Another Audio sync question....

[defiantclass1]

I hate to ask a question that has been covered, but there are so many I'm having trouble narrowing it down.

I converted a VHS tape to mpg using a USB converter I bought with another software program. I then converted the mpg to avi. The audio is out of sync with the video. I have moved the audio track using both VirtualDub and ConvertX. I got it pretty good with VirtualDub but after I converted that good copy to DVD through ConvertX it got out of sync again.

The outcome was that the audio was way in front of the video. So I tried again in ConvertX and I got the first portion of the movie right on, but now the later portion has the audio behind the video.

It seems likes when I fix the front end the back end goes the other direction.

Can anyone tell me what I need to do to get the audio in sync with video throughout the entire video? I would like to do this via VirtualDub if possible. But the audio and video needs to stay put when I convert and burn it to DVD in ConvertX.

[hech54]

I then converted the mpg to avi.

Uncompressed AVI?

[defiantclass1]

Thanks for the response. No, it was Xvid compression. I did that because uncompressed was giving me an output file that grew by 1GB a minute. The entire tape is 123 minutes I didn't feel that was going to be an option. However, I read your response early this morning and decided to attached an external drive and go ahead try the uncompressed method. I got home today and it was in fact just over 139GB, plus it was so choppy in both audio and video it was literally not watchable. I am recompressing that file now and I'm trying the Microsoft compression, but it has only compressed 30% in the last 1.5 hours. So that is not an option either. I have a number of tapes to do and that is too long.

There has to be an easier way. I've captured this tape probably 20 times already using different software, hardware, settings, etc.... There is always something wrong. The video itself is not bad. It's the best looking picture in the world but it isn't bad.

[hech54]

Thanks for the response. No, it was Xvid compression.

There's your sync problem.

[defiantclass1]

Well, I agree that compressing with Xvid caused that file to be out of sync, however like I said, I did it again using no compression and it was so bad it was unwatchable. At least the Xvid was watchable. The uncompressed file just gave blips of audio every other second (or less), plus the file was to big to manage.

[hech54]

What was wrong with the original mpg that you mentioned in your first post? DVD is "mpg" MPEG2.

[defiantclass1]

Well, that's a good question. The only real problems with it are 1) if I wanted to clean up the video in VDM it had to be .avi. VDM wouldn't see my mpg files. 2) the size, and 3) the audio is slightly out of sync even in the original mpg.

The audio being slightly out of sync is the biggest problem. The size actually was not that bad. But I did need to use the interleaving a bit. It seems like as the video gets further in, the more out of sync it becomes. I do a little adjustments and fix it in the later part of the video but it then messes it up in the earlier part.

It was then that I decided, let me try capturing in VDM rather than my Honestech software and see if it does a better job. That is when I started experiencing all these other issues we have been talking about.

I'm just trying to find a method that gives me a good clean, in sync, file that isn't so huge that I need to attached an external drive to house it. If I can nail it down, I have like 50 videos I would like to do. But I can't go through this for all of them. So I have just been experimenting with this one trying find a solution I can easily use for the rest.

I'm not committed to using VDM by any means, or the Honestech capture software for that matter. I just don't want to go buying more software that may not accomplish what I need. I already have that.

Thanks!

[hech54]

Maybe it is just the USB device itself. There are tons of cheap chinese copies of that EasyCap thing floating around on sites like Ebay that simply don't work and aren't even worth the postage paid to ship them.

[defiantclass1]

Yeah, I think you might be right. It might be easier and cheaper to try another one and see if I get different results. Or, buy something more expensive that works better. Do you have any suggestions on what would be the best hardware to use? I currently run Windows 7 32 bit (although I would want something that worked with 64 bit as well as I plan to switch in the near future), AMD Phenom 9950 Quad core processor, 2GB memory. Thanks again