry place for those years as well, so that when you are ready, you can go to the tapes first, then go to the DVDs as a last resort. Because you will really see the different in quality.

I'm glad I could help out. As for the Time Stretching, I've never seen that issue, must be something that virtualdub is doing? I can't seem to recall if you can just drop the m2v file directly into Premiere or not.

You may want to give this thread a read. https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=261416 It describes a way of tricking Premiere to use mpeg files using DGIndex.

[westbrookmedia]

Thank you, I will review that thread.

I was able to drop the m2v file into Premiere, but it wouldn't take the AC3 audio file. When I used an AC3 to MP3 or WAV conversion, the audio and video did not line up at all. I followed your directions with the tools you recommended and it worked great.

I know enough to get into trouble but not enough to understand what I am doing much of the time. I can follow directions well... so thanks again for all the advice and directions.