Video conversion/DVD authoring-Audio problem

[Ashaman074]

Hi,

I have been working on converting home videos taken on both VHS & 8MM to DVD. While I thought this wouldn't be that bad of a project, it is really beginning to drag out and become maddening at this point.

Being previously sidetrack by damaged/corrupted codecs in Windows, I performed a clean installation of XP and have tried to resume where i left off...

Process up to this point:

1. Captured video into lossless AVI (HuffyUV) at 640 x 480.

2. Edited video for content

3. Performed processing tasks (color/contrast correction, de-interlacing, cropping, etc)

4. Performed audio editing to correct background noise, added slight reverb

Ok, so at this point I have several Nice AVI files. They look very good, playback without any issues, and the audio is great. So now it is time to convert to MPEG2 & burn to DVD...

I have tried several different methods, with several different programs, but the result from this point is always one of two things.

1. I burn the DVD, everything seems great, but the audio is crackling/distorted. It almost sounds like "clipping", or like the audio input leves are way too high. Quiet passages even sound OK at first, but when louder passages are reached, it is really obvious.

2. Same problems as above, but this time the audio seems just a little off from the video.

I have tried using separate M2V & WAV files to burn, same problem. I have tried burning a single MPEG2 file (audio & video combined...not a fully standard DVD) same problem. It doesn't seem to matter what I do, the result is always the same, a DVD with distorted audio. They also seem to be much louder than the AVI files, even at the same volume level.

I have tried so many different combinations I am totally frustrated at this point. I feel I have done a lot of research on conversion, but maybe there is something I am missing?

If anyone could help me out with this problem, it would sure be appreciated! My head is getting sore and the wall is wearing thin.....

[setarip]

In what format have you initally captured the audio?

One set of procedures (other posters may/probably will suggest alternative methods) would be:

1) Use "TMPGEnc" to convert the .AVI (DivX-compressed or otherwise) to compliant MPEG2-for-DVD format - Use "TMPGEnc's" DVD wizard/template to accomplish this

2) Use "TMPGEnc DVD Author" (a different program than "TMPGEnc") to easily create the required additional DVD files and structure (and chapters and a menu, if you wish)


**If the combined filesize of the DVD "package" written to your hard drive is greater than 4.37Gb, use DVD Shrink (or similar) to compress


If your O/S is either Win2000 or WinXP, TMPGEnc DVD Author can also burn your DVD. Otherwise, use NERO to burn in "DVD-Video" mode
(As an alternative to "TMPGEnc DVD Author", you could use "DVDLab")


Let us know of your success ;>}

[megamachine]

Welcome to the forum, Ashaman. Do you have a program that can show the audio levels graphically? I use CoolEditPro to check out the levels visually, to monitor potential clipping points, and adjust the capture levels accordingly. It's just a hunch, but if you are capturing at a near clipping level, then processing the audio with reverb, you might be pushing the envelope too much. That would at least tell you if the distortion is clipping, or not. As another possibility, can you try capturing directly to MPEG-2? Then, you can see if there is a problem in how your setup is dealing with MPEG-2 audio and video. If you are using TMPGEnc to do your MPGEG-2 encoding, you might want to install TooLame, as an addon, which I have found improves the audio quality a bit.

[Ashaman074]

Thanks for the replies/suggestions!

Setarip--

I originally captured in HuffyUV, and stayed with this for all editing/processing.


At the suggestion of past posts, I did try using TMPGEnc as well. It went through the conversion without problem, however the result was the same as with other packages; and I had the same problem with the audio.

I tried using TMPGEnc DVD author, I did not have any problems with this either, aside from the final result. I did like the program though, it would definitely be fine with me if only I could find a way to use it and get "clean" audio.

megamachine--

Thanks for the welcome! I do indeed, in fact I used VirtualDub to dump the audio from the AVI file, then opened in SoundForge. I made sure the levels were good without any cliping, and I did have to adjust the input levels during capture to keep this from happening. According to this, it should be just fine?

I did indeed try capturing directly into MPEG2, and it worked, though for some reason the audio was out of sync. At least the audio quality was good though! Unfortunately, I have some editing and processing to do, so going direct into MPEG doesn't seem optimal.

At this point, I don't know man...it seems like I have checked, and rechecked, and searched the net repeatedly, all without getting any closer to a solution. Is there some reason why the audio levels would increase during authoring? That is almost what it seems like is happening.... Maybe I should try dropping the audio levels even more just as a test; that way I would be absolutely sure that wasn't the problem....

Thanks again!

[megamachine]

Audio sync with MPEG-2 capture is a common problem, and I agree that if you are doing a lot of editing, that is not optimal. But it did provide us with another clue, that there is something in the AVI to MPG to VOB processing that is, perhaps as you suggest, inadvertantly boosting the audio. You are already getting a feel for how this works, there's a lot of trial and error, and then asking for advice. That's how most of us learned. Anyway, if you want to try something else, do your usual DV capture and set the audio levels as usual but don't do any processing and go directly to encoding and authoring. Then, try it the way you suggested, where you can lower the capture audio level, on the assumption that it is gaining somewhere in the other processes, and do your usual reverb or whatever you add, and see how that works. You probably already figured out that this takes time, so you can do these tests with short clips to quicken the process. TMPGEnc lets you encode a few minutes of a larger file in order to see how it came out. It's worth the trouble to experiment, in that you will eventually find a method that works for you, with your setup and goals. Hope this helps in some way, and let us know how it goes.