problem with .avi-files: avidemux only reproduces image, mpegstreamclip onl

[miklas]

hi,

I would like to edit a couple of video clips, most of them .avis. Mostly, they need some trimming and synchronizing of A and V tracks. I have been trying various free editing tools but it turns out that any program I found can either access the clip´s audio or its video information but never both. for instance, both qtsync and mpegstreamclip, which are the most useful tools I have, replay some .avis as nothing but a white screen with an impeccable audio track. avidemux, on the other hand, will play the same clip´s video footage perfectly but there is no sound.

I think I might be missing something here, especially since avidemux automatically detects an "audio track 0 (MP3/ channels / 115 kbit per s/0 ms shift)" under the audio > main track menu. but I don´t hear aynthing. does anybody have some good advice on what I might be doing wrong? If am I using the wrong tool, can anyone recommend an editing tool that is able to access both A and V information of .avi-clips? I am quite happy with VLC for reviewing these clips (it easily reproduces both video and sound displaying them, so I am absolutely sure there´s both in the .avi-container) but there is no editing option included in VLC.

I actually even tried to extract the sound to an .aiff with mpegstreamclip and then convert it to a .wav-file with audacity and then import it back into the clip kind of through the back door with avidemux but not even this worked since audacity would not open the audio file generated by mpegstreamclip.

I am running these applications in a Mac OS X 10.5.2 environment. any good advice warmly appreciated.

thanx.


miklas

[Case]

for instance, both qtsync and mpegstreamclip replay some .avis as nothing but a white screen with an impeccable audio track.

Do you have Perian installed? It helps QuickTime-based decoding on a bunch of codecs beyond default capability. A good chance it will give qtsync and mpeg streamclip the ability to play the video as well.

[rumplestiltskin]

Also check here: http://3ivx.com/divxdoctor/

I've sometimes run into AVIs that have a compressed audio track that my Intel iMac simply won't play properly (and I do have Perian). Divx Doctor can decompress the audio track and create a new ".mov" that then may be converted by MPEG Streamclip and, optionally, sync'd with QTSync (into a new "mov" container but without re-encoding).

[miklas]

thanks, c and r,

for the advice. i will download the tools you suggested and try to get a little smarter using them.

however, eventually i found the below explanation in a tutorial by Lord Mulder: Why I don't hear sound in Avidemux? In most cases this is simply because you didn't enable sound yet! By default Avidemux's audio output is set to "DUMMY", which means there is no audio output at all. Just go to "Edit" -> "Preferences" and switch to the "Audio" tab. Then change "Audio output" to "WIN32" or whatever suits your OS. Finally click the OK button. Now you should hear sound."

i would like to add to those that have the same problem with a mac: i am using avidemux_2.4.4_QT4, where for enabling audio you obviously have to go to preferences > audio > audio output. the option "central audio" worked in my case.

now, i got the sound, but i seem unable to synchronize audio and video with avidemux and any video it produces delivers extremely choppy audio. does avidemux, generally speaking, work well? then i might have used some wrong settings. a VBR time map issue occured upon opening a clip but avidemux offered to solve it and i accepted that option. also it said "packed bitstream" and i had it unpack it, not the least knowing what these technical terms mean. however, when it comes to the various format options in the main menu, i suppose it would come in handy knowing what you are doing. anyone got any basic advice or knows of a tutorial on how to synchronize .avis? - now that i got the sound

thanx a bunch,

miklas

[rumplestiltskin]

I believe unpacking the bitstream decompresses the audio (like what Divx Doctor does). If I'm wrong, others will post a correction.

[Case]

I believe unpacking the bitstream decompresses the audio (like what Divx Doctor does). If I'm wrong, others will post a correction.

Packed bitstream is related to the packing together of P-VOPs and B-VOPs in DivX/XviD AVIs, so that some Windows software has it 'easier' on decoding, in terms of decoding future frames, and thus frame-delay. Sorry if this is a bit vague, but that's how much I could understand from searching online.
I don't see how this special treatment of video data can be changed by dealing with the audio separately.

