VHS to DVD picture prefict sound muffled

[Talon]

First off Hello all and what a great site!
I think I have gone into information overload (5 days reading and touring the site)
Ok the problem I am having is , I burned several DVD's from VHS and the first 6 came out better then I hoped. The next one came out with perfict picture but the sound is so low even with the Tv turned up to 24 its like having it on 5. The sound is there but it's like it got squished to almost nothing! It is the same on my computer and on the Tv.
My question is can this be fix'd ? or at least brought up a little?
I would just try another burn but I had to send the tapes back to relitives. I'm sorry I'm real new at this and have read other posts here but they are mostly on problems with sound befor it's on the disk. Ok the did and didn'ts LOL
Tapes played fine.
Were just copied straight across ( VHS player right to back of Tv top DVD burner)
No store bought movies. Just family memories ( I wanted copies for my kids)
If it can be done please point me in the right direction, a step by step would be great but I don't expect anyone to waist alot of time Thanks

[FulciLives]

Hello and Welcome!

Below is my mini-guide on how to do this:

1.) Rip the DVD to your computer. Use DVD Decrypter as your ripper. Use FILE mode but go to TOOLS ---> SETTINGS and change the option FILE SPLITTING to NONE (look for the tab called FILE MODE).

2.) Now run the main movie VOB file (it will be the largest sized VOB file) through DGIndex and under FILE select SAVE PROJECT AND DEMUX VIDEO. This will result in a separate video file with no audio (will have a M2V ext. such as "myfile.m2v"). You will also end up with a separate audio only file (which can be WAV, MP2/MPA or AC3). Last but not least it will create a D2V file but no need to worry about that now (you will not be using it).

3.) Now load the audio file into GOLDWAVE. No problem if you have a WAV or MP2/MPA file. Should also work with an AC3 file but you may have to install the AC3 ACM Decompressor.

4.) Using GOLDWAVE you want to NORMALIZE the audio file as this will have the effect of increasing the volume. In GOLDWAVE go to EFFECT and under that select VOLUME ---> MAXIMIZE. The default is 0.0db or 100% which should be OK but some people feel that you should use a slightly different (lower) level to be safe. For instance you could try 90% which on my version of GOLDWAVE is a pre-set option (though not the default). Some say 98% is enough to avoid "too much". It is up to you. I definately would use at least 90% ... not less.

5.) Now use GOLDWAVE to save the audio file. You want a 16-bit 48k Stereo PCM WAV file which should be the default.

6.) Now my guess is that the original file is going to be a 256kbps AC-3 audio file as that is the format most stand alone DVD recorders record in but it might have been a WAV file to begin with. If the original was a WAV file then you are done processing the audio. If the original audio was MP2/MPA or AC-3 then you want to convert your newly saved WAV file to an AC-3 file (even if it was MP2/MPA you still want AC-3 in the end).

Now I should have mentioned this before but when you were using DGIndex it tells you there what the audio type is and the bitrate (you need to hit the "F5" key for this info). So most likely if it was AC-3 it was 256kbps but we want to match it.

7.) Convert your WAV to AC-3 (skip this if the original was a WAV file). To convert your WAV to AC-3 you want ffmpeggui. Trust me when I say the interface is very easy to understand and use. You select AC-3 for the FORMAT. For the BITRATE you want to select the same as the original which was probably 256. For SAMPLING RATE pick 48000 and for AUDIO CHANNELS pick 2. That is all there is to it.

8.) OK well now you have your video file (the one that ends with M2V) and a new audio file (either WAV or AC3). You are now ready to use a DVD authoring program. There are many to choose from so all I can say is that you are on your own there. One freeware option is dvdauthor.

In fact I want to point out that ALL of the tools I mentioned are FREEWARE except for GOLDWAVE but you can use GOLDWAVE many times before it "locks up" on you. After it does that you will have to purchase it which can be done on-line (you get a "code" to enter that will unlock it).

In fact there is another audio option. It is called Audacity and it is FREEWARE and should have the same option I talked about in referrence to GOLDWAVE. This option is normally called NORMALIZE whereas GOLDWAVE calls it VOLUME ---> MAXIMIZE.

