DVP-NS55P lockups -- SOLVED -- old ffmpeg produces corrupt AC3

[timmus]

I have a new Sony DVP-NS55P player that will not play my burned DVDs correctly. I occasionally make playable Rifftrax movies, and to do this I combine the original ripped M2V and a new AC3 file (a conversion from WAV with ffmpeg) in IfoEdit 0.96, then run it through DVD Shrink 3.2, then burn with TMpgEnc DVD Author 3 onto TY 16x DVD-Rs. These movies work fine in my other players.

In the Sony DVP-NS55P player, one of these movies plays perfectly fine at first, except for the DVD h:mms time display freezing. Then if I pause the movie or forward it, the player remains locked up for about 20 seconds, shows a couple of stuttered frames, then plays about 10 seconds of the scene with no audio and keeps repeating this scene over and over. All you can do at this point is eject the disc.

This shouldn't happen. I keep thinking there's a mistake somewhere in my encoding that the DVP-NS55 doesn't like. I'm wondering if anyone knows of any problems with IfoEdit, DVD Shrink, TMpgEnc, etc, that might cause lockups on a standalone DVD player. Is my DVP-NS55P a piece of crap and I need to return it? Or is there something I can try to make a better encoding?

I used this ffmpeg command to create the AC3 audio and I wonder if maybe it's creating a bad AC3 and causing the player to barf.
ffmpeg -i IN.WAV -ab 192 -ar 48000 -ac 2 -acodec ac3 -y OUT.AC3

Tim

[timmus]

UPDATE: Well, I'm suspecting it's IfoEdit or the AC3 created by ffmpeg. My regular ripped DVDs (DVDFabDecrypter- > DVD Shrink -> TMPGEnc DVD Author) play fine in the unit. Guess I'll try to use some other tools to make the AC3.

Tim

[timmus]

UPDATE: I had success with this problem. I upgraded ffmpeg to the latest version, and re-encoded the AC3. It came out the same exact size, so who knows. I also upgraded IfoEdit from 0.96 to 0.97.1. Somehow the DVD now pauses/searches/plays fine. I hope that helps anyone else with this problem.

Tim

[timmus]

ANOTHER UPDATE: After demuxing the problem DVDs in to M2V/AC3, I found that the newer ffmpeg reported problems when I tried to reconvert these AC3s. I got a lot of "liba52 @ 00B1E500 Error decoding frame, no sync byte at begin" errors.

This suggests that the older ffmpeg from 2004 produces corrupt AC3s.

Sure is quiet in here... no one has seen this problem?

Tim