Converting MPEG2 to VOB. Weird outcome:( Please Help!

[studtrooper]

Well, I just captured about a hour of stuff off a VHS tape (with my Winfast TV200 XP Deluxe) to MPEG2. Everything came out great (no audio-sinc issues or anything). I even burnt the 2.9gb file on a dvd-r and tested it on my xbox media player (XBMC) and watched the entire thing. Perfect. What's my problem then? Well, I tried converting my MPEG2 into DVD files (with Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2 SE) so I could see if it could work on my home DVD players. Well, here's the weird thing: I was able to convert it (took like 2 hours) but after I burnt it and tried it on one of my stand-alone DVD players I noticed two things immediately. One, There are these weird very small checkerboard-like artifacts (kind of like if you overclocked you videocard too high or something) on the video and the audio is out of sinc by like 2 seconds. I checked on my other DVD players (including my PC) and the same thing happened. I then watched a VOB from this DVD that was still left on my HDD, same thing. This really makes me angry There is no reason for the conversion process to do this. Oh, I guess I should also mention that whenever I try to capture or convert using Divx 5.11 or Xvid, I get this same problem, albeit a lot worse. Anyone ever experience something like this? I'm fairly distraught, I was this close to putting my Denis Leary: No Cure For Cancer VHS tape on a perfect DVD

[teegee420]

What resolution did you use to capture? You may not even need to re-encode. I would suggest using a different aurhoring program like TMPGEnc DVD Author.

[studtrooper]

I am capturing at 720x480. I tried out that TMPGEnc DVD Author and it fixed the odd artifacting (only took like 18 minutes to turn the MPEG2 into the DVD VOB files too, bitchin') but the audio remains out of sync (it starts out right but like a minute into it it remains like 2-3 seconds off. For capturing I'd expect this problem, but when I'm simpily converting this shouldn't be happening... Any suggestions? Thanks for the help.

[teegee420]

TMPGEnc DVD Author didn't by chance to an audio sampling rate conversion, did it? It if did you would have been prompted. Also, did the finished DVD play out of sync on your PC too?

[studtrooper]

No, I was not prompted by TMPGEnc DVD Author to do a audio sampling conversion, and yes I tried the DVD on all 3 of my DVD players.

[FulciLives]

Ulead Movie Factory probably re-encoded the whole thing hence the wait time and the degraded video quality.

TMPGEnc DVD Author does not ever re-encode the video.

Not sure what the sound problem is though.

What format is the sound in the original captured MPEG-2 file?

You can load it into VirtualDubMod and then click on FILE and under FILE look for FILE INFORMATION. This will give you details on the video and audio.

The captured audio should be 16-bit 48k Stereo audio (my guess probably MP2 format).

If the audio is anything else (such as 44.1k instead of 48k) then that could be the problem.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[XrayDuke]

Try using the Ulead Video Studio 7 software that came with your card. It will have a option when you get ready to burn the DVD which will say "do not re-encode complient Mpeg format". I can't remember the exact wording but you can't miss it. This may help in that there will not be any re-encode and also the software came free with the card so all that you will lose is a little bit of time if it doesn't work.

[qpskfec]

Try using the Ulead Video Studio 7 software that came with your card. It will have a option when you get ready to burn the DVD which will say "do not re-encode complient Mpeg format".

Movie Factory also has the option to not reencode files that are already dvd compliant, so you don't need to use VS7 to do this. It's under "Project Settings", which is the check box icon.

Just make sure that you are capturing in a dvd compliant format before loading into MF.

[studtrooper]

Well, here's what VirtualDub says about my MPEG2 file. I'm trying Ulead Movie Factory again right now with this new info, thanks.

[studtrooper]

Weird, my capture software (the WinFast PVR stuff that came with the card) doesn't give me a 44k or 48k audio option for MPEG2, only 224/240/244k etc. Which option should I pick to make my video files have a 16-bit 48k audio rate?

[studtrooper]

Well, I tried capturing at the highest rate available for MPEG2 (384k) and VirtualDub still says its 16-bit 44khz audio. How depressing:/

[studtrooper]

Ok, I resampled my audio into a 16-bit 48000khz wav PCM but the problem still remains. About 5 minutes into the DVD the audio just slowly goes out of sync. What the hell is going on

[studtrooper]

I think I fixed it! With a little help, I found out a way that works perfectly with my system. I captured in huffy, seperated the audio in a 16-bit 48khz .wav, converted the wav into ac3, put the huffy files into TMPGEnc (however you spell it) to convert it into MPEG2, and then I put the .mv2 and .ac3 files into TMPGEnc DVD Author, made the output, and then prayed. I looked at the vob files, the audio was perfectly in sync! Yay! Then I burned her up and tested in in my DVD player. Flawless! Woohoo!!! Thanks for the help guys

[FulciLives]

I think I fixed it! With a little help, I found out a way that works perfectly with my system. I captured in huffy, seperated the audio in a 16-bit 48khz .wav, converted the wav into ac3, put the huffy files into TMPGEnc (however you spell it) to convert it into MPEG2, and then I put the .mv2 and .ac3 files into TMPGEnc DVD Author, made the output, and then prayed. I looked at the vob files, the audio was perfectly in sync! Yay! Then I burned her up and tested in in my DVD player. Flawless! Woohoo!!! Thanks for the help guys

With most capture cards you are better off capturing to an AVI file using either HuffyUV (with a fast computer and plently of HDD space) or PICVideo MJPEG (for slower computer or when HDD space is tight).

You then convert that to MPEG-2/AC-3 using a method that you have already discovered.

I'm very happy for you

Capture straight to MPEG-2 is usually a bad idea unless the capture card does it with built-in hardware but your capture card doesn't have any of that.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman