DVD Flick and mp4 files

[edwood]

I have a problem with mp4 files in DVD Flick. When I try to import them into DVD Flick I get the following error message:

Cannot add audio track 2 from (directory\filename.mp4. It needs to be resampled
but has more than 2 channels, which is not yet possible with input using morre
than 2 channels. The audio source will not be loaded.

It will then import the video, but not the audio track. I am at a complete loss as to what to do now.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Regards,
Ed Wood

[bat999]

I am at a complete loss as to what to do now.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

Inspect the mp4 file with mediainfo and post the result here.

[Calidore]

DVDFlick is kind of ornery and is no longer maintained by the author. Try AVStoDVD and see if you have better luck. If not, that program's author has an active support thread in this forum.

[edwood]

Calidore,

I have tried AVS2DVD, and the quality of the video is not nearly as good as DVD Flick. There are some things about AVS2DVD that I like, especially the ease of creating menus, but the tradeoff is not worth the change.

Have a great weekend!
Ed

[edwood]

bat999.

Here is what I discovered when I ran the mediainfo program on one of the mp4 files:

General

Complete name : F:\Ironside\Ironside Season 1\Ironside.1967.s01.e01.Message.from.Beyond.wmv
Format : Windows Media
File size : 563 MiB
Duration : 49mn 57s
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 1 575 Kbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 8 385 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2012-11-14 19:34:34.604

Video
ID : 1
Format : VC-1
Format profile : MP@ML
Codec ID : WMV3
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Video 9
Codec ID/Hint : WMV3
Description of the codec : Windows Media Video 9 - Professional
Duration : 49mn 57s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 8 192 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 30.000 fps
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.889
Stream size : 2.86 GiB
Language : English (US)

Audio
ID : 2
Format : WMA
Format version : Version 2
Codec ID : 161
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Audio
Description of the codec : Windows Media Audio 9.2 - 128 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo 1-pass CBR
Duration : 49mn 57s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 45.7 MiB (8%)
Language : English (US)

I hope this is what you wanted me to post.

Have a great weekend!
Ed Wood

[bat999]

Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
I hope this is what you wanted me to post.

Yes, that's what I wanted to see.
But it isn't more than 2 channels so I don't know why DVDFlick is complaining.
Though that isn't an mp4 file.

[MilesAhead]

Calidore,

I have tried AVS2DVD, and the quality of the video is not nearly as good as DVD Flick. There are some things about AVS2DVD that I like, especially the ease of creating menus, but the tradeoff is not worth the change.

Have a great weekend!
Ed

I suspect the problem is due to WMA audio. Many encoders don't handle it well. I'd look through the encoder list and see if any specifically support WMA audio. I'm not sure of the versions but I think there may be a license or royalty issue with WMV/WMA stuff that forces some encoders not to support it(esp. if they are freeware they ain't gonna' pay no license fees just to give their software away.) You might want to try something that uses AviSynth on the front end.

[Calidore]

Calidore,

I have tried AVS2DVD, and the quality of the video is not nearly as good as DVD Flick. There are some things about AVS2DVD that I like, especially the ease of creating menus, but the tradeoff is not worth the change.

Have a great weekend!
Ed

That's a surprise, since both use ffmpeg to do the converting. I went from Flick to AVStoDVD a couple of years ago and didn't notice a quality difference, just fewer hassles. Maybe it's a settings issue that MrC (the author) can help with over in that thread.

Otherwise, I totally understand preferring to use a program you know that usually works for you over learning another. One thing that sometimes works for me when I have format trouble is loading the file into VirtualDub and saving it as an AVI with uncompressed video and audio. Takes lots of disk space, but creating an utterly generic file can help.

[MilesAhead]

Flick uses FFMPeg. AVStoDVD uses QuEnc, a modification of ffmpeg, if the bit rate is above an adjustable threshold. Otherwise it uses HC Enc. But if the OP tried AVStoDVD with this same video, which is less than one hour, AVStoDVD should use QuEnc 8500 kbit CBR one pass. I don't use AVStoDVD anymore since it usually craps out processing the audio.. at least for me. QuEnc directly works great with mkv HD input. Not sure how well it would do with WMV though.

[Calidore]

Flick uses FFMPeg. AVStoDVD uses QuEnc, a modification of ffmpeg, if the bit rate is above an adjustable threshold. Otherwise it uses HC Enc.

Whoops, you're quite right. Brain cramp on my part.

[orsetto]

edwood, you have two typical problems with this file, neither of which are DVDflick's "fault":

1. The file may have an incorrect extension, it isn't really an MP4 but a WMV. This is confusing to Windows and DVDflick both. So, first thing you want to do is verify the file extension is .wmv and not .mp4

If you can't see file extensions at the end of your file names in Windows, you need to temporarily make them visible by going to Control Panel>Appearance>Folder Options, click on the View tab, and click the checkbox for "Hide Extensions For Known Filetypes" (remove the check from the box by clicking it). You can then look at the full filename of "Ironside.1967.s01.e01.Message.from.Beyond", and confirm the extension is .wmv. If you see it reads "Ironside.1967.s01.e01.Message.from.Beyond.mp4 ," change the extension to .wmv. Upon doing this, you should notice the icon change from a generic movie graphic to a thumbnail frame from the actual video. After you finish examining the file extension, you can go back and re-click the "Hide Extensions For Known Filetypes" if you prefer Windows to display files without them.

2. Once you have the file name extension sorted out, try to load the file into a new DVDflick project. It should import normally. However, if you get another warning about the audio being incompatible and that the audio will not be imported, there's nothing you can do to fix it: this is a known (and freaking annoying and unnecessary) conflict between the utterly pointless MicroSoft-proprietary "Windows Media Audio 9" audio format and every non-Microsoft piece of software on the planet. Neither DVDflick nor AVStoDVD or any other video conversion tool I've tried can work with WMA9, the audio just gets stripped out resulting in a silent converted file.

Whenever I get stuck with a WMV video with this PITA "WMA9" audio format, I set it aside for a hardware workaround (basically play the video with audio thru the analog outputs of a PC into the analog inputs of another PC or DVD recorder, creating a second-generation re-encode that bypasses the idiotic "WMA9" crap). Last time I looked a year or two ago, this was the only simple way around WMA9 conflicts: if anyone reading this thread knows of a recent utility or converter or other painless method, please let edwood (and me!) know.

[MilesAhead]

If you can't get flick to work I'd try TEncoder. It's pretty versatile afa input/output formats. For encoders there's a choice of ffmpeg or mencoder. It's free and there are download and support threads here on videohelp.

[Calidore]

However, if you get another warning about the audio being incompatible and that the audio will not be imported, there's nothing you can do to fix it: this is a known (and freaking annoying and unnecessary) conflict between the utterly pointless MicroSoft-proprietary "Windows Media Audio 9" audio format and every non-Microsoft piece of software on the planet. Neither DVDflick nor AVStoDVD or any other video conversion tool I've tried can work with WMA9, the audio just gets stripped out resulting in a silent converted file.

Whenever I get stuck with a WMV video with this PITA "WMA9" audio format, I set it aside for a hardware workaround (basically play the video with audio thru the analog outputs of a PC into the analog inputs of another PC or DVD recorder, creating a second-generation re-encode that bypasses the idiotic "WMA9" crap). Last time I looked a year or two ago, this was the only simple way around WMA9 conflicts: if anyone reading this thread knows of a recent utility or converter or other painless method, please let edwood (and me!) know.

I run into this frequently. My solution is to use Avanti to convert the audio to PCM/WAV (it can do this right from the WMV file; no need to demux). Then load the WAV as the audio track. Usually this works perfectly, however sometimes the converted audio will drift slightly out of sync as time goes on (1 sec/2 hrs or thereabouts), and I've never found a way to figure in advance when this will happen and when it won't. Since I convert with Virtualdub, I can just use the advanced filters to stretch the audio by the miniscule amount needed to resync. I'm not sure if Flick can do this or if you'd need a dedicated audio tool. This most likely won't apply to the file the OP is working with, though; I'm just putting it out as a possibility I've experienced.

[edwood]

Thanks guys,

You have given me many excellent suggestions, and some projects to work on this weekend.

Have a great one!
Ed

PS: orsetto, the suggestion that I change the setting in CP to reveal the extensions revealed that the files were mp4 files. Upon changing one to WMV and importing it into DVD Flick, it still would not import the audio. I guess I will have to convert all of season 1's (all 29 of them) to avi files then import them into DVD Flick. For some reason, the conversion to an avi flle imports the audio, whereas the import into DVD Flick of the mp4 file strips the audio. Go figure!

Ed

[Hoser Rob]

OK, here's what I think was going on with avstodvd, which I found gave much better quality than dvdflick if used right.

With avstodvd, if the input file has a bit rate above a certain value ... which I'm pretty damn sure 8192Kb/s is ... it uses a different encoder than with lower bit rate video, and runs it in 1 pass constant bit rate mode.

That, IMHO, is a mistake. I always forced 2 pass variable bit rate mode, which is the only way to get consistently good results. Yes, it takes longer. But if I'm going to burn it onto a dvd-r, why not go for the best quality and just let it take the time?

I haven't used avstodvd for some time. Burning video is just too much of a colossal pain in the neck. I only know one person who's burned video for ages. But while I have some issues with avstodvd, it's the best one. Albeit of a sorry lot of programs.

[_MrC_]

@edwood

do you have the possibility to upload "Ironside.1967.s01.e01.Message.from.Beyond.wmv " anywhere (i.e. mediafire.com)?

Since you are an AVStoDVD user (many posts in Doom9 support thread), have you tried to convert that file with it? If yes, could you please post the project log file?



Bye

[orsetto]

orsetto, the suggestion that I change the setting in CP to reveal the extensions revealed that they files were mp4 files. Upon changing one to WMV and importing it into DVD Flick, it still would not import the audio. I guess I will have to convert all of season 1's (all 29 of them) to avi files then import them into DVD Flick. For some reason, the conversion to an avi flle imports the audio, whereas the import into DVD Flick of the mp4 file strips the audio. Go figure!

edwood, your printout of the file properties identifies these "Ironside" episodes as WMV video files afflicted with the stupid WMA9 audio codec. I've really never understood why the hell anyone would intentionally use the asinine WMA9 codec when creating their WMVs, but it poisons about 30% of WMV files I encounter on download sites. As I mentioned, neither DVDflick nor AVStoDVD can import WMA9 audio for DVD conversion, so you need to use workarounds.

Your idea to re-encode them as AVI files is a good one, just be sure you change the file extension on all the episodes to .wmv from .mp4 to eliminate any problems that might result from incorrect extensions. DVDflick and AVStoDVD are usually pretty smart about ignoring incorrect extensions and identifying the true nature of each file, but sometimes they get confused so it's better to fix it if you're aware of the mistake beforehand.

I'm curious what software you intend to use to convert these videos to AVI? I haven't run across any that would convert WMVs with WMA9 audio.

Burning video is just too much of a colossal pain in the neck. I only know one person who's burned video for ages.

It does seem counter-intuitive to burn DVD conversions of video files when the whole point of the files is individual immediate access and ability to share easily. But some of us prefer to archive them as DVD conversions for several reasons, primarily as an alternative to hard-drive backups (which can fail catastrophically). Equally important, most people who upload files are totally clueless on how to create standard, widely-compatible files. Roughly half the video files I come across are faulty MP4 or Quicktime conversions that have issues with playback on various hardware/software, or they stick you with the accursed "WMV with WMA9" audio roadblock. Often, these error-ridden files won't play properly as-is but are readily accepted and "repaired" during conversion by DVDflick and AVStoDVD. So, rather than deal in future with the vagaries of a half dozen file formats and their assorted corruptions, I prefer to archive uniform, standardized DVD conversions of them. Once converted to DVD, they're all the same, and I only have one playback format to deal with. Admittedly one loses a lot of versatility (and a bit of quality) in the conversion, and many collectors don't want to be tied to the "obsolete" DVD playback formats, but for me its the best compromise. I imagine edwood has comparable reasons.

[edwood]

orsetto,

I am using DDVideo AMI Mpeg Converter Gain by daydayvideo. It is an excellent program that does a good job of converting various file types. I found it while looking for a program that I could use to increase the audio gain on files that have a low audio level. It does a good job of allowing you to set the output audio level to a level that does not require you to crank up your system (meaning - home entertainment system [h-e-t]) volume to even be able to hear the dvd. You can normalize the audio to a level that matches the other input sources for you h-e-t. daydayvideo has several inexpensive programs that you might want to check out. Here is a link to the web site.

http://www.daydayvideo.com/

Regards,
Ed

[_MrC_]

As I mentioned, neither DVDflick nor AVStoDVD can import WMA9 audio for DVD conversion.

I cannot speak for DVDFlick, but, believe me, AVStoDVD can import and convert WMA9 to AC3. AVStoDVD can digest everything that can be accessed thru directshow filters. And WMA9 directshow filters are native in Windows XP/Vista/7 (WMAudio Decoder DMO).

Probably, if we can solve edwood video quality issues with AVStoDVD (more details would help), he could avoid to convert the episodes to AVI then to DVD and go directly from WMV to DVD.



Bye

[edwood]

MrC,

I have created a mediafire account and am in the process of uploading 3 of the mp4 / wmv files that do not have any audio when imported into DVD Flick. It will take appx 71/2 hours (the current time is 6:45am EST) from now to complete the upload. However, I do not have a clue as to how to setup the mediafire storage for sharing files. There are not any instructions that I can find (or a FAQ) that tells you how to set up the files to share. They will be ready for you to download sometime late this afternoon. I just need to know how to give you access to them.

Regards,
Ed

[Calidore]

[QUOTE=orsetto;2209250]

I'm curious what software you intend to use to convert these videos to AVI? I haven't run across any that would convert WMVs with WMA9 audio.

Like I mentioned above, Avanti will convert the audio just fine. Then you can load the WMV file into VirtualDub (with fcchandler's plugin), and use "Audio from other source" to point to the new audio file.

[_MrC_]

However, I do not have a clue as to how to setup the mediafire storage for sharing files. There are not any instructions that I can find (or a FAQ) that tells you how to set up the files to share. They will be ready for you to download sometime late this afternoon. I just need to know how to give you access to them.

Just click on the 'Copy Link' icon when the upload is completed.



Bye

[edwood]

MrC,

Here are the three mp4 files that I uploaded.

http://www.mediafire.com/?tv1wfxu0h8tw668
http://www.mediafire.com/?rfbf7ldex7cqo3n
http://www.mediafire.com/?san7s2s8pbkeq48

Thanks for all of your help.

Regards,
Ed

[orsetto]

As I mentioned, neither DVDflick nor AVStoDVD can import WMA9 audio for DVD conversion.

I cannot speak for DVDFlick, but, believe me, AVStoDVD can import and convert WMA9 to AC3. AVStoDVD can digest everything that can be accessed thru directshow filters. And WMA9 directshow filters are native in Windows XP/Vista/7 (WMAudio Decoder DMO).

As developer of AVStoDVD, I'll of course take your word on this as true, but in my case AVStoDVD would absolutely not accept WMA9 audio for import when I was using my dedicated Windows XP PC. In fact, the reason I tried AVStoDVD the first time was to see if it would succeed at importing WMA9 when DVDflick failed. I was disappointed to discover AVStoDVD did not solve that problem for me, and at the time all I saw were complaints from other people frustrated by WMA9 incompatibilities with all kinds of converters, so I gave up. But since you say it should indeed work, then it may have been a configuration issue with my XP system. I have not used AVStoDVD since migrating to a new Windows 7 system, with this good news from you I will eagerly try again soon (I will be very happy if it works, if not at least I will know the problem lies elsewhere and can consult you for troubleshooting). It is really great that you monitor these threads to help people with such questions.

[_MrC_]

@edwood

the WMV files seems to be blocked by Mediafire. I suggest you to zip them and upload again.

@orsetto

when you say would absolutely not accept WMA9 audio for import, do you mean that you had problem adding the WMA to AVStoDVD or converting it?

Looking forward to see your next try. If you have issues, please post the project log file and upload the problematic file.



Bye

[edwood]

MrC,

The first of the three zip files is already uploaded. The other two should be on the site by mid-afternoon.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2on0i2iiuh27tj1

Thanks for your help.

Happy New Year,
Ed

[_MrC_]

No way. Try with another file hosting website, like www.filedropper.com



Bye

[UnknownVT]

I use DVD Flick a lot and a very slightly older version 1.3.0.6
(this dates back to when I was using XP SP2 and the newer version 1.3.0.7 refused to recognize .flv files -
since 1.3.0.6 works so well for me - that I never updated to 1.3.0.7 even when I changed to Windows 7 64-bit)

Occasionally DVD Flick will either refuse a video file like your case, or actually process the file, but get stuck on errors for the audio.

Most of the time I resolve this by doing a "conversion" using VirtualDub. One has to have correct plug-ins to gain the full facilities of VirtualDub - but it is well worth the effort - and once incorporated, then VirtualDub is very powerful and flexible.

By the looks of it the plug-in necessary may well be:
WMV
Windows Media (ASF / WMV / WMA) (by fcchandler)
or
Windows Media (ASF / WMV / WMA) x64 (by fcchandler)

MP4
QuickTime / MPEG-4 / 3GPP (MOV MP4 M4V M4A QT 3GP 3G2) (by fccHandler)
or
QuickTime / MPEG-4 / 3GPP (MOV MP4 M4V M4A QT 3GP 3G2 F4V) x64 (by fccHandler)

Audio for AC3 the format DVDs use, and DVD Flick converts to - usually 192k @ 48kHz or anything above that.

AC3 (0x2000) (by fccHandler)
or
AC3 x64 (0x2000) (by fccHandler)

and just to be able to Open your file probably:

WMA (0x0160 0x0161) (by Microsoft)

Plug-ins library:
http://forums.virtualdub.org/index.php?act=ST&f=7&t=19488

Open the video file with VirtualDub
from the upper menus
Click on Video
Make sure you change from Full processing mode (default) to Direct stream copy
(so it merely copies without re-encoding the video)
Click on Audio
Change from Direct stream copy (default) to Full processing mode
Click on Audio again
[looking at your MediaInfo - it seems your audio's sampling rate was 44.1kHz
then there is an extra step:
Click Conversion - then select 48000Hz]
Click on Compression
select AC3-ACM codec (if it's not there, then the plug-in was not installed properly)
in the box on the right select 192kBits/s 48000Hz
Click OK

Then Click File and select Save as AVI...
(my PC converts a movie length videos in less than 3 minutes)

This results in a new .AVI file with 192k/48kHz AC3 audio which DVD Flick doesn't actually have to convert.

Hope that helps

[orsetto]

when you say would absolutely not accept WMA9 audio for import, do you mean that you had problem adding the WMA to AVStoDVD or converting it?

I meant when I tried to add a WMV video to a DVD project in AVStoDVD, and that WMV included WMA9 audio format, the result would be the same as when using DVDflick: the DVD would author with video but no audio in that clip. Since I don't have my old XP Pro system anymore, I'm unable to duplicate the task and give you an accurate description of any alerts AVStoDVD might have displayed. I will install your latest version on my newer Win 7 systems, and try again the next time I encounter a WMV file with embedded WAM9 audio.

No criticism of AVStoDVD was intended by my earlier posts: it was my understanding that the WMA9 audio track format used in some WMV files is problematic for many kinds of software that converts video files to DVD or other formats. There are many reports of WMA9 causing conversion issues that require the laborious workarounds and "pre-conversion" tips suggested by other posts in this thread: if AVStoDVD is able to bypass these issues, that is a very good news.

[edwood]

No way. Try with another file hosting website, like www.filedropper.com



Bye

MrC,

I have emailed you the file to your avstodvd@gmail.com address, since you are not able to download the file from Metafire. If you do not receive the file let me know and I will search for another source to post the file where it can be downloaded.

Happy New Year!
Ed Wood