DVD Lab pro Audio output

[nzjacob]

Hi everyone, had a look around the forums and the net, but this ones confussing the hell out of me.

My best mate got married last year, and I offered to take all the DV cam footage from the wedding and build a little DVD for his family.

I brought all the footage into Sony Vegas, and did the editing etc. I then use Canopus to convert to PAL MPG2 with 224kbs MPG2 Audio. I have done this a million time (well . . . baybee 100) and no problems. Drop the output into TMPG DVD Author and it encodes sweet. Burn it and it plays back even better.

For this porject, I decided to go the whole 9 yards, and purchased DVD LAB Pro. I have created the project fine, DVD Lab brings in all the elements fine, and even compiles fine. I did demux my inputs to *.mpv and *mpa - maybee that was wrong ?

The resulting output plays 100% on my PC, but not on my standalone players. I have noticed that the Audio tracks on the compiled DVD are all LPCM 224k - when my inpt was MPG2 224K.

Am I missing a setting in DVD Lab to leave the audio as MPG2 ?

I have checked, and the audio should all be DVD complient. I loaded one of the Canopus outputs into TMPGENC DVD Authour and it created a simple DVD fine.

I am pretty new to DVD LAB, and I have searched around for an answer, but it elludes me thus far. I havn't tried converting the *.mpa files that DVD Lab created when it inputted the canopus output yet, but I dont see why I would have to.

Any and all help appreciated.

[setarip]

"I did demux my inputs to *.mpv and *mpa"

I believe this step was entirely unnecessary - and most probably the cause of the resultant silent video...

[mimwdv]

I've got DVDlab (but not Pro) and they recommend you demux the inputs, so by rights that in itself shouldn't have caused the problem. Don't know what could have done it, though. I presume that 224kbps is within DVD standard? Any other auditing formatting funnies which might have caused it? I know I had problems at one point because some of the audio was mpg and some was wav (I think, it was a while ago) - do you have audio incompatibilities somewhere?

[ormonde]

nzjacob

A couple of quotes from your initial post:

"Drop the output into TMPG DVD Author and it encodes sweet. Burn it and it plays back even better."

"For this porject, I decided to go the whole 9 yards, and purchased DVD LAB Pro."

I'm a slight bit baffled as to why you would purchase "DVD Lab Pro" since you stated that you have had success (many times) using "TMPGEnc DVD Author". One usually sticks with the method the yields consistent results.

[reboot]

If the header info is wrong in the mpa, then DVDLab will spit out a useless disk/compilation.
Take the mpa, and run it through ffmpeggui, make it into 224kbps AC3, 48khz, and import that to DLP.
No more problems.

[nzjacob]

Re: nzjacob

Originally posted by ormonde
A couple of quotes from your initial post:


I'm a slight bit baffled as to why you would purchase "DVD Lab Pro" since you stated that you have had success (many times) using "TMPGEnc DVD Author". One usually sticks with the method the yields consistent results.

For this particular project, I wanted to move away from one simple video file on a simple menu, and add 2 slideshows of the wedding photos, and some other things that TMPG doesn't do easy. (Plus it gave me an excuse to try and up my skills to a more professional authoring tool)

I have been able to get most of the audio working now though. I converted all of the *.mpa files using fflmpg to AC3, and then used DVD LAB pro's audio setting options to set Audio to AC3.

This ment the audio in all the Videos worked fine, but the audio in the slideshows dissapeared.

Tomorrow I will try to move the Slideshows to a seperate VTS, and set the Audio in that VTS seperatly. (The audio for the slideshows came from a wav file, and even if I convert this the AC3 I get no sound)

Thanks to all for suggestions - I will keep you posted.

[setarip]

To nzjacob

(Just kidding) Has your vision as yet become totally impaired, as a consequence of constantly choking that chicken?

[nzjacob]

All else fails - I will re-import without demuxing - but that will mean setting up chapters agian ? ?

Yes, my eyesight is quite poor - dont know if its from choking the chicken, or trying to read these posts on my work PC's 14" monitor

[reboot]

You should have had the slideshow in a different VTS to begin with. It's not a 720x480/576 mpg, so it's no wonder your audio didn't work.
To adhere to dvd spec, each portion of the DVD that is not the same as any other must be in it's own VTS.
DLP does this nicely with the Bridge tool.

[nzjacob]

I got it all working sweet. Had to convert all of the AC3 audio to mp2 using ffmpeggui. Even converted the wav for the slideshow to mp2.

Kept everything in the same VTS, as DLP will convert the slideshow pictures to the same format as the other video in the VTS for you.

Once it had finished compiling, I used the IFO edit option in DLP tools menu to set audio to mpa using the quick mpa option. Initially it did this at 20bps, but I changed it to 16bps. At 20bps, there was a slight bump in the audio during the slideshows as the images changed. At 16bps this was solved.

I want to thank everyone here and over at doom9 who provided suggestions. I guess the problem was related to the audio headers in the demuxed audio or something ???

From now on I will be creating any audio streams using ffmpeggui from the source mpg that canopus created.

Anyway hopefully this post will be found by people looking to solve similar issues in the future.

[setarip]

"I guess the problem was related to the audio headers in the demuxed audio or something ???"

This is the first time you've mentioned an .AC3 audiostream.

You initially stated,
"I did demux my inputs to *.mpv and *mpa"

If, in fact, that was the problem, you could have used "AC3Fix" to readily make the headers compliant...

[nzjacob]

Re: Re: nzjacob

Originally posted by setarip

This is the first time you've mentioned an .AC3 audiostream.

Originally posted by nzjacob

I have been able to get most of the audio working now though. I converted all of the *.mpa files using fflmpg to AC3, and then used DVD LAB pro's audio setting options to set Audio to AC3.

From my post above - I converted the MPA's to AC3 as was suggested, but that was no help. Then I converted these AC3's to MP2. Maybee the problem was in the naming of the files - I thought MPA and MP2 are the same thing, however DLP didn't like the MPA files, but the MP2 files were perfect.

Thank god the conversion doesn't take more than a minute

Thanks

[setarip]

"I thought MPA and MP2 are the same thing, however DLP didn't like the MPA files, but the MP2 files were perfect."

As far as I know, they are the same - the technical difference being, if I remember correctly, that ".MP2" refers to a demultiplexed audiostream, while ".MPA" refers to the same information as a standalone file. Perhaps all you had to do was rename the file with an .MP2 extender...

[reboot]

Perhaps all you had to do was rename the file with an .MP2 extender...

This works about 50% of the time in DLP. It's just more reliable to use ffmpeggui, even if you want mp2 instead of AC3.
I have no idea why AC3 didn't work though, unless one track (of any sort) wasn't AC3.