Good Luck !!!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
I just downloaded Audacity to play with it and it will not properly load an AC-3 file although it works with MP2/MPA files and of course with WAV files. So just use GOLDWAVE instead if you have AC-3 otherwise you can use a program to convert the AC-3 to a WAV file first so that you can then use Audacity. Some programs that do that type of conversion include HeadAC3he and another is BeSweet (use BeLight as a GUI for BeSweet). In fact these programs have a normalize option but I still think it would be better to do that with GOLDWAVE or Audacity instead. Oh and Audacity does call the function NORMALIZE and the default setting is -3.0db which should be A-OK.

[Talon]

Thanks for the help FulciLives, I followed what you said and everything went great till my darn power started poping on and off for 2 hours
I finaly gave up for a bit ! Now when I go into DVDauthor and try to put it together and burn I get a error code #5 and says one of the m2v files has end sequence code in it ? I'll have to do some more reading on the programs in your post so I understand what they do better! I like that Goldwave it brought out even whispers in the audio, I haden't even noticed befor.
Your guide was a great help! Again thanks for your time and effort !

[FulciLives]

Good luck ... I have no idea what that error could be ... maybe it was an error due to the computer going on and off while doing all this?

Maybe try to re-rip the DVD and run it through DGIndex again OR if you can figure it out (it can be a bit tricky) there is a way to use DVD Decrypter to rip just the video file ... this can be done using IFO mode and the STREAM PROCESSING area is the key there but I forget exactly how to do it and whenever I need to do that I usually just rip the whole thing then use DGIndex as I find it easier to do it that way.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Talon]

The DVDauther site didn't show anything on the errors or what to do about it.
So I decided just to go ahead and wipe and redo the project over! I have alot better understanding of what to do now! After the power settled down i ran scandisk and defrag . Not sure if it helped but didn't hurt things
If nothing at least I wind up with a copy I can watch Heh

[Talon]

I tracked down the source of my problem! After 2 more trys I did a bunch of reading and found when I "TOOLS ---> SETTINGS and change the option FILE SPLITTING to NONE" it leaves the end sequence codes,not sure why. was 3 VOB's on the DVD. I used ReStream and got everything back on a DVD-RW and now have a new problem lol! My sound is Great! but it's off a little. When I went into the folder I found this .. VTS_01_1 TO1 Delay-54ms.ac3 I think I can fix it if I can find AC3 Delay Corrector all the links seem to be broken

[FulciLives]

I tracked down the source of my problem! After 2 more trys I did a bunch of reading and found when I "TOOLS ---> SETTINGS and change the option FILE SPLITTING to NONE" it leaves the end sequence codes,not sure why. was 3 VOB's on the DVD. I used ReStream and got everything back on a DVD-RW and now have a new problem lol! My sound is Great! but it's off a little. When I went into the folder I found this .. VTS_01_1 TO1 Delay-54ms.ac3 I think I can fix it if I can find AC3 Delay Corrector all the links seem to be broken

Supposedly one cannot tell a difference when the delay is 100ms or less. I doubt you need to make an adjustment for 54ms but by all means try it. I'm not aware of any bad links for AC3 Delay Corrector.

You can try this download link ---> CLICK HERE

Good Luck

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Talon]

Thats where I have been going, when I click the download link on the next page a window comes up with this "The requested URL /ac3d21b1.zip was not found on this server." mirror link is the same for me
Thinking about it now you may be right ! I'll have to rewatch the DVD it seemd that the first part of the DVD was real close on the mouth movment and speech but towards the middle when my cousin is talking about a fish his mouth moves a second or two befor the voice starts . I didn't watch it to the end as it got late.

[Talon]

Ok thats weird! First part(10 to 15 min)of the DVD is right on fastforward to middle and voice is 1 sec after mouth by the end of the DVD you see grandpa's mouth move 2.5 sec befor sound starts lol my aunt picks up the phone and starts talking then it rings Guess things were alot slower back then
Well this is getting to be alot more complicated then I thought !