Knowing in advance which buttons to push

[chowse]

Hi,
I recently had to try about 4 times to encode 2 .avi's to DVD before I did it successfully.
I've never had that problem before, but, unfortunately, I've reinstalled OS X 10.4.2, and upgraded to ffmpegX 0.0.9t r4.

Long story short, using mpeg2enc, I had to uncheck the Normalize audio button in order for the audio to not be choppy.

The question is...is there some way I can know in advance that I will have to do something like that before I encode?
Maybe the file information should tell me? msmpeg4 (or other), divx (or not)?

So can I know in advance which buttons to push before encoding, or is this all trial and error?

Thanks,
Charles

[major]

I didn't notice audio being choppy when using Normalize, perhaps could you help me reproducing your issue, by emailing me to major4@mac.com with a short clip and your process output.

[chowse]

Thanks for the reply, Major.

Unfortunately, I deleted the video files once I had a successful encode.
I am currently working on another encode, and will save everything.

BTW, how can I save a short clip to send you?

I do have the process output of the last (successful) encode, but I doubt if a successful process outout will be much help. There were no errors, but I will post it if you like.

Here is the process output of an unsuccessful encode using ffmpeg. This resulted in no video and choppy audio. There are no errors.

Encoding started on Tue Oct 11 10:31:01 CDT 2005
Input #0, avi, from '/Users/charles/Movies/[tmd]the.amityville.horror.2005.(dvl).dvdrip.(1of2).avi .joined.avi':
Duration: 01:28:33.4, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 567 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: msmpeg4, yuv420p, 352x240, 14.99 fps
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 24000 Hz, stereo, 56 kb/s
Output #0, rawvideo, to '/Users/charles/Movies/[tmd]the.amityville.horror.2005.(dvl).dvdrip.(1of2).avi .joined.avi.ff.mpv':
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 720x480, 23.98 fps, q=2-20, 4000 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
bench: utime=2170.527s
video:1525818kB audio:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 70.028583%
Input #0, wav, from '/Users/charles/Movies/[tmd]the.amityville.horror.2005.(dvl).dvdrip.(1of2).avi .joined.avi.ff.wav':
Duration: 01:25:00.9, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 768 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Audio: pcm_s16le, 24000 Hz, stereo, 768 kb/s
Output #0, ac3, to '/Users/charles/Movies/[tmd]the.amityville.horror.2005.(dvl).dvdrip.(1of2).avi .joined.avi.ff.ac3':
Stream #0.0: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 448 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
video:0kB audio:278955kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.000000%
STAT: Picking VTS 01
STAT: Processing /Users/charles/Movies/[tmd]the.amityville.horror.2005.(dvl).dvdrip.(1of2).avi .joined.avi.ff.mpg...
STAT: VOBU 16 at 4MB, 1 PGCS

<snip>

STAT: VOBU 12000 at 2871MB, 1 PGCS
INFO: Video pts = 0.214 .. 5313.480
INFO: Audio[0] pts = 0.214 .. 5101.078
STAT: VOBU 12006 at 2872MB, 1 PGCS
INFO: Generating VTS with the following video attributes:
INFO: MPEG version: mpeg2
INFO: TV standard: ntsc
INFO: Aspect ratio: 4:3
INFO: Resolution: 720x480
INFO: Audio ch 0 format: ac3/6ch, 48khz drc
STAT: fixing VOBU at 4MB (17/12006, 0%)

<snip>

STAT: fixing VOBU at 2871MB (12001/12006, 99%)
STAT: fixed 12006 VOBUS
INFO: Scanning /Users/charles/Movies/[tmd]the.amityville.horror.2005.(dvl).dvdrip.(1of2).avi .joined.avi.ff.mpg.DVD/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.IFO
Tue Oct 11 11:29:33 CDT 2005

[major]

Video seem to exist here, perhaps it was black?

[chowse]

Correct, black video, which, in effect, is no video.

If you haven't already seen it, I emailed you RE: this topic.

[major]

Try to open the source avi and the intermediate mpv file, do any of them look incorrect?

[chowse]

Concerning the file that I mailed to you, the source .avi and .mpv file play correctly.
The .mpg file, however, has choppy audio.