[miklas]

thanx for the research.

knowing little of this i tend to agree. a and v out of sync in some cases seems to be a hard thing to fix.

i take it that you guys in general rely on avidemux to be state of the art, so i keep trying to get these outofsyncs fixed until i grow tired of it

if any new tool pops up, please let me know

miklas

[rumplestiltskin]

The first thing I try when encountering audio issues is to check out what type of audio track is in the video. Sometimes the person who encoded it puts in too much in the way of bitrate or uses something to compress the audio. The result is audio that plays out of sync or choppy.

As I mentioned above, Divx Doctor (and other tools) can decompress the audio. If necessary, I extract the audio track, convert it to AIFF (which your Mac will play perfectly), drop it into the video in place of the original audio track, and then drop the video into MPEG Streamclip fr the final conversion. Alternatively, I convert the A and V separately and then paste the audio track into the video and save as a ".mov" (which contains the converted A and V - usually H264/AAC for my purposes).

I know you may not be converting to H264/AAC but I'm mentioning my process only to provide some alternative methods for you.

Again: QTSync does a great job synchronizing the A/V tracks (assuming you have QT-compatible A/V).

[miklas]

you are right about qtsync, i like it to. but i have a bunch of clips that neither qtsync nor mpegstreamclip is able to reproduce. it reproduces nothing but white frames.

i will try what you explained regarding divx doctor. get back to you.

thanx.



miklas

[miklas]

hi,

I tried the divx doctor you recommended but it did not solve the out of sync problems i was having. but while downloading divx doctor i also downloaded MPEG4v1 and 4v2 as well as 3ivx MPEG-4 since i saw it being recommended. now, it seems, the video that was out of sync before installing these codecs is perfectly in sync.

does that make sense? my impression until now was that since i am using mac os x and vlc player there are no extra codecs required to be installed. i hardly ever encounter anything vlc can´t open at all. but if sound and image being in sync also possibly depends on extra codecs being installed i think that might be where my out of sync issues are coming from.

just wanted to give you some feedback on your advice. i will see if these codecs resolve other out of sync issues as well.

thanx for pointing out the options.


miklas

[rumplestiltskin]

VLC has all of its codecs inside of it. Why these other codes you installed are fixing the issue is a mystery to me. Perhaps others will chime in with helpful suggestions.

[miklas]

hi rumplestiltskin,

that´s my thinking, too. too bad i don´t know how to uninstall these codecs, because if i could do that and the clip would go out of sync again, then that at least i would have a way to verify that the codecs did the job

miklas

[rumplestiltskin]

They're probably in either:

Hard Drive > Library > QuickTime
or
Hard Drive > System > Library > QuickTime

Your Mac should have already had the codecs necessary for MPEG4 (although Perian helps with PC-type MPEG4 media).

If you do manage to remove those codes and find that they resolved your problem, let us know. Thanks!

[miklas]

hi rumplestiltskin,

it looks like you were right again. i found 3ivx MPEG-4 where you said it would be and uninstalled it. the MPEG4v1/v2 Codecs were not in /library but in their original unpacked folders from which i conclude that they weren´t even used by any of my video players. still, one of the movies i remember as being out of sync is now fine. first i thought it is the new 1.0.1 version of vlc that maybe resolves a/v out of sync issues that previous versions could not. but they run fine with older vlc versions now, too. on the other hand i cannot rule out that older versions of vlc make use of the newest version´s libraries or codecs on my machine now, right?

anyway, it´s obviously not been the additional codecs but then i don´t know why this movie in question was out of sync in the first place. i was able to perfectly sync two other movies with avidemux now. others that qtsync cannot open i recently edited and saved with avidemux, but the next day i opened the same original (!) movie with avidemux again and now it was badly chopped up. then there´s others again that have kind of like an audio blackout every 1.5 seconds or so and i suppose i better don´t even think about getting them fixed. i would spend ages with a tool like wavepad or the like ...

i am beginning to think that avidemux maybe just works proper on particular days. maybe it works fine only on workdays, but on saturdays and sundays it badly messes all your videos up. something like that

anyway, that´s been that. thanks for your help again. only thing i still need to check on now is this perian you mentioned ...



miklas

[rumplestiltskin]

Perian should be considered an essential component. Having it installed permits many more formats to be opened and made available to whatever apps do your conversions (transcodings).

