mpeg audio sync issues

[spawnuvsatan]

I am using Leadtek's USB TV II to capture video from my TV/VCR/TIVO. The file is captured in mpg format which I know is not the best but that is all that the capture device will do. I edit out the commercials using Womble's MPEG Video Wizard 2003 and the file plays back flawlessly, audio and video in perfect harmony.

The problem I run into is when I try to author a dvd the audio slowly drifts out of sync. I have tried authoring using the following software:

Ulead MovieFactory 3
Ulead MovieFactory 2
TMPGEnc DVD Author
DVD-Lab
DVD Architect


Next up to try is:

Pinnacle Studio 8
Ulead DVD Workshop 2

I have been searching the forums the last week now and all of the suggested solutions that I have attempted to this point have failed. The only ones I haven't trie

Another thought I had was to try burning just the mpg to dvd-r and try to make some sort of menu to play them. Anyone know if this is possible?

I'm also open to any other ideas to fix the audio sync issues. I have tried to seperate the video and audio with no luck and I have tried to author just using the edited mpg. Although the edited file appears to be fine I am starting to suspect that it is not and I am going to test burning an unedited capture with commercials and all the extra junk just to confirm.

Another thing I haven't tried is converting the mpg to avi. I'm worried I will run into more audio problems when I do this though. Maybe if I do it before the editing I won't either way I think I might try both.

Thanks in advance and I am sorry if this has been answered before somewhere (I obviously have missed that post )

[pyscrow]

Demux your MPEg with ProjectX, (or PVAStrumento, TPRconverter or similar), then try authoring the resultant split files using TMPGenc DVD author.

[spawnuvsatan]

Thx for the reply. I tried to demux using PVAStrumento and while it did keep the audio in sync it created a new problem where it drops some audio to do so.

I'll keep trying.

[spawnuvsatan]

Is there a program I can run these files through that will identify dropped frames or problem spots with audio/video sync? I still have not had any luck keeping audio in sync when trying to author the mpg files so I can watch them on my TV.

I am pretty sure my system is powerful enough to do video editing but I need to figure out if the capture device is my problem or my system is.

Any suggestions are appreciated. TIA

[Montana]

You might try VideoReDo -- it will find audio frames that aren't partnered with any video and delete them. Then it will give you a report when it's done as to how many frames have been deleted, and provide some guidelines as to how many dropped frames are "acceptable".

I would run both an edited file and an unedited file through the program to see if there is any difference in the outcome.

[spawnuvsatan]

Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded the trial for VideoReDo and it did not find any dropped frames within the edited file. Not expecting to run into this issue I deleted the original file and have not yet captured any more video to test an unedited file.

PVAStrumento seemed to find some sort of problem with the edited file and it made corrections to keep the audio in sync but as I mentioned above it did so by dropping some of the audio stream causing a whole seperate problem where whol words would be dropped from sentences.

Is there any other program that can analyze a file for dropped frames?

[spawnuvsatan]

Update for myself ... if nothing else I can at least use this thread to keep track of all have done to correct this so far.

Since my last post I took some files that were captured in mpg format and not yet edited and burned them to dvd with Ulead Movie Factory 3. I chose UMF3 since at this point it doesn't seem to matter what authoring software I use and UMF3 is pretty quick and easy. End result was the same...audio is still out of sync. This time it's noticeable right away.

After reading the stickies in the capturing forum I decided I would try something totally different since nothing I am currently trying is working. I captured in .avi format to my USB 2.0 hard drive and then plan to use UMF3 again to burn the unedited file to dvd again once I can figure out how to get the sound to capture properly :P

[Chief Engineer]

Windows Media Player or any player using Direct Show Filters can usually correct for audio sync problems and lead you to believe you have a good source file.

Load the file in VirtualDubMod and check the sync. If it doesn't sync there, it will not when you create your dvd files.

I suffered from a similar problem for months and eventually tracked my it down to a bad codec. Once I removed it from my system, I've had no problems.

[spawnuvsatan]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try that and post my results. How do you tell if you have a "bad" codec?

EDIT:
I've run the demuxed and edited mpg file that I have through SyncView and it shows that the sync is off by as much as 16ms in some spots. The amount of time varies as the file plays though. When I go back and look at the files in DVD Lab I see that there is about a 1 second difference between the demuxed files (sometimes audio is 1 second shorter and sometimes it 1 second longer....working with 9 different mpg files). I didn't catch this before. I may try messing with the audio delay in DVD Lab and see if this resolves my troubles.

[Chief Engineer]

How do you tell if you have a "bad" codec?

The fact that a file would play fine in Windows Media Player, but have sync issues in VirtualDubMod, convinced me that the file itself contained "what it needs" to play in sync. So, since the file has "what it needs", demuxing audio, strectching it, and remuxing is a workaround, not a fix.

With this in mind, I concluded my encoding software must be the culprit and started experimenting with various others as you have, and ended up with the same results you have. After months of research, reading dozens of posts, I learned these softwares use the same codecs as an "engine" to process files. More research led me to some tools that would let me pick the codecs to use instead of Windows doing it for me. A few days of experimenting later, I identified combinations that caused problems and removed them.

The result: no sync problems with any software I use.

[spawnuvsatan]

More research led me to some tools that would let me pick the codecs to use instead of Windows doing it for me. A few days of experimenting later, I identified combinations that caused problems and removed them.

The result: no sync problems with any software I use.

What combo did you come up with?

[Chief Engineer]

It's been awhile, but seems like I removed Bicubic Resizer and Morgan Stream Switcher, and added the Mainconcept filters that install when you load the trial Sony Vegas Video.

I used ZoomPlayer and Gspot to check which filters windows used and Zoomplayer to change the merit values to force windows to use the mainconcept filters.