Video clip shorter after transcode

[ipodmusicman]

Hi folks,

Not sure if this is the correct forum to post this in, but I hope that somebody can shed some ligh on what is actually going on.

This is the scenario:

My wife decided to create a photo montage for her younger sister's 21st birthday party containing pics taken through her life. She decided to use Windows Movie Maker 2.0. She created the montage with titling, transitions, etc.

I found some video on VHS that I wanted to include in the montage and decided to capture the video using my Hauppauge PVR 150 into MPEG-2 format using the WinTV 2000 software which works well for me. I edited this video with Womble MPEG Wizard and exported the final clip to MPEG-2. I was unable to bring the video into WMM, so I exported the montage to WMV format in WMM.

I viewed the clip and all looked 100%, no problems whatsoever.

I took that video clip and transcoded it to MPEG-2.

I viewed the clip again and all looked 100%, no problems whatsoever again, so far so good.

I imported the montage and video clip into Womble MPEG Wizard. I inserted the video clip in the middle of the montage and added a music soundtrack to the montage.

I exported the finished product to MPEG-2 in Womble MPEG Wizard.

I viewed the MPEG clip and I found that some frames hooked, some of the transitions hooked and I was not happy at all. The audio track was in sync with the video which I was happy about, but the video wasn't good at all. The video clip that I had inserted was fine.

I decided to fire up DVD Lab Pro 2.0 and imported the MPEG video clip. DVD Lab split the audio and video into two seproate files. After that, I noticed that the video portion was 4:00 minutes in length and the audio was 4:48 in length. The complete clip is 4:48 in length. I viewed the video portion and found that each slide was beeing shows much quicker resulting in the total playback time of 4:00 minutes. The clip that I had inserted was fine here.

Can somebody give me an idea on what is going on here? It seems to me that Womble MPEG Wizard's MPEG encoder is to blame here. Can somebody advise on weather a different video editor would do the trick and which one I should go for?

Could it be that the encoder is not saving the timecode in the MPEG-2 file? Perhaps the length of time for each slide in the MPEG-2 file has been taken away? Any ideas?

Please help?

[kschang]

4 minutes vs. 4:48? 4 minutes is 240 seconds whereas 4:48 is 288 seconds... 288 to 240 is... exact 1.2? or 6:5? That's weird... You're sure you didn't convert the sound or frame rate wrong somewhere?

[guns1inger]

A couple of things to try

1. Demux the video and audio with a standalone app. Rejig can do this, maybe muxman. DLP can be pretty twitchy about the quality of it's sources.

2. Use Restream to reset the GOP timestamp of the mpeg, then try loading it into DLP

[ipodmusicman]

Thanks a lot. I've just downloaded the tools mentioned and will give them a try this evening and report back.

But just one thing, after I exported the MPEG-2 file from Womble MPEG Wizard, there were some parts where the video hooked for a split second or so. Isn't the problem also lying with Womble's MPEG-2 encoder? Perhaps I should use a different video editor to start with? If so, which one is recommended for MPEG-2 editing?

[guns1inger]

Womble actually has a prett good rep around here for editing mpeg files. What did you transcode the wmv file with ?

Personally, I would not export as wmv, I would use DV avi for export from WMM. Most apps will handle DV, and certainly much better than wmv.

Alternatives to Womble include videoredo and cuttermaran.

[ipodmusicman]

I was actually going to export as DV AVI as the next step, but to my stupidity, I accidently deleted the WMM project file instead of another file in the same folder ... I undeleted it and found the project file to be corrupt, so currently I only have the WMV file. Needless to say, my wife wasn't too happy.

I used SUPER to transcode from MWV to MPEG2.

[ipodmusicman]

Hi folks,

I thought I'd post a closing on this thread as to how I eventually got my video working 100%

I transcoded the MPEG2 video clip I wanted to insert within the photo montage to WMV and imported both the photo montage WMV and the clip into Movie Maker. I placed the clip in the correct spot on the timeline and exported the full project to DV AVI. Transcoded it to MPEG2, pulled the video into DVD Lab Pro 2.0, burnt the DVD and the rest is history. Now my wife is happy and relieved that she can do her speech at her sister's 21st in November, complete with photo montage and vidoe to go with it.

Thanks to all who gave suggestions. I really appreciate it a lot.