Corel Video Studio audio and frame issue

[techmot]

Hi, does anyone know what could be causing my captured videos using Corel Video Studio (when the captured (MPEG-2) files are imported into Lossless Cut seem to have no audio during preview and when outputted and played via VLC Player?. When I trim down a video and export the file lossless, I find that there is no audio during playback in VLC Player, though when played in Windows Media Player there is audio. This only happens with videos that have been captured with Corel Video, so I'm suspecting there's some strange audio codec being used that VLC and Lossless can't recognise, no idea what. Also, when I import files into Lossless Cut, which again have been captured in Corel, the image is squashed in and not their correct frame dimensions. Changing the different settings from a lower resolution doesn't make any difference. I have noticed when I've opened Virtualdub that often the Capture Pin is set to NTSC for some reason and produces the same squashed image frame.

[DB83]

The simplest thing for you to do is upload, as an attachement, a short sample video of an original recording from Corel. 20 secs with a clip that should contain audio will be sufficient.

So no more questions for now. An answer is all that is required.

[techmot]

I have attached a sample video captured straight from Corel Video, abit long at about a minute but couldn't find anything shorter. I noticed the audio missing using another program called Shutter Encode (actually a really useful programme, much better than HandBrake IMO as it allows you to choose from a variety of formats not just MP4 and that strange MV4 format that Nero doesn't recognise), and when I did abit of cutting and used the "Cut without reencoding" setting, the outputted file produced no audio when played in VLC player, so it must be something to do with Corel.

https://files.videohelp.com/u/301282/BBC1_%2019%20May%202000.mpg

[DB83]

Well I have some 'shocking' news for you.

Without any alteration on my part, there is audio on this clip. It is PCM aka uncompressed. Which should not even need a codec to play.


In fact the real issue is the video which is half-DI or 352*576


So you really need to see what has gone wrong with your system. Unless you actually turned audio off in VLC (look at the speaker icon in the lower right). Play in one player should play in another especially when no codec is involved.

[techmot]

Well I have some 'shocking' news for you.

Without any alteration on my part, there is audio on this clip. It is PCM aka uncompressed. Which should not even need a codec to play.


In fact the real issue is the video which is half-DI or 352*576


So you really need to see what has gone wrong with your system. Unless you actually turned audio off in VLC (look at the speaker icon in the lower right). Play in one player should play in another especially when no codec is involved.

No there is sound when I play the file in VLC player (for some reason the version of VLC I have is 32bit) on the version I have, the audio isn't muted. No idea why it is uncompressed, will have a look at the settings in Corel. Yes I use 352x576 because any higher all I get is jittery picture in preview and in capture, I'm guessing the Toshiba laptop I have the processor can't deal with anything higher. The jittering isn't terrible but is noticeable and offputting. What spec or processor you need to cope with a higher capture I don't know as I would've thought that a modern laptop that I have would be capable of dealing with it. Playing my 720p camcorder files doesn't produce anything like that (sometimes in 1920x1080 though), so it appears it can't cope with higher res from my capture device or VHS recorder.

[Cornucopia]

Unless you have a 20+ year old laptop, any computer should be able to play D1 rez mpeg2. Likely some settings elsewhere in your capture+edit+playback chain are messed up.


Scott

[DB83]

No there is sound when I play the file in VLC player .....

FFS. You were asked for a sample that you could not hear audio in standard players (other than vlc). Are we wasting our time ?


At the selected bitrate, even your system should handle D1 mpeg2. The only advantage in half-D1 is when bitrate is under 2000 kbps yours is over 4000 kbps.

[techmot]

No there is sound when I play the file in VLC player .....

FFS. You were asked for a sample that you could not hear audio in standard players (other than vlc). Are we wasting our time ?


At the selected bitrate, even your system should handle D1 mpeg2. The only advantage in half-D1 is when bitrate is under 2000 kbps yours is over 4000 kbps.

I forgot that the file had audio. It's when I import the file into Lossless cut or other similar programme that produces outputted file with no audio in VLC player. As I said this only seems to occur with files that have been captured in Corel Video.

https://files.videohelp.com/u/301282/BBC1_%2019%20May%202000_2.mpg

Regarding resolution, the seems to cope with anything below 620, but anything above 320 it produces more video "stuttering" like it has a different framerate. Setting the capture to 720 produces alot more video stutter or jittering. I think my RAM or processor cannot cope with this capture resolution, or that my Climax Digital USB capture device can't capture at that resolution.