[miklas]

okay. i had downloaded it already and i installed it now. all there is is the "perian.prefpane" file that i double click and then the installed components kind of run in the background, i suppose.

one thing i keep wondering about though is this: you guys keep mentioning quicktime and perian is also supposed to support the qt-application. i hardly ever use quicktime because for my own needs it´s much inferior to vlc. am i missing any great "pros" of quicktime? and, more importantly: if i hardly ever use qt but vlc instead. wil i still benefit from installing components meant to support quicktime?

miklas

[Case]

okay. i had downloaded it already and i installed it now. all there is is the "perian.prefpane" file that i double click and then the installed components kind of run in the background, i suppose.

Some items were installed into ~/Library/QuickTime/, that will aid QuickTime. The PrefPane itself is accessible through System Preferences, where you may configure a few things.

one thing i keep wondering about though is this: you guys keep mentioning quicktime and perian is also supposed to support the qt-application. i hardly ever use quicktime because for my own needs it´s much inferior to vlc. am i missing any great "pros" of quicktime? and, more importantly: if i hardly ever use qt but vlc instead. wil i still benefit from installing components meant to support quicktime?

VLC is great for playback, precisely because it has everything inside it, and it will play just about anything. It will not use QuickTime components.

QuickTime is more than the player: it's Apple's architecture for working with multimedia across many applications. The authors of e.g. MPEG Streamclip and QTSync only have to do a small bit of coding to make their apps work with everything that QuickTime understands. If you work with any application that relies on QuickTime, then you will benefit from 3rd party components that extend QuickTime's capabilities. This is especially true for transcoding (converting from one format to another) and editing.

[rumplestiltskin]

Case is 100% correct regarding QT in Apple's view of things. QT's beauty is that it's there when you need it (and all of my multimedia apps use QT so it's the glue that binds everything together seamlessly).

Miklas: If you think QT is bad, just try doing serious multimedia in Linux where there is no QT. It sucks.

[miklas]

let´s see if i am getting you guys right: it makes sense for me to install these components because although i hardly ever use QT (because, for instance, i find it most annoying that it won´t play on the entire screen - and that it takes about a quarter century to start i am probably using editing tools that rely on it, whether i notice it (or like it or not.

if there´s no response to this posting i take that i am on the right track



miklas

[rumplestiltskin]

QT Player will, indeed, fill the screen if you select it in the menu.

I see in your profile that you are using a hackint0sh running an Athlon CPU. It is no wonder you are complaining about QuickTime; no offense intended but you're saddled with a stinking pile of manure. Get a real Mac if you're going to run OSX and then you won't complain about QuickTime because it is what enables all the good things to happen on the Mac. It's the glue that binds all the disparate multimedia apps to work together properly...and it's quite fast if you have the proper hardware matched with the proper version of OSX.

(Please - those who are running OSX on a hackint0sh that is equipped properly to handle these tasks, this is not an invitation to go ballistic about Apple's pricing, etc. This is a QuickTime-related question I'm answering.)

[miklas]

AMAZINGGGGG!!! i was now able to fix a bunch of movies i could never watch because they were so choppy you got seasick by watching them.

it appears that extracting the soundtrack as .aiff with mpegstremclip and importing it with audacity kind of like eliminated the blackouts they sported every one or two seconds. i then imported the edited audio back into the movie with avidemux. this entire process actually even somehow smoothened the sequences where bits of some miliseconds are missing now. the result is not perfect but it´s not far from the mark.

is that possible??? i remember having tried more or less the same maybe a year ago but the result was as choppy as the original. am I finally going nuts or might this recent success be due to the components i installed following your advice?

