Can't hear audio

[blaus]

Hello!

I did a capture from VHS to DVD, and authored a DVD. The sound is quite perfect in my standalone DVD. However, my cousin played the same DVD in his standalone DVD, but can't hear anything. I mean, almost... the menu audio is fine.

Please help me!

Bye!

[gadgetguy]

What did you use to Author the DVD and what audio type (PCM, AC3, MP2) is your source?

[blaus]

I've authored twice, to see if it worked: with Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3, and with Pinnacle Studio 9.
The source was PCM audio. It was captured with Scenalyzer Live.

[Soopafresh]

AC3 or MP2 ?

[blaus]

None of them. PCM. I'm talking about the source format.
But how the audio format may influence in the cause of the problem?

[gadgetguy]

The NTSC DVD specs allow for DD (Dolby Digital/AC3), DTS, PCM(uncompressed audio) or MPEG-1 Layer2 (MP2). Additionally, at least one audio track must have DD or PCM Audio. I'm not familiar with either of the authoring packages you've identified, but from what I've seen most menus get encoded to PCM audio, but the tracks can be something else. If the player is picky about the specs and the audio on all of the tracks was encoded to MP2, then they won't play because it technically doesn't follow spec.

[Soopafresh]

"MPEG audio is not used much on DVDs, although some inexpensive DVD recording software programs use MPEG audio, even on NTSC discs, which goes against the DVD standard and is not supported by all NTSC players."

[blaus]

OK, so which tool tells me the audio format the DVD was recorded?

What authoring tools do you suggest me? I was thinking in a tool that allowed me to put lots of audio tracks, each one in a different format.

Thank you all!

[blaus]

Another point: he has borrowed another DVD that was also captured from VHS, and played fine in his standalone DVD player. I guess it has something to do with the original VHS audio, isn't it?

[guns1inger]

g-spot can tell you what audio you have

[gadgetguy]

It's unlikely that the VHS audio has any infuence on the playablility of the audio in his DVD player. I need to understand the process you're using to create your DVD. You say that you used Scenalyzer Live to capture the video. What hardware are you using? It sounds like the original capture is in DV-AVI, is that correct? Then you are using Ulead or Pinnacle to edit, encode, and author, correct? I can't help with the specifics of either of those packages as I don't have/use them, but there must be some place where you can specify the type of audio to be used.

One way to check the authored audio is with PowerDVD, right click on the screen while it's playing and select "Show Information". Information about both the audio and video will be displayed over the picture.

[blaus]

gadgetguy: I'm using exactly this process you've described. The hardware is a Pinnacle Studio Deluxe capture board (I think it's the same as Pinnacle AV/DV).
The video I guess it's DV-AVI. Sorry, I'm not familiar with this spec.
Do you think that if I author the DVD with many audio tracks, let's say AC3, PCM and MP2, it would work?
Thanks!

[gadgetguy]

I think that if you use many audio tracks of different types there will not be enough room to provide adequate bitrate to the video. Just specify AC3 for your audio. That will be the most compatible, compressed audio.

[blaus]

Just some news from the last experiment: I did what I said, put 3 audio tracks, and he still can't hear the audio.
Some more information:
1) The audio is mono.
2) The tape was recorded in Japan. May be anything to do with the problem?
Can anybody help?
Thank you!

[solarfox]

First of all, forget the tape. The VHS source tape cannot possibly, in any way, affect whether or not the DVD audio can be heard in one DVD player but not in another. Period.

OK, now that we've got that cleared up...

The issue is what format the audio got encoded to when it was converted from the captured files to the DVD-ready MPEGs.

When you go to encode the file for DVD burning, tell ULead or Pinnacle that you want the audio track to be AC3. If it doesn't offer AC3 as an option, choose PCM instead. Either of these will produce a disc which is according to the NTSC DVD spec. Do not choose MPEG audio.

Once this is done, do as Gadgetguy suggested -- try playing the resulting DVD video files in PowerDVD (note that you don't need to burn to a disc for this; you can play DVD video files straight from the hard drive) and, while the movie is playing, right-click on the image and select "Show Information". Make sure that what PowerDVD says the audio format is matches what you told ULead or Pinnacle to do.

If it does match, and your output was either AC3 or PCM, then the disc should play just fine in any DVD player. If it still won't play correctly, then your friend's DVD player is either not working properly, or he's got the sound settings messed up somehow.

If it doesn't match, and PowerDVD says the audio stream is MPEG even though you told Pinnacle or ULead to use AC3 or PCM, then either you missed a step someplace in the process and the settings didn't take, or there's some other options set somewhere in the program(s) that's causing them to override your settings.

However, before we can go any further, you must follow the suggestions above and report the results, so that we can be sure what you're getting out of the Pinnacle or ULead programs is really what you're supposed to be getting.

[blaus]

Here's what I did: I've extracted the sound, encoded to ac3, wav and mp2. Then I've re-authored with these 3 audio tracks, using DVD Lab Pro 2. I had to shrink so to fit in a single-layer dvd. However, DVD Shrink won't let me shrink with 3 audio tracks (don't ask me why). So I've shrank with another tool (Amazon DVD Shrinker), but it didn't work well on standalone dvd (the footage got lost). So I used DVD Shrink with just 2 audio tracks (PCM and MP2).
Conclusion: both DVDs didn't work in his DVD, just in mine.

[levick]

Ask your friend to check his digital audio settings on his DVD player. He may have it set up to work with AC3 or DTS only. The setting must be raw or bitstream if the sound is LPCM or MP2 audio.
This is very much the case with MP2. Where is the decoding taking place? The DVD player itself or a home theatre receiver? The settings in the receiver may also need checking. Or if the decoding is done on the DVD player be sure it can decode MP2 audio steams....as mentioned earlier this is not a default setting. Failing that can you reauthor your sound steam with AC3 only to get around this issue?


Good luck.

[blaus]

levick: the decoding is taking place in the DVD player.

Regarding the audio format, I've lent him a DVD-R of mine, recorded in LPCM 2.0 1536 Kbps. This is the SAME audio format that the crappy DVD was recorded.
Sincerely, I'm getting nuts with this...

[blaus]

Just to keep you acquainted with the situation, the problem was that the audio came from a mono VCR, and was connected to just one input of the capture board. So I purchased a 1-RCA to 2 RCA cable, connected to both L/R inputs, and it worked!
Thank you all!

[Bjs]

Wait till this person get's a dvd player with more than 6 audio output's and wonder's why the audio isn't coming from all except two of the output's to a 5.1 sound system ... lol