[DB83]

I con confirm that the 2nd clip does not have audio.

However, there is only one (maybe two) qualities of the 2nd clip that is different to the first - both are 352*576 (half D1) + PCM audio so both should, theoretically, play fine.


But the 2nd has a video bitrate even bigger than the first. Given that the run time is quite short it may be the case that the audio has no opportunity to kick in. Like I said, half-D1 is efficient at low bitrates < 2000 kbps - no reason to give it more. I have seen video where the audio bitrate is much too high in relation to the video which has 'killed' the video. Never witnessed the reverse but I guess this is possible.


Do a new sample. This time at 720* 576 at 6000 kbps with PCM and at least 1 minute in length to give both video and audio a chance. But if you still have a longer one ( > 500 meg) from your capture experience you can always upload that to a file-sharing site (not youtube which will re-encode regardless)


The other 'oddity' was that the first video was ID'd as a 'menu'. Can not get my head around that one.


Interesting that both vids appear to be the same source so it may be that other factors are at play.

[techmot]

I con confirm that the 2nd clip does not have audio.

However, there is only one (maybe two) qualities of the 2nd clip that is different to the first - both are 352*576 (half D1) + PCM audio so both should, theoretically, play fine.


But the 2nd has a video bitrate even bigger than the first. Given that the run time is quite short it may be the case that the audio has no opportunity to kick in. Like I said, half-D1 is efficient at low bitrates < 2000 kbps - no reason to give it more. I have seen video where the audio bitrate is much too high in relation to the video which has 'killed' the video. Never witnessed the reverse but I guess this is possible.


Do a new sample. This time at 720* 576 at 6000 kbps with PCM and at least 1 minute in length to give both video and audio a chance. But if you still have a longer one ( > 500 meg) from your capture experience you can always upload that to a file-sharing site (not youtube which will re-encode regardless)


The other 'oddity' was that the first video was ID'd as a 'menu'. Can not get my head around that one.


Interesting that both vids appear to be the same source so it may be that other factors are at play.

Cheers for that. It does seem strange from what you've observed from the clips. With the second clip, all I did was import the file into Losslesscut (which can be found on this site), just trimmed it down and simply exported it as it was (according to the programme, no encoding needed), and when played in VLC there's no sound, but there is sound when played through Windows Media Player (and maybe other programmes, though I haven't tried those). The lack of sound through VLC Player only happens with videos that I have captured through Corel Video Studio (no such issue with Virtualdub captures), and as far as I'm aware I haven't changed any of the audio or video bitrate in Corel, though I have set the resolution occasionally to 720x576, but I can't imagine how that would effect the audio.

[DB83]

Well I tried several players and only MPC-HC would play the audio. Also tried various editors some of which reported that there was no audio track. Vdub2 did play the sound.

The question is does the audiio play BEFORE you trimmed the video regardless of the player selected ?


It really would be useful for a much longer original sample even if there is audio present but BEFORE any trimming.

[techmot]

Well I tried several players and only MPC-HC would play the audio. Also tried various editors some of which reported that there was no audio track. Vdub2 did play the sound.

The question is does the audiio play BEFORE you trimmed the video regardless of the player selected ?


It really would be useful for a much longer original sample even if there is audio present but BEFORE any trimming.

Sorry for the late reply, only just got around to to checking my email's.

It is very odd only one player had the audio. I have since noticed that there is sometimes no audio when I import certain captured files into Lossless cut when captured using Virtualdub; in Lossless Cut it sometimes displays the message "sound may be missing but will appear in the export", and this is without trimming and straight from Vdub. So it seems it's not just Corel Video. I can't find why Vdub would do the same since I have captured as uncompressed avi and in PCM audio.

I will try and do a longer capture.

[techmot]

Only just realised that the reason for the difference in lengths is because the DVD version has had a few seconds cut. I hadn't noticed before until I imported both files into VSDC editor, overlayed both files above each and used the opacity level to try and determine where there may've been a difference in the framerate, but I noticed that part way through the scene that the DVD had been trimmed by about 4 seconds making the length appear shorter than the TV recording I have. Why the DVD version has been cut I do not know, but I suspect due to the use of the cover song which may've been too short for the original scene so they probably trimmed a few seconds off hoping noone would notice. I hate it when they do that. Alot of TV shows that have been released on DVD have had numerous changes made, either music changes due to rights issues or scenes trimmed or even whole scenes cut completely, sometimes for no apparent reason. That's why I think it's important to have an early broadcast recording your fav show on VHS, because there's always something that is changed for home video release.

