mp3 codec problems

[DoctorVoodoo]

Hello all, I am having a problem with encoding the audio as Mp3 in Flask. I have 2 systems that I am using to encode movies ( I am going overseas and I am taking 2 100 gig external firewire drives with movies etc. So I have about 75 dvd's to encode). The first is my desktop which is an AMD 1600 xp with a gig of ram, lots of hard drive space and a 64 meg ddr Radeon. The other system is a PIII 1 gig laptop with 512 megs of ram. I have xp pro and 98 se on the desktop and xp home on the laptop. I have been encoding non stop with the laptop using Flask .594 and the radium codec. It works great, albiet slow (5 hours to encode). The desktop worked great for awhile. I could encode in 2 to 3 hours. The desktop starting crashing during encoding. Sometimes after a few minutes, and sometimes almost at the end of the movie. It kept getting worse and worse until finally I did a complete reinstall of my OS's. I had a 98se and 2000 dual boot, and now have a 98 se and xp pro dual boot. (same prob in 98se, 200 and xp) I have the same problems as before, but now I cant even get it to start encoding if I select the mp3 codec at 48000 any kbps. If I select any other audio codec it works fine. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the radium and lame codec and have had no success. If I choose the normal avi output plugin it doesnt even show 48000 as an option in the mp3 codec. If I choose the other avi output option I can choose the 48000 under mp3 but it wont encode. I get an error message. I have basically mirrored the setup I have on my laptop but it still wont work. Right now I am taking the long route and extracting the ac3 then encoding it to mp3, but that takes soo much longer. I have read about the windows mp3 codec overwriting any third party mp3 codec, but being that it is working on my laptop with xp, it should work on my amd system. I have also tried Flask .6 and Mediator (which I really like) But I have the same problems. Is it possible that I have too many mp3 codecs installed? How can I be sure to remove them all? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks, DR.

[DoctorVoodoo]

well, I took the long approach and did a direct stream audio with one movie, converted to mp3 in BeSweet and joined with no problem. Then I tried another title with the same process and it crashed again. I see that this is a problem for alot of people. Doesn't anyone have a fix for this??

[Vidbox]

MP3 Codec problem

I hear that the problem is XP and not the codec. Something about needing to stop XP from defaulting to WMA format during video recording. Sorry I can't tell you more. At the time I wasn't too concerned being that I don't record on my XP puter.

[setarip]

A somewhat shorter and easier solution to try (shorter than saving and converting the .AC3 audio stream and then multiplexing) would be to initially convert the file with Flask, with the audio set to PCM 48,000. Load the compleetd file into VirtualDub and convert the audio to .MP3. If you run into the same problem under VirtualDub regarding .MP3, at least you'll have determined that it's not a problem with Flask.

Let us know of your success ;>}

[DoctorVoodoo]

The problem is definatly not with Flask. It crashes in any program that encodes audio and video at the same time. I have used Flask, xmflask, mediator etc.. Apparantly there are two poblems. I have read that windows will sometime overwrite or corrupt third party mp3 codecs, and I have also read that divx 4.12 and 4.11 have problems with amd processors as they were written to optimise Pentiums performance. I believe the latter is my problem since I can do the exact same things with the exact software and setting on my laptop PIII 1 gig system with no problems at all. apparantly many people are having the same problems with amd processors...Its a shame cause when it was working I could encode in about 3 hours.

DR