PinnacleStudio8 LOSES AUDIO during import of .AVI files

[DivXterminator]

I just installed Pinnacle Studio 8 (so that I can make DVDs out of a collection of fan-subbed Anime .AVIs), and upgraded to the latest revision, 8.12.7.0

When I select an .AVI file in the Edit pane, it auto-detects scenes from the file; BUT, the resulting clips have no audio!!!

This is strange to me because they play just fine in the Windows Media Player... I did some searching, and downloaded a copy of Gspot v.2.70a ... Here's the output:

CONTAINER
File Length Correct
OpenDML (AVI v2.0)
Interleave: 500 ms (12.0 v.frames), preload=504
Audio frames: Split across interleaves
Video: 154 MB (87.43%)
Audio: 21.3 MB (12.10%)
AVI Overhead: 863 KB (0.48%)

USER DATA/METADATA
[ISFT] Nandub v1.0rc2
[INAM] Hikaru no Go - Episode 01
[ISBJ] Hikaru no Go - Episode 01
[IART] #Elite-Fansubs@irc.enterthegame.com
[ICOP] www.elite-fansubs.com
[ICMT] www.elite-fansubs.com
[JUNK] Nandub build 1852/release

AUDIO
Codec: 0x0055 MPEG-1 Layer 3
Info: 48000Hz 128 kb/s tot , Joint Stereo
Stat: Codec(s) Installed

VIDEO
Codec: DivX 3 Low-Motion
Status: Codec installed
Len: 23:20.138
Frms: 33570
kbps: 925
Qf: 0.196
Frames/s: 23.976
pic(Wxh) 512x384
sar: 1.333 (4:3)
par: 1.000 (1:1)
dar: 1.333 (4:3)

After rummaging around this site for a while, I hit upon a post that made me wonder if the problem might be due to the DivX encoding of the audio 'Split across interleaves'---Does that make sense? How might I correct it? I have other .AVI files that don't suffer this deafening upon import, and the .MPEGs I've tested work fine too.

That is the big issue as far as I'm concerned.

Nonetheless, if there is some way I can resample the framesize of my source video from 512x384 down to 640x480 (to prevent spontaneous cropping of the output through Pinnacle) that would be helpful too.

Thanks so much for helping me through this impasse!

[DivXterminator]

Should I try converting the .AVIs to .MPEG 2 before importing into Pinnacle?
I don't think I have a file converter (unless one comes with Pinnacle) so, if you know of a good one that won't cut out after 10s or pollute with some kind of banner, I would appreciate the referral.

[julitomg]

Your Studio version is a bit old, it probably won´t work with mp3 audio without the purchase of the apropiate plug in (if it was available). What do you need to import your avi files into Studio?, to edit them? or just to author the DVDs you want(encoding included)? I wouldn´t like to sound like the many pinnacle bashers around but it´s indeed a (very)buggy program. Don´t get me wrong I have Studio (vers. 9.43)and don´t have any problems with it but then again, I use it very little and least of all to encode or author DVDs. If you´re not planning to do a lot of editing, look into the Tools section or ask around the site, there are several AVI to MPG/DVD alternatives, as well as authoring programs (some free)

[DivXterminator]

Thanks for the reply Julitomg!

I do want to edit the files... but minimally (I want to cut the theme, preview and teaser sequences) so that they'll fit on fewer disks, and make the menu so that individual episodes can be easily accessed, as well as a sub-menu for some mini-spots that aired alongside them. I also want to resample some, if necessary, to prevent edge-clipping (which I've witnessed in the test project I already burnt)... Do you know if that is an eccentricity of PinnacleStudio8 or what else might be the problem?

If you know of some freeware software that can do those things for me better than PinnacleStudio8, and won't leave any artifacts in the video, I would LOVE to hear about it.

So 'MPEG-1 Layer 3' is another way of saying "MP3"... Cool. You suggest that Pinnacle8 possibly can't handle MP3 audio without a plug-in? The Codec is installed on my machine (according to Gspot); so, what else is there?---I'm such a n00B! Shall I just check the Pinnacle site for such 'plug-ins'? I already downloaded the latest updates for it AFAIK. Maybe there's something else... I'll check.

[DivXterminator]

I've just found a promising post on the Pinnacle Website suggesting a work-around for this problem is to use TRex.exe (a Pinnacle utility that is no longer available from their download site) to convert the MP3 audio track to WAV format before importing to Studio.

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE I CAN GET A COPY OF TRex.exe or something that will do the same thing for free without side-effects?