I never had audio sync problems till...

[midwestarts]

I never had audio sync problems until I reinstalled my operating system from scratch and setup VirutalDub, TMPGEnc, and DVD Complete.

Recently I captured a 2 hour tv show edited the commercials out using TMPGEnc and the whole thing was out of sync from start to finish.

Yesterday I recorded a 2 hour tv show edited out the commercials out using TMPGEnc and it was only out of sync up to where the first commercial was taken out. Any ideas? Is it any of the settings im using?

VirutalDub to capture the video – I use these settings -

Audio Compression
Format = PCM
Attributes = 48000kHz 16 Bit, Stereo 187 kb/sec

Video Format
Resolution = 720x480
Pixel Depth = UYVY

Video Compression = Huffyuv v21.1

Capture Settings
Capture audio = checked
Wait for OK to capture = ok
Frame Rate = 29.9706

Advanced
Drop % limit = 10
Maximum index entries = 324000
Video buffer limit = 10
Audio buffer limit = 0
Audio buffer size = 0
Lock video to audio = checked

I then edit the video in TMPGEnc

Open TMPGEnc > use the wizard > choose DVD NTSC with CBR Linear PCM Audio

Video Type = Interlace
Field Order = Bottom Field First
Aspect Ratio = 4:3 line
Content of movie = Video movie

I then cut out the commercials using the source range

Other settings
I choose the bitrate appropriate for the movie.
Encode mode = interlace
DC component presision = 10 bits
Motion Search precision = slow

GOP structure
Output bitstream = unchecked
Detect Scene change = checked
Force picture setting = unchecked
Quantize matrix
Output YUV data as Basic YcbCr not CCIR601 = checked
No motion search for still picture part by half pixel = unchecked

I then take the encoded file and burn it to DVD using DVD Complete.



System info

P4 2400
512MB of ram
tons of hard drive room

[Poplar]

I don't understand why you use TMPG to edit out commercials. You can do that with VDub or Avisynth, then frameserve it into TMPG, which is better and perhaps faster. It seems that you encoded program stream directly. I always encode elementary streams and mux them later, as many more experienced users do. That's first two things that come to my mind....

[midwestarts]

I dont understand. Can you point me to some directions?

[Poplar]

I don't know how good TMPG is as a video editor, which it is not meant to be, it is an encoder. VirtualDub and Avisynth are dedicated video editors with excellent reputation and powerful features. That's what I meant.

You should edit your source in VDub or Avisynth, extract the audio, then encode video stream and audio stream separately and mux them together. This should be your standard procedure.

[midwestarts]

I just used TMPGenc because it was easier and faster than editing in virdub and they encodeing in TMPGenc. But I do not know how to frame serve.

By DVD creation application likes the video and audio to be in two seperate files. So i dont hink i should mux them? How do I do any of that?

[midwestarts]

any ideas?

[oldfart13]

What happens if you can't get VDub to work? I've had this problem for many months now. The author seems to say "well, if it don't work for you, too bad" so I have been looking for alternatives. Unfortunately, many people in these forums tend to think ALL commercial software is crap, so I'm left out in the cold. I'm always open to alternatives...

[Sartori]

When you reinstalled your operating system , did you reinstall your graphic card capture drivers correctly ? And also specifically your motherboard drivers ? if you have a VIA chipset , the AGP drivers ?
If you haven`t done these , it can cause your problems .


Oldfart13 - you haven`t quantified exactly what won`t work in vdub - capturing , frameserving , or whether it ever worked for you and then stopped etc etc , but it is actually someones elses question in this topic .
People seem reluctant to do it sometimes , but delete Vdub and then reinstall it , is a first step . Other than that please post in its own topic , with more details .

TMPGenc can output as m2v and mp2 streams - if you are using the wizard , at the last screen , under the filename there is a tickbox to output to "Output audio and video as individual elemetary streams" .

[CogoSWSDS]

Here's the easy way to cut commercials using AVISynth and Virtual dub, and frameserv to TMPGEnc.

1. Use Virtual dub to find the beginning and ending frame numbers of the commercial breaks. For example, commercials at frame 10000-11798 and 20000-21798 (in NTSC this would be two commercial breaks of 1 minute each).

2. Create an AVISynth Script (must have the .AVS file extension or it won't work). This is a plain text file, and Notepad works well for this. In the example above, and assuming the path to your file is D:\clip.avi, your script would look something like this:

iclip=avisource("D:\clip.avi")
c1=trim(iclip,0,9999)      #video before first commercial break
c2=trim(iclip,11799,19999) #video between commercial breaks
c3=trim(iclip,21798,0)     #video after final commercial break
#note that using 0 as 3rd parameter of trim indicates end of 
#video clip.
oclip=c1+c2+c3
return(oclip)

Save this script with the .avs extension by doing "File->Save As", changing the File type to "All Files" and using the ".avs" extension in the File Name box. For example, save to "D:\clip.avs"

3. Load TMPGEnc and where you would ordinarily put your avi's file name, use the .avs file name instead (eg "D:\clip.avs"). Windows will realize you are using an avs file and load the proper DLL and frameserve automatically.

