missing audio when doing video conversion in Tmpgenc

[kerrying]

I got a problem that is kinda tearing lumps off hairs off my scalp here:
So, I just completed cutting and editing another home-made movie of my own (source captured off digital video camera onto high bitrate mpeg files) on Cyberlink PowerDirector Pro. This time around, having had enough with the crappy pic quality PowerDirector produces when it converts & cuts it into a VCD, I decided to try out tmpgenc when it comes to doing the conversion of the mpg file PowerDirector produced to VCD compliant mpg files. It turned out that the picture quality is great, then there are portions of missing audio here and there. Not a single clue what is going down here. Enlightement needed here. Thanks a lot in advance!

[Tommyknocker]

We are going to need your configuration and programs you are using.

[kerrying]

The situation got a little bit more interesting now. Cracking my head over how to actually solve this problem after checking all those audio-related problems on various websites, I decided to de-multiplex the audio stream of the original mpeg file into mp2 (from within Tmpgenc), convert it into wav (from within Winamp - Disk Writer Plug-in), and the encode the original mpeg file into VCD-compliant mpeg (PAL format) with the audio source being the wave file converted with Winamp earlier on and hey, woala, the problem actually goes away. Now the newly encoded mpeg file looks great and sounds ok (can't be sure, I have to check further with this - but I seem to detect a slight degrading in audio quality after the decompressing and recompressing)

BUT..., now I have 1 good old problem that's been bugging many others who asked about this over and over again: audio out-of-sync problem. The mpeg file appears fine right from the beginning but when the playback reaches the 3rd minute and from there onwards the mpeg file simply looks like a badly done foreign title from the 50's with crappy French dubbing. The Winamp reported a 1392 seconds (23:12) and 23 minute 12.89 seconds of length for the mp2 audio stream and converted wav respectively. And taking a quick look at the Window Media player (sorry, I didn't go to the extreme of checking it with editor with milisecond precision) and it says both the original mpeg file and the Tmpgenc encoded mpeg file are of the same length (23:15).

In the name of trial-and-error and pushing my patience hoping miracle might occurs :P , I tried quite a few times encoding with Tmpgenc just the portion with missing audio using different settings (as it takes slightly more than 2 hours on the lame pc I am using to encode the 23 minute long video) - motion search precision:normal/high, with/without Detect Scene Change, with/without Motion Search, with/without Error protection and etc (I know, some of the settings have absolutely nothing to do with audio, but hey, like I say, I am hoping I might just get lucky and a miracle might happens, silly eh... !! ) but, to no avail. The problem disappears only when I decided to do what that doesn't seem logical - decompressing original audio stream with Tmpgenc only to have it recompressed again during the encoding. Oh, and while trying to piss myself off, in several attempts , the encoded mpeg file of, say, 30 seconds, simply shows a static snapshot of a frame with the WRONG audio.

I am a programmer myself but I don't really understand how the missing audio problem can happens and why the solution works the way it works (although it introduces new problem)?

Anyway, now what? I still have hairs on the right side of my scalp for the out-of-sync issue... Enlighten me, please, gntlemen. Thanks a lot!

For the sake of discussion, here are my system profile and information on config. of softwares I use. But, don't laugh at the pathetic spec., I know it is crappy when it comes to this video stuff but, for the time being, I just gotta live with it so, bear with me:

- Pentium II 300 MHz
- 192 MB RAM
- MS Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222A
- original mpeg file of resolution 352x288, 3000000 bits/sec, 25.00 frames/sec, with intended aspect ratio of 16:9 for viewing
- original mpeg files cut, edited, joined, rerendered and encoded into 1 big mpeg file with the same video format through Cyberlink PowerDirector Pro 2.0 (on my pc, performance sucks, introduces burst noice here and there in the generated mpeg file, and video joining is not precise at all, while the video actually seems fine when it is previewed in its preview mode)
- template used in Tmpgenc is the default PAL VCD template that comes with Tmpgenc but with the noise reduction turned on (default setting values used), error correction for audio turned on and video arrange method: full screen (keep aspect ratio).