Losing audio on standalone DVD player but OK on PC?

[thief_]

I used DVDLabPro to create a DVD of my wedding using clips rendered by Sony Vegas 5 into MPEG.

The resulting DVD on the PC is gr8, but I have burnt four copies on two different media using two different applications (Nero & DVD Shrink) and all copies do the same thing: No audio but video is OK.

Interestingly, I created a photo slideshow in DLP and added audio to that, and that is the only audio that plays on the stand-alone DVD players (tested on two).

Non working audio details:
Rehersals.mpa, FPS:=48KHz, Ratio:=224Kbps, Time:=00:05:37, System:=Stereo

Working audio details:
U2-BD.wav, FPS:=48KHz, Ratio:=16bits, Time:=00:01:59, System:=PCM

The first was derived by DLP when I imported the Rehersals MPEG video clip and the second is a rip of part of a song off a CD.

What is my problem with this project?

[Forum Troll]

Try converting the MPA audio to WAV and see what happens.

[guns1inger]

Do you have the AC3 plugin for Vegas ? If so, output AC3 instead. If not, check out the settings in your DVD players to make sure they are a) capable of outputing audio from mpeg1-layer2 source (should be in Australia), and b) that they are set to output mpeg audio as PCM. My Pioneer was set to output mpeg audio as a bitstream by default, but my amp cannot decode mpeg audio. Changed the player to output PCM instead, and everything works nicely.

[thief_]

Tried the DVD settings but nothing made a difference. I'll try the Vegas AC3 plugin, but it doesn't explain why it worked one day and not the next!

Thanks for your help. I'll keep trying...

[non-linear]

You could try opening the authored DVD (if it's not on the hard drive, copy the contents there first) in IFOEdit and look at the audio attributes for the movie. If the title where the mpa audio is says it's PCM or AC3, then that's probably where the problem is. You can double click on where the audio info is listed and change it to mpeg2 audio.

Not sure if that'll solve your problem, but it's one more thing for you to try

[thief_]

Thanks- another quality response! This time I exported the audio from the video file as wav, imported it into DLP and it worked.

I have heard that you can not mix different audio formats (wav & mpa) in DVL coz only one will work and the other won't.

My question is, if I have any audio files other than MPA (wav, mp3, etc), what should I convert them to and how, so that they are compatible with the other MPA audio files?

[non-linear]

It is possible to have different audio sources in DVD-lab, you just have to open the IFO files in IFOEdit and correct the audio type for the movies that have the wrong audio format set to them.

You are better off just having one audio format. Your choices are: PCM (which I don't recommend because of how much space it takes), AC3 or MP2. Since you're in Australia, I recommend just using MP2 audio for everything.

[thief_]

Thanks Non-Linear. So how do I convert a wav or mp3 to MP2?

[non-linear]

Personally, I do my conversion from wav to ac3 with ffmpeggui, which also supports converting to mp2. It's free, it's basic, and it works. Another method would be to use BeSweet. BeSweet has more features, but if you want simplicity, go with ffmpeggui. It'll allow you to select the audio type (in your case, mp2), the bitrate (I recommend 192 minimum), and the sample type (48KHz for DVD), then you select the directory and filename to save it to. Then hit "convert", and it'll do its job.