Nerovision NO AUDIO prob -> IFO files - can u help?

[larry__ellison]

As many have reported in this forum, Nerovision produces DVD's with no audio for a LOT of people. The folks at Ahead are useless - I've contacted them twice and all they say is, "Nerovision produces DVD's with LPCM audio - make sure your player supports it."

As others have said in this forum, a DVD player HAS to support LPCM audio to be a DVD player in the first place. LPCM is just WAV format - I've created lots of DVD's with Sonic and Ulead products using LPCM that play PERFECTLY in EVERY ONE of the players owned by myself and my family. This is NOT a player compatibility issue.

So... In my vain attempts to get it to work, I authored a DVD to my hard drive in Nerovision. I then tried playing the VOB file directly in Zoom Player, WinDVD and Windows Media Player -- each of them plays perfectly, sound and everything, so I know that Nerovision is putting sound in the files it creates.

However, when I attempt to play the DVD from the directory (in other words, playing it as a DVD rather than just playing the VOB directly), I get video with no sound.

I don't know enough about IFO files to know what's going on, but someone out there has to know. Can anyone help? I could come up with a small sample VIDEO_TS folder if anyone is kind enough to take it on.

If there was a relatively quick hack that I could do in IFO Edit once NVE was done authoring the disk to fix the audio problem, that would be almost ideal. Of course it would be nice if Ahead actually did something about it (or even admitted there was a potential problem)!

The reason I care so much about using Nerovision is that it's the only low cost option for authoring DVD's with honest-to-God chapter points (including semi-decent menus - I know I could hack together a disk with chapter points in IFO Edit, but without menus). The only other relatively inexpensive option is the "prosumer" versions of Sonic and Ulead packages, but they are both hundreds of dollars.

[SHS]

Good find larry__ellison your rigth the audio is there in the VOB it self like you said how ever I would like to ponit out that 80% of time that level 1, 2 tech support are useless what you and I need is direct contact to the nero software engineering.
I guest I will not be using this products any more now that I know it only dose only LPCM audio for DVD I want MPEG audio for DVD I do not wish for space hog LPCM audio witch cut the video play time in half per disk I guest Ulead MovieFactory is still the best products out there for the money.

[David K]

I’ve been experimenting with Nerovision (with the plug-in) with mixed success. The one thing I really like about it is that it appears to accept SVCD and other non-strictly-DVD compliant mpg2 files and then “transcodes” them, saving me the trouble of having to re-encode them myself. Spruceup (otherwise a vastly superior program) completely crashes on me whenever I try to load a non-DVD-strictly compliant mpg2.

However, I am running into the lack of audio problem. There is no audio problem if Nerovision likes the parameters of the original mp2 audio track in your file and leaves it alone: thus those files whose Mpg audio remains unchanged play audio in the final DVD. But if Nerovision doesn’t like the parameters of the original Mp2 audio track it changes it to LPCM when it transcodes it, and I get no sound in the DVD selection playing it on my standalone (Sampo 631CF) or on my computer (WinDVD 4.0).

I haven’t figured out yet why Nerovision leaves some Mp2 tracks alone and transcodes others into LPCM. The cases where it left them alone were 48 khz /224kbps. I thought that perhaps it converts for non-DVD sampling (i.e. 44.1) and that explains some of the cases but it also converted a 48khz /338kbps.

As appealing as parts of it are, I’m not going to spend too much more time with Nerovision until someone figures out a pattern to the sound problem, or until Nero releases a new version.

(Final note: I am currently burning mini-DVDs (DVD structure on CDs) rather than real DVDs, but the problems and observations seem to work for both.)

[David K]

Follow up from my previous posting.

I made a DVD-compliant Mpg (from TMPENc) with 48khz/224kbps (instead of the usual 338). Nerovision converted the audio track to LPCM (and thus no audio when played). Using Ifo-Edit I took a look at the IFO files that Nerovision produced for the VOBs with LPCM and the IFO files list the audio as Mpeg audio. So perhaps this is the problem, the IFO is telling the player to look for mpeg audio instead of the LPCM that is really there.

Bottom line: if you want to have Nerovision leave your Mpeg audio alone when it transcodes, you need to use a Mpg encoded according to TMPENc’s SVCD template (adjusted to DVD size and audio sampling rate) instead of encoding the Mpg with TMPENc’s DVD mpg template. Of course, Spruceup will not accept the SVCD template encoded mpgs, so you need differently encoded Mpgs for each program.

[larry__ellison]

David K - you are exactly correct. I should have tried opening the thing up in IFO Edit before!

If you open up the VTS_01_0.IFO file in IFOEdit, the "Audio 1" entry indeed says it's MPEG audio. You can double-click on it and change the entry to LPCM, then re-save the IFO (I chose to "save as bup" as well).

Guess what happened after I did that??? THE AUDIO WORKED!!!

I'm incredibly pissed at Ahead for continually blaming us and our DVD players when they're the ones that F'd it up.

Ulead DVD Workshop 2 (only $49 direct from Ulead's site) is more full-featured and it does NOT re-encode every single file you give to it (it will if you want it to, but it doesn't force you to re-encode like Nero Vision Express). Plus, it will allow you to author with MPEG audio, saving you tons of space and allowing you to put much more video on the disk.

I really wish that I had not spent the $24 on Nero's crap.