All this of course assumes you're using at least V1.0 of AVISynth (I use V2.07; it's quite stable, available from http://www.avisynth.org)and that it's properly installed. V0.3 has parameters in slightly different order but it works a lot the same.

CogoSWSDS

[Sartori]

Here's the easy way to cut commercials using AVISynth and Virtual dub, and frameserv to TMPGEnc.

1. Use Virtual dub to find the beginning and ending frame numbers of the commercial breaks. For example, commercials at frame 10000-11798 and 20000-21798 (in NTSC this would be two commercial breaks of 1 minute each).

2. Create an AVISynth Script (must have the .AVS file extension or it won't work). This is a plain text file, and Notepad works well for this. In the example above, and assuming the path to your file is D:\clip.avi, your script would look something like this:

iclip=avisource("D:\clip.avi")
c1=trim(iclip,0,9999)      #video before first commercial break
c2=trim(iclip,11799,19999) #video between commercial breaks
c3=trim(iclip,21798,0)     #video after final commercial break
#note that using 0 as 3rd parameter of trim indicates end of 
#video clip.
oclip=c1+c2+c3
return(oclip)

Save this script with the .avs extension by doing "File->Save As", changing the File type to "All Files" and using the ".avs" extension in the File Name box. For example, save to "D:\clip.avs"


CogoSWSDS

Obviously , a different definition of "easy" to me , that is complicated just for the sake of it.

[Poplar]

Well, if you are serious about digital video, you need to spend some time to learn to use some tools, VirtualDub, Avisynth, Premiere, etc. Otherwise, you'll be stuck at newbie level......

[CogoSWSDS]

I'm not sure I see what was so complicated about the sample script I gave, but I will try to explain what is happening inside this script.

iclip=avisource("D:\clip.avi")

This line basically says "Create a clip named 'iclip', and use the file 'D:\clip.avi' to create it.

c1=trim(iclip,0,9999)      #video before first commercial break

This line says "Create a clip named 'c1' which contains frames 0-9999 of the clip named 'iclip'." The part of the line after the '#' sign is a comment that AVISynth ignores.

c2=trim(iclip,11799,19999) #video between commercial breaks

This line says "Create a clip named 'c2' which contains frames 11799-19999 of the clip named 'iclip'." Since the commercial break is from frames 10000-11798, these two clips c1 and c2 contain the video from start up to the frame before the first commercial break, and the video from the frame after the first commercial break to the frame before the second commercial break.

c3=trim(iclip,21798,0)     #video after final commercial break

This line says "Create a clip named 'c3' which contains frames 21798 to the end of the clip named 'iclip'" (0 in this case is an alias for the last frame in the clip 'iclip').

oclip=c1+c2+c3

This line says "Create a clip named 'oclip' by putting clips c1, c2, and c3 together back to back with no breaks in between.

return(oclip)

This line passes the clip "oclip" to the application you are using (for example, TMPGEnc), and it does this without creating an intermediate avi file in the process.

Many years ago in the days of WFW3.11 I could have done this in Adobe Premiere LE 4.2. I would have had to import the clip 3 times, then carefully cut the commercials out of each one on a frame level, then put the three clips on the storyboard back to back with no breaks, and then finally outputting the file to a second AVI, all of which would have been quite time consuming. I can guarantee that I could find the frame numbers in Virtual Dub, type the above AVISynth script into notepad, and save it as an AVS file in less time than it would have taken me to do all that in Premiere LE4.2.

CogoSWSDS

[Sartori]

Before anything else , a great mini tutorial on script writing .
I fully appreciate the need for scripts , I used to write loads , even setup my own tcp/ip stack with one but only because I had to , please explain what advantages there are to writing scripts instead of a filter chain , to do complicated wipes and the likes of that through Premiere or to do particular things to specific frames ?
VDub has a tool for basic fades which is really all thats needed for most basic caps , which are tv caps .

The point I meant was that you can just jog to the commercials in vdub and then select by frame the start of the ad right up to the frame the ad finishes and then hit delete - why do you need to write a script ?

I would personally say a good understanding of TMPGencs settings is a major prerequisite for leaving newbie level , followed by learning the settings/filters in VDub for a)capturing b)filtering c)frameserving .

Sometimes I save it out again compressed with Huffyuv (and so lossless) if I wish to seperately filter it , but usually do it all at the same time - then frameserve to TMPGenc .
You could of course cut out the ads in TMPGenc , it might not be a fully fledged editor but it does this basic task perfectly adequately .

Frameserving is an art which is more or less mandatory to learn for good results , but even then , TMPGenc will accept sequentially numbered files as an input . There is a colour loss concerned with frameserving (look up the topic to read the tech. reasons ) but I still have very , very good caps .


I`ve never had anything go out of sync doing this . (the only reason I`ve ever had out of sync probs was when I hadn`t installed my VIA AGP drivers ) .