Trying to Normalize Audio on a video and convert it to DVD-goes out of sync

[John Shumate]

Hello.

I have an Xvid File, and when I convert it to DVD, its so loud it starts to distort on my TV. So, I extracted the audio with virtudubmod, and then I opened up audacity and normalized the audio. Then I exported to MP3, then I opened Arial Audio Convertor, and converted the MP3 to MP2. Then I opened TMPEGENC DVD Author, and then I added the audio to the MPEG-2 Files that I've already done.

The result is after TMPGENC DVD Author finishes the job, the audio goes out of sync after a few mins.

Is there anything that can be done so that i can sync it up with the normalized track?

Or better yet, is there a better way to go about doing this?

I would greatly appreciate any help.

Thanks

[AlecWest]

I've never worked with Xvid files. But, I have had issues like that converting from DivX-encoded AVI files. Basically, I follow the same routine you do except that I bring the audio and video portions up separately in players to see, timewise, how long each file is. Then using Multiquence (precursor to Goldwave), I'd normalize the audio AND change the speed of the audio file ... either up or down ... so the length of the result file matched the length of the video file. Then I saved the WAV file, used ffmpegui to convert it to MP2, and usually everything was copasetic when I remuxed.

[John Shumate]

hmm..ok..I'll give that a try. Thanks.

Anybody else got any suggestions?

[John Shumate]

Just wondering, could you do this with Goldwave? I already have Goldwave.

[FulciLives]

Just wondering, could you do this with Goldwave? I already have Goldwave.

If the Xvid has MP3 audio then yes the best tool in fact is GOLDWAVE.

Just open the AVI file into GOLDWAVE and then save it as a 16-bit 48k Stereo PCM WAV file.

Then do your normalization (-3.0 db is a good spot to avoid "too high" audio) then re-save as a 16-bit 48k Stereo PCM WAV file.

Then convert the 16-bit 48k Stereo PCM WAV file to AC-3 format using ffmpeggui (which is freeware and better than using MP2 audio). As for the AC-3 bitrate I like to use 256kbps but you can use 224kbps or 192kbps but do not use anything less than 192kbps and do not use anything above 320kbps (and frankly anything more than 256kbps is overkill anyways).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[John Shumate]

I actually tried that and it works perfectly.

Thanks alot.

I also used the normalization in TMPGENC Plus, which I never knew was there :P , and that works pretty well aswell.

Just wanted to share the info with everyone. Thanks.

[AlecWest]

Then convert the 16-bit 48k Stereo PCM WAV file to AC-3 format using ffmpeggui (which is freeware and better than using MP2 audio).

Oops ... in my first post, I meant to say that I used ffmpegGUI to convert WAV to AC3, not MP2. Multiquence is a kind of feature-poor version of GoldWave. But I never saw a reason to upgrade because my TotalRecorder Pro version does a lot of stuff that GoldWave can do (but Multiquence cannot).

Incidentally, I just came into possession of an XVid file that simply wouldn't convert (or even frameserve) properly. I finally had to extract the MP3-encoded WAV with VirtualDubMPEG2, and convert it to a PCM WAV with TotalRecorder Pro. Fortunately, the times (audio/video files) matched so I didn't have to "tweek" it with Multiquence. But the attached audio did something weird when I attempted to frameserve and/or convert ... so I used the Huffyuv codec to resave the original Xvid AVI as a video-only AVI. The result file and the audio file were a perfect time match ... so I converted it to MPEG2 with TMPGenc Plus.

Incidentally, the dimensions of the Xvid video were 512x320. In upping it to 720x480, I didn't see any artifacts at all. Looks great (and sounds great).