DVD Burning issue - Video Great, Audio Absent

[JackoFluent]

I have posed a similar message under 'CD and DVD Writers' so I apologise if this is not good protocol, but I'm not sure if I have a burning or DVD Writer issue)

I've recently bought the following Pioneer equipment: DVR104 (A04) Writer, and DV-533K Player, and as they are the latest(ish) from Pioneer you'd expect them to be compatible. However, I'm writing DVDs of old home movies (analog captured into ULEAD VideoStudio6 via a Dazzle Hollywood analog->DV bridge) but although the video quality on the final DVD is excellent, I'm getting NO SOUND.

I am only using the VIDEO_TS folder (no AUDIO_TS - but surely not needed with audio in the video stream), and have burnt from the ULEAD software, and also with the Veritas (Prass...someting, can't remember, not at home) software that came with the burner. I have also jus bought the latest Nero software, but have not had time to check (I have a day job!!)

Anyone else getting this problem?

I don't believe it is a Pioneer to Pioneer issue (surely not). I'm using DVD-R, and DVD-RW (same results). I believe it cound be a sound encoding issue, but have used TMPG to encode the avi video to DVD (PAL) MPG. Ulead writes the VIDEO_TS files, and then I burn. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG!!?? BTW the DVDs play OK on my PC so the embedded audio is passing through my firewire connection to the burner OK (the DVR-104 is in an external OEM firewire box). There has been some talk of firewire audio issues, but evidently the audio is being written to the DVD.

Any help greatfully received - I've just arrived at work with huge bags under my eyes. I'm going nuts!

ANOTHER ISSUE is that the firewire connection to the DVR 104 under WIN2000 takes an age to be recognised (sometimes takes 20minutes after boot-up) - anyone know how to speed that up?

Cheers, Jacko (NOT a happy Vegemite - having invested $$000s so far, including a Sony TVR950 camcorder to move from analog to DV to burn DVDs - but that's ANOTHER story!!)

[mikerios]

I'll take it you only have the A04 and no other optical drive on your system, have you tried playback on the pc with your pre made VOB files with Power DVD to see if they do in deed have sound ? I have the A03 hooked up via firewire internally and it burns fine ( using a caloptic 1394 converter avalible at www.caloptic.com )with no audio loss issues. In TMPEGEnc, what do you use for your audio source, the same avi file ?, have you test rendered to a short mpeg file and either played back from the hardrive or bunt to SVCD or VCD to check for playback?

[JackoFluent]

The DVDs play OK on the PC with full sound, so the audio is there (are you saying I can check the VOB files on the harddisk before buring too?). It seems the set top DVD player is not liking the audio encoding or something.

I am using just the one avi file for both Video and Audio in TMPGEnc to make the MPG that is then used in ULEAD VideoStudio to write the VIDEO-TS (and AUDIO_TS which is empty) files.

I notice the TMPGEnc gives me Audio Layer II, is that relevant (vs Layer 3 etc?). Also should I be de-multiplexing the video and audio into two separate streams so that the AUDIO_TS has some files?

Re the Optical disks - I do have another (internal drive) connected. Should I disable that to speed up the firewire recognition of the external DVR?

Thanks for your suggestions, Jacko

[JackoFluent]

I just found this info on the DVDit site:

"Audio Sampling Rate Conversion - Note that although DVDs require 48kHz audio, DVDit! will convert 44.1kHz audio files to 48kHz during the writing process. This means that DVDit! does all the hard work for you"

Do i need to convert my audio manually to 48kHz (as I am not using DVDit)?

any further input appreciated,

Clueless

[mikerios]

Try this,

Ulead has known issues with audio ( DVD Movie Factory, DVD Workshop and Studio ), make sure your Ulead Studio is patched, and let Ulead make the folders ( VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS ) on the hardrive. See if the those files ( the vobs on the hardrive ) play properly. If they don't then it's either Ulead is not patched ( yet ) or maybe your audio has not been coverted to 48khz ( and if you check the audio settings in TMPEGEnc and made sure it was set for 48 and not for 44 or you will have no audio as DVD players expect 48 khz and not 44. The AUDIO_TS as a general rule will always be empty. But most DVD Programs ( Nero included on DVD Video burns ) make the folder for compatiblity.

