sage's 1.8GB/hr DVD files have no sound in TMPGenc

[etk29321]

I'm having intermittent (~50% of the time) problems buring shows recorded with sage to DVD. I've tried TMPGEnc, Roxio, Nero, and have had trouble with all of them. TMPGEnc works the best (as in does not just crash windows and reboot the machine like the others), however, it claims there is no sound on tracks from time to time. These files play fine in sage, and are seemingly no different than the files that work. All the files are recorded at 1.8 GB/hr DVD bitrate. All files are between 1.5 and 2.5 hrs in length. Also, when it does work, it works great.
Any clue what's going wrong here?


fyi: Ulead is the only program I've been able to get to work 100% of the time, but I'm not willing to pay $500 for DVD authoring software. Of course, it still has to spend 4 hrs to re-encode each file before it starts buring -- something else i dont see the need for.

[etk29321]

More info...

I tried DVDlab.. it informed me that there was a bad header on the audio stream.

I then tried Merge/Cut in TMPGEnc. This seemed to fix the problem I can now burn the mpegs.

Ok.. the question then is... why is sage/PVR250 creating mpeg files with corrupt audio headers?

[fidget]

What kind of system are you using? Does it use a VIA chipset?

[etk29321]

abit KR7A-RAID mainboard in the sage server system. yup it is a VIA chipset (VIA KT266A/ VIA VT8233)

[fidget]

Originally posted by etk29321
abit KR7A-RAID mainboard in the sage server system. yup it is a VIA chipset (VIA KT266A/ VIA VT8233)

Take a look at this thread (http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...pci+corruption). When I had a VIA based PC, I couldn't get more than 2 PVR-250s to run together. Once I changed to an Intel chipset I had three running together without any problems.

[justme]

I have the same chipset in my old Sage box and I get literally over 1,000 PTS errors per minute of video with just one card(PVR250) and this is with the latency patch. Without the latency patch the file is so corrupted that the audio will be badly out of sync in just a half hour of recording and this is before any editting.

For those that don't know this is a know issue with some Via chipsets and the PVR250/350. There is another bad interaction of this chipset with some Soundblaster cards, and yes I own one of those models. The different hardware manufacturers all blame each other for the problems. The only good thing is that this is not a Sage issue as WinTV2000, WinTVcap, and GBPVR all showed this behavior. This is why I switched to an Intel chipset/cpu for my new box, despite the fact that I'm a big AMD cpu fan.

[thatdude90210]

I just had something similar with tonight's Cold Case episode, I was recording it in DVD 2.5 G/hour. And I'm using an Intel 845GV mobo with a Celeron 2.0G (+pvr 250 in a dedicated box). Loaded up the mpeg with TMPGenc DVD author and try to play it on the edit menu, the result was "cannot initialize audio decoder."

There are issues with the file, Windows Media player 9 would not play it... it's on perminent pause. I can move to any spot on the video but it just would not play.

Playing it in Sage TV itself results in slow motion with matching slow sound, but WinDVD 4 played it ok.

The mpeg crashes Virtualdubmod when loading.

I finally used TMPGenc plus to save the *.m2v & the *.wav files and loaded those into TMPGenc DVD author and that worked.

[etk29321]

hm... the remux messed up the sound sync (~.5 sec off)... did you have that problem too thatdude90210?

Justme, did you find a fix to the VIA issues? or am I stuck?

[thatdude90210]

I just remember that I used the original mpeg as the video source in TMPGenc DVD author, and then use wav file as the sound source. The final dvd did not have any sync issues.

[justme]

Justme, did you find a fix to the VIA issues? or am I stuck?

The latency patch that hauppauge suggests at the very bottom of this this site made it at least usable for just playing back in SageTV. I still have some problems with editting long(over 1.5 hours) recordings though, and this is using Wombles' Mpeg2VCR. Which is generally(and rightfully so, IMO) considered the best editor for PVR250/350 created files.

In the end this was one of the the many issues that caused me to decide to build a new Sage box. I ordered the same board a friend has and tested the setup first with his board and it seems fine on the Intel board(can't remember the model off the top of my head). Hopefully time will justify my decision.

So if you already have the latency patch installed and you don't want/can't try a different motherboard, the only thing I can suggest is SHS's forums. There are lots of little tricks(like thatdude90210 mentions) and workarounds for this type of issue. Some work for some and some work for none, but it's your best shot at finding a method that will work. Hope you get a method that works for you. I mostly edit to and archive to high quality Divx/Xvid myself, so I'll leave the more advanced DVD stuff to the experts(both here and at SHS's).