what i am trying to say is: did i just experience what you pointed out yesterday, that mpegstremclip, avidemux and audacity have become more potent in decoding audio and video data with these additional components like perian and the like that i installed?

it´s like all you guys wrote in your postings suddenly makes tons of sense to me

miklas

[miklas]

well, that´s intereswting, rumplestiltskin, WHERE did yøu see that? where is that profile of mine??? now you got me curious...

hasn´t happened to me in ages, but i actually needed to refer to a dictionary to decode "stinking pile of manure"

i don´t even know what an atlon cpu is, well, at least not the atlon part in it. and please do elaborate, what is a REAL macintosh?

always willing to learn (as you well see from my recent post)

glad I finally got you excited

miklas

[Ai Haibara]

It's in your VideoHelp user profile. At the top of every forum page, you can click on the word "Profile" to get to a page where you can edit your profile. Also, if you're looking at one of your posts, clicking on either Computer (whose tooltip will show you what you have entered for the Computer Details) or Profile will let you view your profile.

Here's what you have for yours - the CPU Speed field's what has rumplestiltskin concerned:

Computer Details/Setup:
Operating System: mac os x
CPU Speed: athlon xp1800
Harddrive space:
RAM Memory: 2 GB
Video Card:
Capture Card:
Motherboard:
DVD/CD:
Standalone DVD Player:
Desktop DVD Recorder:
Other:

[rumplestiltskin]

A "Real Macintosh" is one that has an Apple logo on it (and not just a sticker you put on it for grins). It's made by Apple...y'know, the company in Cupertino? It's not hacked together PC hardware that is running an OSX86 (hackint0sh) version of genuine Apple OSX. Do I need to be any more specific about this?

[miklas]

all right, Ai Haibara, got it. thanx.

since i now hardly have any choppy movies left i would like to stray off the subject. since i opened this thread myself i suppose this is not against the etiquette. it is not a particular video issue although the same thing might occur with some video editing tools, too:

the toolbox of another application i am using has mysteriously disappeared on my machine a while ago. i can no longer use the application because there is no other way to pick the various editing tools. there seems to be no way to recover it, including over the main menue: i only get the hide toolbox option as if the toolbox where visible but it is not.

then i just realized that whenever i chose the show or hide toolbox option in the main menu that there seems to appear respectively disappear at the utmost RIGHT edge of my screen what seems to be the utmost LEFT rim of my long-lost toolbox window. but it only seems to be a dot wide so you hardly see it if you do not look for it. obviously i dragged the window to the right side of the screen once and it went too far.

so i found back my toolbox as it seems, but unfortunately there is no easy way i can drag it back into the screen or close it because the mouse pointer won´t get there. even after installing seashore new this situation remains unchanged. that´s a tricky one, isn´t it? anyone willing to have a guess on how to fix it without reinstalling the OS?


miklas

[Case]

the toolbox of another application i am using has mysteriously disappeared on my machine a while ago.

The location and visibility of a toolbox is most likely stored in the application's preference file. Deleting that prefs file would bring everything back to default, and likely bring back the toolbox to a better suitable position on your screen. Any custom preferences would be lost, but those could easily be entered back in, so that seems like a small price.
Most apps store preferences in a .plist file in ~/Library/Preferences or /Library/Preferences. But some apps do not follow the guidelines, and name the file different or store it in a different location.

[miklas]

that sounds good, case. did not find any seahore.plist there though. right now i am searching the whole disk for anything with "seashore". maybe i´m lucky ...

miklas

[miklas]

case,

i found a file named "net.sourceforge.seashore.plist", and yes, it was in the preferences folder. i do not have any important open seashore tasks at the moment, so i don´t care much about deleting any preferences as long as it´s just seashore´s.

are you suggesting i simply remove the file?

miklas

[Case]

Yes, just remove the prefs file. Then launch the app to check.

[miklas]

hi case,

thanx. i think my last posting was lost. i couldn´t wait so instead of removing it i renamed it. i installed seashore new and now i got my toolbox back. thanx a bunch. should have asked earlier. cost me a lot of nerve this little problem.

good advice.

miklas