Problems Encoding Long MPEG files 2 DivX

[marauderz]

Hi guys and gals, I'm stumped on this little problem I have. My source file is a video which I 've recorded using my ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon card.

It's a 352x288 25fps PAL video clip with 44khz, 224kbps Layer II audio.

My problem is when I try to encode the whole show (~45mins) at once using the following settings :-

DivX - 2 Pass, 320kbps bitrate
MPEG Layer 3 (Radium) - 112kbps 44khz Stereo

And I start the encoding with VirtualDub the encoding STOPs at around audio sample ~17500000. I've tried bringing up the audio data rate to 224 to match the source but it doesn't seem to work. Encoding little chunks of video (about 3 mins a piece) does work...

And I know it IS the audio that's causing the problem because when I choose no audio the video encodes without a hitch from start till end.

All in all I only managed to succeedd once.... but I CAN'T remember what I did.. I think I did some conversion settings but I can't remember....

Can anyone tell me if there're any limitations that I should be aware of, or a way to get around this problem WITHOUT ripping it in 3 minute chunks? (BTW Using Save Segmented AVI also doesn't work)

Thanks for all your time.

- Marauderz

[setarip]

Try initially saving it under VirtualDub with Uncompressed PCM sound. If successful, close VirtualDub. Restart VirtualDub (set "Video" to "Direct Stream Copying"). Change the audio settings to your desired .MP3 settings and save with a new .AVI filename.

Let us know of your success ;>}

[marauderz]

Yes, it does work when I do direct stream copy on the Audio (It changes it to a PCM stream)

Although I haven't tried recompressing it to MP3 after obtaining a PCM audio stream.

I guess I was kinda stumped and demorallized after all those previous failures. OK will let you know if it works.

[setarip]

"I guess I was kinda stumped and demorallized after all those previous failures."

Naaaah!

We look forward to your success ;>}

[marauderz]

It didn't work...

All the time the audio encoding stops around audio sample ~17560000 of the total sample....

Anyone got any other ideas?

*sigh*

Oh and it always STOPS at the SAME audio sample.

[setarip]

Since you're able to load it under VirtualDub, you should be able to delete the frame(s) where the problem is occurring.

[marauderz]

well.. a little problem.... it ALWAYS stops after processing X number of frames. I moved my selection away and it still didn't work!!!

So I used Virtual Dub, ripped it out to a WAV file, LAME'ed it to an MP3 then used NanDub to join the files..... it works....

But I feel really

[setarip]

All's well that ends well...

[marauderz]

It's not over yet

looks like it's not over for me yet... seems like when I tried to splice the MPEG into several AVI files my audio gets screwed up. I'm trying to compensate by adjusting the... 'Preload Skew' ? Whatever that is..

Here's what I'm doing right now.
- Take 1 big MPEG file
- split into several small VIDEO only AVI files using DivX 2 pass 640kbps.
- using the same time indexes for the above chunks I use Virtual Dub to rip out the audio in WAV format.
- Convert WAV to MP3 at 224kbps 44.1khz
- Join Video and audio together using NanDub. Set Preload Skew to try and compensate for audio lost.

I'm thinking would this be better?
- Take 1 big MPEG file
- Convert the WHOLE chunk into a big DivX AVI.
- Rip the whole WAV out and convert to MP3
- Then in Nandub while I'm joining I split it into sections.

Or should I join the video and audio THEN only use NanDub to split the resulting file?

Also a question, what's the nicest BitRate I should use to convert MPEG1 Video recordings? 320 seemed too blocky at times... and I don't know... 640 sounds a bit overkill.. opinions?

BTW Thanks for all the help guys!