I am not familiar with Ulead Studio DVD Authoring side of the program but I am sure it looks simliar to the DVD Movie Factory feel. Neither DVD Movie Factory nor DVD Workshop will accept a mpeg2 file with 44khz specs, so I suspect it will be the same for Ulead Movie Studio 6, however I did have an issue with both DVD Workshop and DVD Moviefactory burning / authoring ( as I ran the authored VIDEO_TS folder thur Nero and it too burnt a DVD with no sound ) my DVDs with no sound, and this was resolved by the audio synch patches that were avalible at Uleads website.

[JackoFluent]

Great input thanks - I've not patched the ULEAD VideoStudio, but am off to their site now!

I'll work on your advice tonight and report back ...... Really appreciated, I feel I'm making progress

[JackoFluent]

Oops! no Ulead patch for VideoStudio6. Still I'll look at the 48khz issue ...

[FredB]

I have the exact same issue here. Pioneer 104 to burn and Pioneer DV-343 to play back. All mpeg files play fine with sound before encoding, but when finalized DVD is inserted into DV-343, I get video with no sound.

I am trying to transfer PAL tapes to DVD. Captured my tape by first going through Canopus ADVC-50, so it is a DV with 48 kHz sound. Encoded using tmpgenc. . I used high quality PAL DVD template in DVD Workshop. I patched DVDWS with latest files, but no change. In tmpgenc I used the PAL template with 6000kbs 2 pass VBR and a few filters.

Any ideas?

[FredB]

One more thing: I tried to capture and encode all within DVD Workshop to see if tmpgenc was the issue and get it out of the way. I got the same result.

Could it be a problem related to the analog to DV codec in the Dazzle and Canopus boards, only in PAL mode?

[JackoFluent]

I think this is almost certainly an audio encoding issue. Fred - have you EVER written a DVD that plays sound? I notice that this site has a demo download of a 'perfect' DVD fileset at:

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvd.htm, details here,

" DVD NTSC Sample, it is a NTSC DVD with 3 video samples, a dolby digital trailer, a VCD MPEG sample authored as DVD(DVD-VCD), a SVCD MPEG2 sample authored as DVD(DVD-SVCD) and a simple menu. (read the included text file for more info). The DVD Sample is 25 MB"

and download at
http://www.vcdhelp.com/download.phpd?id=3

It is an NTSC not PAL sample, but I reckon that if you burn those files to a DVD-R or RW and they work in your player, at least you know that a correctly saved DVD fileset with encoded audio etc will work on your combo.

Unfortunately I have other problems in that my 1394 port is now refusing to see my Pioneer 104 (A04) and I couldn't put this theory to test last night. I'm thinking of taking my OEM firewire box back to the manufacturer and either getting an internal drive or a USB2 device.

However, I'd like to know if you have any luck with the test files...

[FredB]

Found it! It was actually the Pioneer DVD player's setup that was not correct. Look at the sound settings for mpeg and set it to mpeg->PCM. That fixed it for me, my DVDs are perfect now!

Fred

[JackoFluent]

Excellent! I'm happy for you. I'll check my player too. Yet another thing to try!

[FredB]

Yeah, this is fun now. I really hope it works for you too. This is one of those things you play with when you first install your DVD player and then forget about it since you never need to go there.

Good luck!

[Master-Dialectition]

I had the same problem. that setting worked for me...thanks alot fredb

Any ideas why you have to change this?

[FredB]

I think that this setting is used to format the digital sound output. The way I read it is: what should the 343 do when this format is found on the DVD. The way it was set before probably just sent the mpeg sound from the DVD straight to the digital out, and of course my receiver did not know what to do with that.

I am glad it helped you solve your problem too!

Fred

[JackoFluent]

FredB - I'm back to playing with this now after having my PC totally overhauled. Just to let you know I changed these settings too on my DVD player (MPEG->PCM) and I now can play my DVDs in all their audio glory, thanks!

Amazingly I have had a thread with Pioneer asking for their help and they never mentioned this setting once.

As for the firewire connection, I ripped the writer out of its external box and had it mounted internally. Now - no probs.

Another technology monster whipped!

[stephen67]

I have a similar problem too. I recorded some videos using power vcr II. It save using mpeg2's I used instantvideo to convert to vob. Heres the problem it works fine on my go video dvd player but when I play it on my phillips 711 there is no sound. Any clue as to what is going on? I suspect the audio is not in a dolby format for my reciever, which everything goes thru.