Help! Choppy audio playback,Dazzle capture, burned with Nero

[johnl]

I have a great friend (62 years old) that is a 'wanna be' computer geek. He is somewhat new to computers but soaks everything up like a sponge and learns fast. He wanted to capture video to vcd from old vhs tapes before they deteriorate. For his birthday, we bought him a Dazzle DVC (USB, His machine: win98se, 500mhz amd k6-2, 386 mb ram, burning at 2x and 4x speed with nero, using the standard vcd capture setting) which works well. BUT, after burning the NTSC vcd compliant cd, the video is great but the audio after 10 to 15 minutes is choppy on his stand alone dvd player. The file plays perfect in windows media player from beginning to end. I brought my newer laptop and external burner over and transfered the .mpeg file to my computer, burned it, same results. We've updated every possible driver and software patch from Dazzle. Thier customer support is closed on the weekends. We have a lot of time invested in learning and trying to make this work, can anyone help?

[kickbxn5]

I had the same problem. I increased the video capture bitrate to the highest possible. You may have to split your capture to 1/2 hr of video at a time because the audio and video may get out of sync . Don't use the vcd template from dazzle, it sucks.

[johnl]

I'm truly thinking of returing the Dazzle and getting a 'pci all in wonder radeon' (as he doesn't have an agp port) to see if it will be better. I need to keep this simple for my elder friend, I want him to click to capture, click to stop, then burn it. What a great birthday gift I've given him, dayz of frustration......

[deadpac]

johnl

Have you read the guide on this site about capturing using a Dazzle DVC.

The Dazzle DVC I doesn't properly provide enough buffer for the audio when capturing at VCD specs, there have been 3 patches that I've seen so far to improve the VCD capture of the Dazzle but they haven't seemed to fix the problem.

What you should do after you've captured with the Dazzle and edited your clip is to demultiplex the video using TMPGEnc's mpeg tools [you'll end up with an m1v video file and mp2 audio file], and then Multiplex the m1v and mp2 file back with TMPGEnc's multiplex tool using the VCD-Standard Header when multiplexing, Non-standard if you captured at a higher bitrate. Burn the remuxed file with Nero and your audio skipping problems should be gone.

This should fix the problem of your audio skipping in your DVD player; if after you do this and the problem doesn't go away, then there could be something wrong with your DVD player, maybe. What kind of DVD player are you using to play the VCD's.

I gave away my Dazzle to my friend; ah the joys of less than real time software encoding; and he bought a Minitek player to play the VCD's he captures with the Dazzle and right out of the gate his player had no problem playing the VCD's captured from the Dazzle without having to demux/remux with TMPGEnc.

Capturing with an ALL-In-Wonder pci to avi and then encoding to MPEG will take quite a while with your friends system and capturing directly to MPEG-1 with it will produce VCD's that are uglier than if captured with the Dazzle DVC, unless a new computer is in the works then I'd suggest you stick with the Dazzle DVC as it will produce faster results than capturing with AVI with the AIW pci or MPEG-1 directly with it.

[johnl]

Deadpac,
Thanx so much for your wisdom, we'll give it a try. And also, you brought up something I forgot to mention, I brought my portable dvd player over and the cd we burned played perfect in that. BUT, we've tried many dvd players and my portable was the only one if played fine in. I will try the multiplex trick, if it doesn't take to long and works, way cool.
What I want is for my friend to capture, then burn with no re-encoding. I have an all in wonder radeon (agp). I capture, then burn, life is good. I would think the pci version would also capture in vcd compliant mpeg1 files like mine so that would avoid re-encoding.
I stayed up late last night and read a post in a forum about my friends computer. It has integrated video on the mother board. I hope a hardward based card (all in wonder radeon) would free up some of the system resources (audio buffers). Dazzle's support pages state if this skipping problem occurs, unplug the unit for one minute to clear the buffer.
Again, thanx for you help, truly appreciated!