Strange problem with sound on authored DVD's.

[samwem]

Hi folks, hope someone can help me.

I have a very strange problem which I just cant seem to figure out. I use Ulead movie factory to author my DVD'sand up till a couple of weeks ago, everything was fine. Mainly I use it to put capture DV camera video onto DVD. Just basic stuff. Windows movie maker for my editing, Ulead for authoring.

About 3 weeks ago, the sound stopped working on authored DVD's. This was a few weeks after me trying to put some TV show's onto DVD to take away and play on a portable DVD player. It was about 3 weeks ago I tried to do some more and the problem happened. I dont recall installing anything, or having any virus issues ( norton AV and Zone Alarm have always seemed to serve me well ).

Now, when I play DVD's on the PC using media player, which always worked fine, I get no sound. A good example is this. Footage from the camcorder, authored into a DVD. video works fine, but no sound. The REALLY spooky part is this...

If I play the same disc via Ulead's DVD player 2.0, it works fine. This problem is replicated on my laptop too... no sound in media player. Plays in Ulead.

I am totally stumped. I've tried different discs and brands. tried uninstalling and re-installing ulead... on both desktop and laptop... Other than that, I dont know what to think. I hope someone can help

Thanks for reading this far ! Even more thanks to anyone that can help !

Mark.

[non-linear]

What audio format are you using in your DVDs? It needs to be AC3, MP2 or LPCM (uncompressed). Have you checked to make sure that the audio from your source material is actually being used in the compilation? Also, is your audio in the 48KHz sampling frequency?

[mikiem]

Each media type has files required to play, & often each software that has something to do with these files installs it's own versions. Windows doesn't always handle this well.

If the audio plays one place & not another, that suggests that perhaps the player (in this case wmplayer) doesn't know how to decode the audio, or else perhaps as far as wmplayer is concerned, the decoding part is broken. Your Ulead player on the other hand may not use the default files for decoding, but it's own set. With DVD this is complicated by wmplayer accepting/using decoders from separate DVD players like Power DVD.

So... as posted by non-linear, troubleshooting will vary according to the type of audio you use. If it's ac3, you had to install something at some point to decode ac3 files -- probably included in DVD player software. I'd try repairing or remove and reinstall of that software.

If the audio is mp3, then I'd look to what your system is using for mp3 decoding. Does wmplayer play mp3 files? If so, look for something DVD related. If not, reinstall that capability -- easiest way I'm aware of is reinstall wmplayer -- might also try this in either case.

As to what happened, I'd suspect that other software, probably something you don't use often, overwrote files or registry settings when you used it -- many do this automatically, so it doesn't take installation or anything to cause the prob.