Merging many VCDs using TMPGEnc MPEG Tools causes sync loss!

[mikewg]

I know this is going to sound weird, but I have 43 VCD compliant MPG files that I want to join together. I want each one to be seperated by a 1 second black screen, so I created a 1 second VCD MPG with 1 second of blank sound and no video stream.

I used TMPGEnc's MPEG Tools to join them all together. Unfortunately, despite using the VCD Standard File setting, the file seems to fall out of sync. Windows Media Player won't even play the resulting file, it freezes half way through... VirtualDub plays the file, but the sound is obviously out of sync.

Is there a way to can join these 43 files together with the 1 second blank video in between each of them without it falling out of sync? Is there another program I should try besides TMPGEnc? I've already encoded all the individual files to be VCD compliant, so I really don't want to piece them together in VirtualDub and reprocess them through TMPGEnc because I'll lose quality. Any other options? Thanks in advance!

[LeeBear]

I think your sync problem is caused by your 1 second MPEG stream that doesn't contain a video stream. What you probably want to do is remake your 1 second blank screen, this time make sure it has both a video and audio stream. You can use your 1 second of blank sound as the audio, and you can use a sequence of black ".bmp" pictures as the video. TMPG can use a sequence of pictures as the video source.

-LeeBear

[mikewg]

Okay I understand how to make the black BMP file, but how would I make exactly 29.97 frames worth? How would I put them together to create the video stream?

[mikewg]

Actually I figured out how to make the 1 second VCD file, but the final file is still out of sync. At the beginning, it's not all the bad... but as the video goes further, the video is ahead of the audio.

I checked the 1 second file I have... I ran it through TMPGEnc and it's VCD compliant. I opened it in VirtualDub and there's 30 frames, each frame having a picture, so I know that it's not because it didn't have a video file with it.

Is there a better way to join 43 files with a blank joiner between them without them going out of sync? I really want to join all these files, but obviously I'm at a standstill until I can get them working right. Please someone help!!

[mikewg]

I did some testing, and I've found that joining the MPG files even without the joiner clip causes them to fall out of sync. The video is still ahead of the audio, despite all the clips being VCD compliant and I'm 100% sure I'm using the VCD setting when I'm joining the clips. So if the problem isn't necessarily the joiner clip, what could be causing all the clips to fall out of sync as the video file goes along?

[LeeBear]

Joining MPEG's is probably about as fun as going to get a root canal done You say your 43 MPEG's are VCD compliant, I'm sure you mean they're the same resolution, framerate, and bitrate. But there might be other things that aren't identical like VBV buffer size, etc. That can lead to issues if you're joining MPEG's, especially as many as you are trying to do. You may want to use Bitrate Viewer to check that all the MPEG's are really the same. Another thing you can try and do is to demux the MPEG's, join up just the video streams first. After that you should be able to get an 'exact' number of frames for the entire joined video. Then use an audio editor and join the audio strems together (with the 1 second between clips) and see if the length exactly matchs the length of the video (ie. if your video was 1000 frames, and your framerate is 25 fps, the time would be 40 seconds). If it doesn't match or is slightly off use the 'stretch' function in the audio editor to make the audio the same length as the video. Once you get the audio to be the same length as the video you can just mux them back together.

-LeeBear

[KingJohn]

Is there a way to can join these 43 files together with the 1 second blank video in between each of them without it falling out of sync

I guess your putting them all on a VCD, why not just drop them into the VCD authoring program one after another, and set a pause gap after each one, or drop a black picture in after each one, then when played the DVD player will play the first, play the black picture (for as long as you want) and move on to play the next.

Better to do this then all that joining.

[quriousman]

I just wanna share my experience in mpeg1 cut/join stuff ..

I have a 1 DAT vcd file (mpeg1). I make 4 clips from this one DAT file and then join these 4 clips, both step using VCDCutter.
The audio-video result of JOINING any clips with VCDCutter is ALWAYS synchrnoized. But .... VCDCutter cutting accuracy always give me a headache. For some DAT, it cuts accurately, but for many DAT file, it always add 2-10 seconds, before and after desired range ... 10 seconds ???!!! What the hell happened ???? It's about frame stuff ??
The strange things come again when joining the clips, some clips are joined as it is, but some clips (from the same DAT file) are reduced for 2-4 seconds, especially the last clips ....

Then I tried TEMPGenc. It joins the clips ACCURATELY .. but .. the audio & video are ALWAYS out of sync ... ALWAYS !! And sometimes the audio is gone in the middle of the clips !!!
Well, it could be fixed by adding/subs audio gap in the setting, but it takes time TOO long to synchronize 1 small MPG file ... maybe I should tune the other setting ???

Any other cut/join tools that is better than those 2 ?? ... It seems that nobody's perfect ? ...