Disparity in volume L/R AVI movie

[pclaptop]

I d/led an AVI movie and one audio track is VERY low as compared to the other. (stereo playback)

I burned the movie to DVD and the same audio problem occurs( that should have been a given!)

I can play other d/led AVI'S fine but not this one.

Is this inherent to the d/l oe is there something I need to adjust in ffdshow?

I use the KLM media codec 880 and chose volume normalization upon install.

I have not yet tried to re-d/l the movie, as I saw no comments regarding audio problems.

thanks, pclaptop

[Selur]

I d/led an AVI movie and one audio track is VERY low as compared to the other.

one of them is probably reencoded,.. or do you mean the left channel of a stream is a lot lower in volume than the right one? If that is the case somebody probably messed up,...

[AlanHK]

Is this inherent to the d/l oe is there something I need to adjust in ffdshow?

Probably someone screwed up when downmixing from 5.1 to stereo.
At this point, probably best to go all the way and downmix to mono in the ffdshow "mixer".

[Hoser Rob]

I... I can play other d/led AVI'S fine but not this one.

That doesn't really matter. Web dl videos are notoriously badly encoded. They're either made with crappy software or by decent software run by someone who doesn't have a clue how to use it properly. That's understandable ... encoding is complex.

It doesn't matter what the file extension or the size iseither. I've seen multi gig h.264 .mkv's that were actually worse than some 700Mb xvid .avi's. The genius who encoded one of those huge mkv's didn't even know enough to use high profile.

Is this inherent to the d/l oe is there something I need to adjust in ffdshow?

Yes, it's probably just badly encoded like most of them, though this problem seems unusual. Can't your dvd author program mix to mono?

I use the KLM media codec 880 and chose volume normalization upon install.

The Klite codec pack is known to cause problems. All 3rd party codec packs are a bucket of worms in modern versions of windows. Why not yank them and use software that doesn't need that crap. That is, good software? There's no excuse for not being able to write directshow/directx compatible programs.

I have not yet tried to re-d/l the movie, as I saw no comments regarding audio problems.

Many of the videos I've seen that were godawful ... practically unwatchable ... had 10/10 video ratings. Either those people were watching it on their phones or they're legally blind or they're just dumb.

Under windows 7 I ended up yanking all 3rd party codecs, and now under linux I'm blissfully free of that nonsense. Under both systems I can play properly encoded h.264 video with a bit rate > 1Mb/s. Just fine. Flawlessly. And that's on a middle of the road i3 laptop plugged into an external screen. Many xvid avi's with 1/10 the bit rate don't play properly.

So, since it's against forum rules to advocate downloading another copy, I'm going to suggest you just buy the video on disc. While I'm not rabidly anti downloading I'm not all that sympathetic to people who aren't happy with the quality either.

[Cornucopia]

Only way to truly tell what's going on is to open in an Audio Editor/DAW and view the waveforms (would likely have to demux first).
Probably not worth your while.

Scott

[jagabo]

Audacity with the ffmpeg source plugin (both free) can import audio directly from an AVI file (and most other containers). You can view the waveforms there. And otherwise manipulate them.

[hello_hello]

Is this inherent to the d/l oe is there something I need to adjust in ffdshow?

Like everything, there's good and bad. Sometimes things go wrong when encoding and you don't realise until later. It's happened to me.
I think Hoser Rob needs to drag himself out of the 90's and update his generalisations. Of course there's crap quality stuff out there, but mostly these days the quality is very good. As long as your expectations are reasonable and don't expect perfect quality in a 500MB 1080p movie encode. The "scene" encoders even have to conform to a set of rules when encoding. http://scenerules.irc.gs/n.html?id=2012_SDTVx264r.nfo
When it comes to individual uploaders... well anything's possible of course. I mean, apparently it's possible for someone to label any system installed codec as crap, and claim "there's no excuse for not being able to write directshow/directx compatible programs" seemingly oblivious to the fact KLite installs ffdshow, which is a directshow decoder.

Anyway, which player do you use? Maybe try MPC-HC. Out of the box it'll play all the common video types without the need for ffdshow, so maybe try it to see if the audio problem remains. If so, maybe the audio channels were mixed up during the encoding process. Of course by deselecting the appropriate internal MPC-HC decoder, you can get MPC-HC to use ffdshow instead.

Or try looking at the ffdshow audio decoder's volume filter if you're using it for the audio decoding. You should be able to work out how many channels of audio there are and whether they're wrong for some reason. ffdshow even has a filter for swapping the channels around. If it can fix the problem, you could re-encode the audio with ffdshow decoding and fixing it in the process. Of course you'd need the ffdshow "bucket of worms" to be installed in order to use it for that, otherwise Hoser Rob will no doubt be able to tell you which software you should be using for that job.

[AlanHK]

I doubt there is any codec issue. If other videos have normal audio, and this doesn't, the problem is with the video. Audio generally works correctly or not at all.

[pclaptop]

ah ha, more enlightenment, thanks again guys

[Mephesto]

Hoser Rob, stop msileading noobs. K-lite codec pack works just fine and has been since its inception. Prove that it causes problems.

[hello_hello]

Maybe Hoser Rob needs to consider being able to use a PC to play h.264 video with a bit rate > 1Mb/s mightn't necessarily be anyyhing to boast about, given the max bitrate for High Profile, Level 4.1 is around 60Mb/s, if memory serves me correctly.

I've got a sample video here which peaks at around 100Mb/s.The video card chokes on that one trying to decode it, but even the CPU in my second PC has enough grunt to decode it without stuttering, and it's not an i-anything. It's an old core2 duo.

Not being able to play many Xvid/AVIs properly..... well that's not something I'd be mentioning while boasting regarding my PC/codec cleverness..... there's still an old Pentium 3 PC in this house which plays standard AVIs fine, despite the fact it has a few buckets of worms installed. And it must be over twelve years old.

[pclaptop]

OK guys thanks for all of the input, I enabled "mixer" in ffdshow and that seems to have balanced out the two channels.

I am really getting an insight as to how the decoding/encoding works. How 5.1 gets down to stereo is amazing. Not that I understand it yet but I'm working on it.

And as for Linux if i could run Linux 24/7 I would, but in the business that I in there is no Linux flavored sw for what I do. I've had mandrake (10+yrs ago) Red Hat and most recently Ubuntu.

I realize that where some of these video d/l's come from is not the most professional so it is what it is!

thanks again pclaptop