[DB83]

^^Methinks you have posted this in the wrong topic

[techmot]

I have noticed also, that videos captured in Corel Video Studio don't appear to play in Windows Media Player or other players such as Power DVD Player, but do play in VLC player with or without the audio missing. Very strange. I checked the captures that have been done in Vdub and played the files (both the original uncompressed files and the encoded to MP4 files) in Windows Media Player and VLC and they both play fine. There must be some issue with Corel Video to be causing this, what that is I don't know. I wish these programs worked the way they should be working on my laptop as it is very frustrating. Often Corel Video will not capture the video properly, it records for a few seconds and then the sound cuts off and then about 20 secs later it comes back on, and when I stop the capture and check the outputted file it has only captured about a few seconds of and has stopped. When this happens I have to reboot and start again which seems to fix the problem. It becomes abit of a trial and error trying to capture. On the other hand using Vdub I get audio lag especially when capturing for more than 30 mins. I have tried to maximize CPU usage by closing down my anti virus and the internet and I've captured direct to my external HD (as well as defragging my harddrive but it takes ages to do), but I don't think that really helps. Dropped frames are quite common even on very good tapes.

[DB83]

One major issue here is that in all your topics you reguritate the same issues.

You were asked for a longer, original, no editing, no re-encoding sample from Corel. And I seem to recall that in one topic you praised Corel as the ONLY program that did not give you capture issues. Now that does not appear to be the case unless you are 'throwing dice' with the capture options.


One is hardly encouraged to keep replying with a lack of response from you.


But I still believe that many of your issues are the VCR and/or Capture Device. Replace at the least the latter with one with proper driver support - to remind you the recc was Hauppauge USB-Live2 - and at least we can then find some common ground.

[techmot]

One major issue here is that in all your topics you reguritate the same issues.

You were asked for a longer, original, no editing, no re-encoding sample from Corel. And I seem to recall that in one topic you praised Corel as the ONLY program that did not give you capture issues. Now that does not appear to be the case unless you are 'throwing dice' with the capture options.


One is hardly encouraged to keep replying with a lack of response from you.


But I still believe that many of your issues are the VCR and/or Capture Device. Replace at the least the latter with one with proper driver support - to remind you the recc was Hauppauge USB-Live2 - and at least we can then find some common ground.

Probably my capture device I would say more than anything. I also get alot of jitter, but again that's probably down to my processor and applications running in the background.

Off topic here and I know I've asked this before, but why do the files I have been captured in either Corel Video and VDub when I tried to convert and compress them to a different format in order to fit onto a single layer DVD barely make any difference when imported into Nero Video?. In Shutter Encode I imported a 50 min long video that was captured 640x480 and converted it to an MP4 file and set it to a default bitrate of 5000 and outputted file was 1.85GB, but upon importing into Nero the file read over 9GB. I even lowered the bitrate to 500 and lowered the audio bitrate to 128 and that made no difference. I even compressed the MP4 and converted to an MPEG2, dropped the framerate and it file read about 250MB, but in Nero the file read 3GB in size and the video quality was very pixelated. Very strange.

On my Panasonic DVD Combi I once transfer from tape 4 episodes of a TV series which ran at around 50 minutes in length each, on a single layer (4.7GB) disc, the video bitrate of the MPEG-2 file was roughly 9000kbps with a frame size of 720x576, and yet using programmes like HandBrake and Shutter Encoder not even one 50 min really compressed MPEG-2 file will fit onto one disc - why?. Is this due to the enormous size of the original AVI file that was captured in Vdub?. Why will a standalone DVD recorder allow you to record about 250 mins of video at DVD quality, yet compressing an MP4 file and lowering the video and audio bitrates to 500 and 128 has no effect in the file size in Nero?.

Also, some of the programs like Shutter Encoder have odd framd size outputs but (like 240x180) and there's no 720x576) and this seems to vary depending on which programme you're using which makes it all confusing when encoding to a different format but trying to preserve the same framesize as the original file.

[pepegot1]

Corel does not support 352X576 video. No wonder you are having problems.
Try videostudio forum: https://forum.corel.com/viewforum.php?f=1
An excellent forum with knowledgeable people.