has anyone used FlaskMPEG? I have audio trouble

[aestheticdawn]

When I am using flask and I convert my MPEG video/audio stream into an avi, the picture comes out good but there is no audio. I have no idea what to do. Can someone please help. If you don't know flask, then is there anybody out there that can suggest freeware that will convert MPEG video/audio stream into avi?
thanks
ty

[theDruid]

aestheticdawn,

you're going to need to give loads more detail...

e.g.:

* what exactly is your input - a vob, MPEG1/2 etc...
* what version of Flask are you using?
* what output codec are you using (there are dozens of types of avi)?
* what settings are you using?

we'll try and help, but it would be real crystal-ball stuff to give you advice based on the information you've given.

cheers,
mcdruid.

(PS there are loads of other encoders that can do avi output - TMPGEnc can do it, for example)

[aestheticdawn]

well it was a VOB, but I converted it to MPEG video/audio stream because I wanted to get a smaller clip rather than the whole movie. I am using the newest version of flask (from the site). Under Video codec I have "uncompressed video". For audio codec I have Fraunhofer IIS MPEG layer 3 codec. And Im not so sure about my settings...where do I find that? Basically what I want to do is convert to any type of fromat that Premiere will read. I think it has trouble reading MPEG video / audio stream, because it crashes every time it import it. It seems to work fine with AVI. I really have no idea what I am doing here. I am very unfamiliar with the flask interface/codecs/conversions/etc. Thanks for your help. and sorry I posted twice...didn't know that was rude.
tyler

[theDruid]

hi aestheticdawn,

i'm a bit confused now - you say you converted your vob into a 'MPEG video/audio stream' - how did you do this (again there are quite a few different flavours of MPEG streams).

I don't know much about premiere, but it strikes me that it's not a great idea to do 2 conversions before you even get into premiere. Every time you (re)encode, you lose quality.

Depending on how much video you're talking about, converting a vob from a DVD into uncompressed avi is going to take a lot of disk space.

I would look into frameserving from your original vob into premiere - i have no idea if virtualdub's frameserver is compatible with premiere, but that would be the first thing I would look into.

There is a version of vDub which can handle MPEG2 vobs (see the tools section of this site), and I use that to frameserve to different encoders quite often. The only problem is that the vDub mod cannot handle streams that span across multiple vobs (if you're ripping from a DVD you can get around this by ripping the whole stream into a single vob - but depending on the size of the stream, you'll need to have an ntfs disc to handle the big file).

Look at the guides on this site - there's a lot about frameserving, and probably some guides on premiere etc..

good luck,
mcdruid.

PS. also - use lame for your mp3 codec, not the fraunhoffer one - see the tools section again.

[theDruid]

aestheticdawn has PM'd me with some more details, and we've agreed to continue the discussion in this thread - incase anyone else can be of more help, or incase this helps anyone else.

aestheticdawn PM's are as follows:

ok...since I really don't have a clue about ANY of this...let me start from the beginning.

I decrypted a dvd and now have the files on my pc. Now these put onto my pc as vob files. I took these files into Inter Video DVD Copy and made it so it only converts one, 2 min scene. This is now on my desktop as a MPEG video / audio stream. Now...I have a 2 min scene that can play in windows media player at DVD quality, but I can't bring it into premiere to edit it even further. I and doing a montage of my fav quotes from movies. Now when I use flask to make the MPEG video / audio stream into an AVI (premiere reads avi well), it does it fine, except for the fact that the audio is lost.

is there an better way to do this? again...im just shooting in the dark and have no idea what i am doing or any of the termanology. thanks so much for your help.
ty

Hey. First of all, thanks for all the help you have been...I really appreciate it. I downloaded another version of flask and it is working way better. I am a bit confused about the codecs however. Which Video Codec gives the best output video quality? Does the codec determine weather or not premiere can read it (i know you don't know much about premiere)? Anyways...have a good day.

Okay - lets establish what you're saying:

1. Your aim is to take a few short scenes from a DVD, and edit them with Premiere.

2. As I say, I am not an expert on Premiere at all - in fact I know very little about it - but you say that Premiere cannot open vob files ripped directly from the DVD, and you want to convert the footage into some form of avi stream that Premiere can handle.

3. You don't say what format you want to end up with, but I'll presume that you're going to try and use premiere to encode your finished-edited stream back to (S)VCD or DVD format.

Right - let's simplify what you're doing - as I said before, the more conversions you put your stream through, the more you'll degrade the quality.

To get your clip(s) from the DVD into premiere, there are a couple of approaches (there will actually be many more, but here are a few that come to mind):

1. You could use FlaskMPEG, as you are trying to do.

2. You could use DVD2AVI.

3. You could use Virtualdub-MPEG2-AC3 (a vDub mod).

The first step, however, in doing any of these would be to rip the DVD.

There are several good tools for this - probably the most popular being DVD-Decrypter and Smart Ripper.

I personally prefer the latter. I would use Smart Ripper to rip the whole title (and incase you need to use the vDub mod, I would set Smart Ripper to rip the whole title as one big vob - in settings select 'max filesize' under 'file splitting', and set the max filesize to 8000mb or something like that - you'll need an NTFS drive to do this, but it seems you have WinXP, so you should be okay for that)

Once you have done that, any one of the 3 apps I listed above can access the vob, and can output a nice avi (or frameserve as if the file were an avi) for you to feed to premiere.

I personally would use the vDub mod. Load the vob into it, and you can then 'select range' under video, and set the start and end of the section you wish to edit in Premiere.

Once you've done that, you've got 2 options:

1. I don't know if Premiere will accept framserving from vDub, but if it will, that's a good way to do it.

You will need to install the frameclient handler for vDub - which is done by running 'auxsetup.exe' in the distribution of the mod.

Then you need to load the file in, select range, and then 'start frameserver'.

When you start the frameserver and are asked for a filename to use, call it something like 'frameserve.vdr.avi'

Then see if Premiere will load up this 'ghost' avi file you've just created.

2. If the above doesn't work with Premiere, you could output a real avi clip from vDub.

You load the file up the same way, select range, and then 'Save as avi'

You could do this uncompressed if the clip is small and you have plenty of disc space. Alternatively, you could use a 'lossless codec' such as HuffyUV - which will make the file smaller, but theoretically not lose any quality.

You'd need to install huffy first (obviously), and you access the compression through video->compression.

As to one of your questions, if you use a high-compression codec like DivX etc.. at this stage, you'll make the file smaller, but you'll be throwing out a lot of data to do so - and thus losing quality. There's no point in doing this when you're not trying to produce a small end-product, but just doing an 'in-between' step in the editing. Huffy doesn't shrink the filesize nearly as much as these sorts of codecs, but that's exactly why it's good for editing/capturing etc..

Oh - and leave the audio as default - i.e. 'Source Audio' and 'Direct Stream Copy'.

If you output the whole stream like that as an avi, Premiere should accept it.

As always, there are dozens of other ways to do this, but the above is probably how I would go about it.

let us know how you get on.

cheers,
mcdruid.