Emerson MP3 player

[Lissa]

I recently bought an inexpensive mp3 play, an Emerson EMP517-2. It came with a video converter for PCs, but I have a Mac. I was able to convert videos to the strange format it wanted, useing ffmpegX. It takes two steps, although it does work, maybe someone could tell me a better way to do it.

Step one converts the audio to an mp2 file.
The video tab is set to "passthrough (ffmpeg)" and the "encode video" box is NOT checked.
the audio tab is set to ".MP2", the "encode audio" box is checked, 96 kbit/s, 44100Hz, Stereo, CBR and audio track 1.

Step two converts the video to an AVI and adds the MP2 audio back in.
The video tab is set to "XviD [.AVI] (mencoder), "encode video" box is checked, bitrate 69 kbit/s, size 160x128, autosize 4:3 and framerate 15.
the audio tab is set to ".MP2", the "encode audio" box is checked, 96 kbit/s, 44100Hz, Stereo, CBR, audio track 15 (or anything except 1) and hit the "add audio" button to locate your MP2 audio file.

The audio does seem slightly out of sync and it is a tiny, not so great image, but it does work.

[tomlee59]

Glad to hear that you were able to come up with a workaround -- many of these little devices have no known workaround on Macs, so you're to be commended for even trying! What's a bit confusing is the need for a two-step process. It should be possible to produce the final format in one go. This would also avoid the double conversion of the audio track. With such low bitrates, there's an awful lot of quality loss for the audio. Avoiding the double conversion might also help with the sync. What happens if you attempt to convert in one pass? Also, are you starting with DVD or some other source?

In any case, if the sync error is annoyingly large, you can fix it using Audacity. You can add a silence (to adjust for a fixed sync error), and/or change tempo (to speed up or slow down the track, if the sync error is drifting at a constant rate).

[Lissa]

I did try to do the conversion in one pass and it didn't work. Afterward I would look at the file and the audio was still whatever format it had started out as. There is a FAQ on ffmpegX and it says that it is the mp2enc engine that does the MP2 conversion. Mencoder and ffmpeg engines don't support MP2 at all. So that is why I tried doing it in two passes. I guess ffmpegX can only use one engine at a time (maybe I don't know if this is true).

I will try audacity to fix the sync problem. The video is the size of a postage stamp so I hardly notice that the talking doesn't sync with the lips!

And my Emerson MP3 player cost $30 so I can hardly complain.

[tomlee59]

Hmmm...ffmpeg has an mp2 encoder, I'm fairly certain, as I've encoded VCDs in the past using that engine (it's fast). It might be that ffmpeg doesn't support conversion from your particular source (e.g., for legal reasons). That's why I'm curious as to what your sourcefile is (DVD or something else?).

If you ever attempt a one-pass conversion again, post the contents of the logfile (click on the blue "i" in the Progress pane). I'm very curious as to what it says about the failed audio conversion. Maybe there's something simple that could be done to fix it. Sure would be nice to be able to do it in one go.