More audio/video sync issues

[bboyle]

Okay I am really frustrated. I have done about 50 avi to svcd conversions and most went well. Everytime I am using virtualdub to convert the audio to pcm at 44kHz. I am using tmpg 2.56 to encode the mpeg 2 using vbr, the average length of my video is about 50 minutes. The problem I am having lately is the video will occasionally skip or have a glitch, and the audio / video is not always in sync. The thing is the SVCD plays perfect on my PC, it just has a problem in my standalone samsung DVD s221 player.

So my research on the net tells me the bitrate is to high and is causing the sync problems. I downloaded a bitrate viewer and low and behold the bitrate is higher than the specified limit in tmpg, 2520 is the specified limit in tmpg but I have actual bitrate limits exceeding 3200 in the encoded mpeg2 file. I would like to continue to use vbr because I like the idea, but can anyone give me an idea why tmpg is not doing its job properly? Do I just need to use CBR (I feel bad doing this because quality is compromised in high action portions of the movie)

Just incase anyone needs any more info on how I am doing my conversions.

All avi's are divx 3, 4 or 5.02,
All audio has been converted to PCM using 44 kHz,
VCDeasy converts the mpeg2 over to bin/cue,
Nero burns the cue file at a slow speed of 8x (I actually have a 32x burner but am burning at a slower speed to make sure there are no problems reading the disk)

One last thing, while doing the conversion to bin / cue in vcd easy I get a "update data scan offset" warning (I have tried with and without no difference), also when it writes the bin and cue file I get a few messages on the screen about some mpeg marker not being set, and non mpeg1 audio stream. Not sure what any of that means.

Thanks for any help,
Bryan

[bugster]

You say you are encoding in Tmpgenc using VBR. But which form of VBR? TmpGencs CQ mode is VBR and I have seen it reported that this mode frequently exceeds the specified bitrate. I have never heard of this problem with 2-pass VBR. So if you are using CQ, try 2pass or even Manual VBR (which requires a lot of effort).

Hope this helps.

[bboyle]

I am using the 2 pass vbr, I am starting to think I just need to encode at a CBR. My CBR svcd's play flawlessly, but even when I set the max limit to 2000 and lower value to 1000 I get a few glitches with VBR. I did a bitrate viewer of the svcd with the above limits and it doesn't go over 2500 but still plays glitchy in a few parts and loses sync.

Weird,
Bryan