Video/Audio Delay W/ NERO (???)

[ckad79]

I just posted a letter on here earlier.. but I thought I would give NERO one more time, after downloaded their newest version of their program.

Anyway, the quality of the video shocked me! I couldn't believe what I was seeing... it was a complete turn around from the older version.

Though, the problem now is... when I play the movie in my DVD play.. the sound is way off. Why does this happen? Is there anything that I can do to prevent it? Should I change it to MPEG? If so, what programs do you recommend... I just tried TMPGenc and when I got done.. I was left with nothing but audio, for my new MPEG file of the movie.

Is NERO just aweful or can I do things.. to make it work?

[ckad79]

What if I make the AVI, a ASF, and then an AVI again.. won't that force the video and audio to stay in check.. or will the picture quality go.. way down???

[ckad79]

What if I burn in NERO, but burn really slow .. instead of 4X will that fix it???

[mats.hogberg]

What are you trying to do with Nero? VCD? SVCD? DVD? What kind of file do you feed it?

/Mats

[ckad79]

I'm trying to burn a VCD.. or a Video-CD. For some reason the thing WILL not accept MPG files but only AVI files.

Anyway, I just tried to burn the movie slow...... but had the same results.

[mats.hogberg]

The standard reply:

Don't use Nero to encode or author. It's a fine piece if CD writing software, but stinks when it comes to authoring, and simply should never be let to encode to (S)VCD MPEG.

The AVI to VCD process involves 3 steps:
1 Use TMPGEnc (or CCE) to encode to a VCD compliant MPEG stream
2 Author and create the VCD image with VCDEasy
3 Burn the image created with above, either using VCDEasys built in burning capability, or use Nero to write it to CD.

/Mats

[ckad79]

What is "CCE" and I must be doing something wrong because when I tried the other program, all I got was sound and no video??? What's wrong with it??

[mats.hogberg]

CCE (Cinema Craft Encoder) is an MPEG encoder, just like TMPGEnc.
By "when I tried the other program, all I got was sound and no video???" I presume you mean TMPGEnc. If it's like you say, then TMPGEnc has trouble reading the AVI, and you're either missing some codecs, or haven't set the direct show filter priority in TMPGEnc high enough. Either way, TMPGEnc ought to have told you about its problems.
If you mean the other way around; "when I tried the other program, all I got was video and no sound???" then this is normal - TMPGEnc shows video but doesn't play audio during encoding.
If you "successfully" encoded an AVI to VCD mpeg (You did use the VCD template in TMPGEnc, didn't you?) without TMPGEnc complaining about anything, but the resulting mpeg came out with just the sound, then there's something really wierd going on.

For further info, may I suggest some reading up on the finer details of AVI to VCD conversion, easily found under the HOWTO/Convert heading, left?!?

/Mats

[ckad79]

The program that I'm referring to is "TMPGEnc", but I think it's an older version of it. When I try using it.. it's pretty simple.. you select the file, "movie.avi", and automatically it lists it as a source for "audio" and a source for "video" on my computer's harddrive. Then it saids at the bottom that it will rename the file "movie.mpg", in the same folder.

I hit the "start" button at the top... after selecting the "Audio & Video" (outside of that, I can encode "audio" or "video" or "both"). The program goes through everything, takes about fourty minutes and in the end.. I get basically a mp3... MPEG without video.

I am not sure about templates, but I will take a lot at the program again. I don't remember seeing anythig in the "options" mention about VCD.. I did see the option for "MPEG-1" and "MPEG-2".

As far as "codecs" go.. why would the video play with Windows Media Player and not play with TMPGEnc?

Maybe my version is way to old?

Thanks again.

[mats.hogberg]

Yes, all seems ok! When TMPGEnc starts, it usually shows a wizard with a lot of templates to choose from. If not, there's a "Project Wizard" item under the "File" menu. Among the wizards are VCD for both NTSC and PAL. Try one of these and encode a few minutes, then hit "Stop". No need to encode the whole AVI until you've got it working.
Do you see anything in TMPGEncs preview window? This ought to show the AVI being encoded.

As far as "codecs" go.. why would the video play with Windows Media Player and not play with TMPGEnc?

Well, on my box, Media Player wont play any AVI at all (thanks to Nimo and my stupidity), but TMPGEnc reads most of 'em fine - so there seems to be no "hard" connection between the two...
/Mats

[ckad79]

I just noticed a newer verison of the software is out.. i'll try it tonight and hope that it works.

Thanks

[ckad79]

I don't get this computer program for the life of me! Geez. I just downloaded the new version... same result. It's so simple to figure out, I can't understand why nothing will show. I select... the sile as a source for both "audio" and "video", hit START and nothing previews.

According to Windows' Media Play the details on the AVI file I'm messing with are simple:

Audio Format:

MPEG Layer-3,56 kBit/s, 24,000 Hz, Stereo

Video Format:

352X240, 24 bits, 51914 Frames, 14.985
Frames/Sec, 44 KB/Sec, MS-MPEG4 V3

I don't know... I wrote a letter to NERO asking them what gives with their encoding process. I probally won't hear something for weeks but oh well...

[mats.hogberg]

Only odd stuff is that it's MS MPEG4, and that it's 14.985 frames/Sec. The latter sure wont improve matters! (Quality wise)

Try loading the AVI in VirtualDub. If you can see the video there, just frameserve it to TMPGEnc.

And, for the umpteenth time: Forget Nero as an encoder/VCD authoring app! It's a good CD burning app.

/Mats

[ckad79]

Thanks. I'll try it again tonight. Last night, I tried NERO (one more time) to do the entire process, but with a different movie that had the same ratio and for some odd reason... the thing found a way to burn. The sound was pretty good, not perfect... but workable until I can figure this out.

Oh well, in using VirtualDub. I make the new video.. frame by frame.. but I get a file in the end... 25.6 GIGS!!! I need to tweek this.

[mats.hogberg]

Don't make a new AVI with VDub! Frameserve it to TMPGEnc. No intermediate file, and quicker too.

/Mats