No audio after encoding

[Minster]

Well guys, I'm going to need your help.
After several days of trying to find out what is going on for myself, I decided to call in for your expertise.

Here's the problem: I want to put a movie onto a DVD; and thus I've encoded it with the MainConcept MPEG Encoder by using Elementary Video+Audio; which outputted an Mymovie_video.m2v (video) file, and a Mymovie_audio.mpa (audio) file. So far so good. That is, it should be. I tried to play the video file, without any problems. Good quality and all.. No problems. But then, the audio file came, and toghether with it the problems.

When I open up the audio (Mymovie_audio.mpa) file in WMP, I hear no sound. Nor do I hear anything in VLC Player or any other player. I thought it had something to do with my codecs, didn't bother about it anymore and burned it with the video file to a DVD.

Weird things is, after putting it in a DVD Player, there's no sound there either!

I think it's got something to do with, a) Nero ******* up my codecs; I've heard it before, and/or b) the installation of Windows Media Player 11.
So therefore I'd like to know as well how to completely have every last fuckin bit of these 2 programs removed from my computer; I've already uninstalled them "the normal way", but I think there's still some things left, like registry keys.

I already tried several things, such as simply installing new codecs as well as encoding Prison Break again with other encoders. No successes.

On my dad's PC I tried it as well, and it worked there, but all of a sudden, a few days ago, I wasn't able to convert there anymore either.

The audio is NOT AC3 by the way, and reinstalling/uninstalling everything didn't help either (apart from reinstalling my OS, haven't tried ).

I also encoded it, like I already did a dozen times, but with ConvertXtoDVD. This converter though, only outputs AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders, not 2 elementary streams with which I can move on, to make my DVD. I want to burn multiple episodes on a DVD, so therfore I don't need AUDIO_TS/VIDEO_TS (yet of course).
When playing this file, there is sound, but like I said, I can't use AUDIO_TS/VIDEO_TS.

So, I converted it again to 2 elementary streams, but once again, no sound. When playing audio in a media player, you know those little 'beams' that represent the audio levels? In WMP 11 they're in the lower left corner.. Now, when playing a converted audio file, those beams don't move a muscle.. So taken that into account, I think the encoders don't even give any output anymore.. Anyone know why that could be?

Here is a screenshot:


I do think I found out why he doesn't gives any output though.... When you encode, there should be a tray icon of both the ffdshow video decoder and the ffdshow audio decoder, right? (assuming you have checked those options in the settings, I have).

Now, when I convert something, only the video decoder shows up, not the audio one! That must be why it gives no output.. Anyone knows what could be the reason for it not starting up?

I also tried loading the file into this version of GSpot, and this came out:



The left image is the one where I let G-Spot run over the .mpa audio file, and the right one is the .m2v video file. As you can see, the right image has the proper codec used (MPEG-2), but in the left image, no codecs at all are used, which prooves the fact that there is no audio output at the time of encoding, since the ffdshow audio decoder won't even start up.. I wish I knew why.

I hope you guys can help me out here, cause it's bugging the crap out of me. Thanks for taking the time for reading this

P.S.: It's not only this movie, it's also happening to other films.

And if anyone might need it, here is a codec list of all my codecs + filters:

[Baldrick]

convert the audio to mpa or ac3 with something else like ffmpeggui.

[Minster]

But won't the audio become out of sync then? 'Cause I think I've had it before that I had to convert the audio with an other program, resulting in sync problems.. But I'll try it out, thanks mate

Anyone else who wants to give this a try?

[guns1inger]

I don't understand your problem with ConvertXtoDVD. The video_ts folder is your finished DVD. Isn't that what you want ? Why do you need elementary streams ? You don't mention any other authoring software in your post.

I also second Baldrick's suggestion. ffmpeggui to ac3 is the better solution. If you do it properly, you won't get audio sync problems.

But I still don't understand why you can use ConvertXtoDVD's output.

[manono]

I don't understand your problem with ConvertXtoDVD.

I'm not entirely sure myself, but I think what he encoded is just one episode of several he wants to include in his DVD. Of course, he can always demux with PGCDemux to get his elementary streams back.

[guns1inger]

Or add multiple episodes to his ConvertXtoDVD project . . . . . .

[Minster]

I don't understand your problem with ConvertXtoDVD. The video_ts folder is your finished DVD. Isn't that what you want ? Why do you need elementary streams ? You don't mention any other authoring software in your post.

I also second Baldrick's suggestion. ffmpeggui to ac3 is the better solution. If you do it properly, you won't get audio sync problems.

But I still don't understand why you can use ConvertXtoDVD's output.

OK, I want to author it with Adobe Encore, and to do that with many episodes is why I need elementary streams. 'Cause there will probably be some sort of way to convert the video_ts to elementary streams again, but that would just take more time.

I have just tried out ffmpegGUI, and it works great, I'll see if they're still in sync, and if so, I'll use this program instead for my audio. But I'd still be dieing to know what is causing this problem though..

I don't understand your problem with ConvertXtoDVD.

I'm not entirely sure myself, but I think what he encoded is just one episode of several he wants to include in his DVD. Of course, he can always demux with PGCDemux to get his elementary streams back.

Yeah, it's one episode of several that I indeed want to put a DVD. As for the demuxing, let's assume the sound encoding would work, it'd take more time to encode them to video_ts and demux that, then just encoding them and you're.. if that makes any sense, nevermind else :P

Or add multiple episodes to his ConvertXtoDVD project . . . . . .

I could, but I'd still be having video_ts and well, you can see above why I don't like that.. Thanks for the input though, for all of you, the ffmpegGUI works at least so I'll stick with that for now. Of course, it would be nice to see if I could get MainConcept's encoder to work properly again though.. So suggestions are welcome.