Audio goes out of sync after cutting mpeg with TMPGEnc

[Neomorpheus]

I've recorded some things from vcr to my pc using Virtualdub and then converted to mpg using TMPGEnc. the audio is ok until i edit them in TMPGEnc and then the audio goes out of sync, does anyone know why and how to get around this??

[Bogie]

Neomorpheus:

This appears to be a pretty common problem as you will see if you search around these wonderful forum topic areas.

Unfortunately, there seems to be as many solutions as there are people who ask the question.

I can only tell you how I solved the problem I had with my audio getting more and more out of synch with the video as my dvd progressed. It was like watching an old dubbed chinese movie with the lips going and the guns firing but the sound following a second later.

If it hadn't cost me a perfectly good piece of expensive media I would have laughed.

So I searched the forums and discovered myriad solutions involving extracting the audio track, running it through Audacity and other progs and then matching the synch in some other editor. Slowing down the video frame rate, speeding up the audio sample rate and one pretty good piece of advice which involved sacrificing a chicken.

Then I found a reference to a product called Canopus ADVC100. Which is an external device, sometimes compared to a "bridge" or the "Dazzle" capture device.

I don't know about those things, but after reading over 100 extremely positive comments I swallowed hard, calculated the real cost of the 3 weeks I spent trying to fix the damn audio problem with a variety of Freeware/Shareware/Trialware programs and the coaster DVDR's and then went out and bought one of these pricey buggers. ($419. Canadian at the DVshop.ca in Toronto.)

This device is really designed to take almost any input from any digital, (ie: camcorder) or analog (ie: VCR) and it sends the output out via a Firewire cable to any capture software or hardware you have in your machine. It has some feature known as Audiolock which does just that.

I capture the file using Ulead Video Factory 6 in AVI format, run it through TMPGenc to convert it to an MPGII file and then author it in TMPGencAuthor before burning it with Nero.

Perfect, every time.

Needs big hard drive, 13 gigs per hour of tape in AVI format. I took a 3 hour and 20 minute sporting event and burned it to a 4.7 gig DVDRW (the other great lesson I learned, DVDRW is a newbies best friend) with zero problems, zero dropped frames.

If the boys and girls at Ahead get their act together I hope to do all of this with one prog (Nero 6) sometime soon.

I know this may not fit everyones budget and lots of other people have combinations of capture cards, software, source materiels and knowledge and time on their hands that eliminate the audio probs without this expense but this is beautiful and it works for me.

I hope you find this info helpful and I wish you luck. It was a pretty good feeling to finally get it right.

Cheers

Bogie

[epo]

This is because lengths of audio (24 ms) and video (33.3 or 40 ms) frames don't match and streams can only be cut between frames.
Most realiable (but a bit time consuming) is to edit video and audio separately.
Also new version of MPEG2VCR is told to master MPEG editing without sync problems.

What I do (I rip MPEG from satellite) is to demux first. Then I run video (save whole clip over) through MPEG-VCR (most likely You don't need to do it). And now for cuting. Cuting video with MPEG-VCR and audio with goldwave (and marking lengths/starts/ends on paper). Audio and video can be of different length and start/end at different positions, You just need to know exactly how to join them together and where to put transitions.
Now, when I have all these 1/2 song clips (I do music DVDs this way), I make EDL (with transitions/fades/legth cuts) on paper. Next is to convert this EDL into MPEG-VCRs video clip list and to join audio with goldwave.
This ready, it now only takes to compress audio with TooLame and to mux streams together. So, video with perfect sync is ready.

In Your place I would cut original capture tough as MPEG is not meant to be edited.

Bogie is right, but this doesn't apply to You as Your original capture is perfect (helps with gradual unsync due to dropped frames.)