DV-AVI

shiro_clanclan · Post by **shiro_clanclan** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:33 am

Well, well, well. I see that in my absence, a-m-v.org has undergone multiple changes, hopefully for the better. That's good.

I also noticed that a new guide to WMM was posted, which attempts to address the export issues commonly found in complex AMV projects. I used it with some success at first--previously I didn't know that you had to specify a framerate in DirectShow to open a DV-AVI--but after significant testing I came across the same problem I'd always had.

Which is. At first, a DV-AVI will save my project with stunning video quality and will always save, no matter how complex my project is. Great. But upon playing the resulting DV file, the audio sounds like it's 96kbps and skips whenever there's a "complex" scene change (anything from an effect to a speed modification). So I figured, fine, I'd just open the DV-AVI in VirtualDub, mux the original MP3 in, and save as HuffYUV AVI.

Which works. Except that now, while the audio is perfect, the video progressively gets out of sync. My theory is, as it has always been, that there's something about the DV-AVI exporter which causes it to "stretch" the audio in an attempt to match the source footage. Which doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

Interestingly, not all of my videos go out of sync when exported. My rather simple G Gundam video remains the same whether I export to DV-AVI or WMV. The audio issue is still present, but muxxing in the original MP3 solves it without loss of sync.

The Evangelion vid I'm working on goes out of sync if saved as DV-AVI. The glitched audio is "in sync," but when the original MP3 is muxxed, it gets worse and worse as the video progresses.

The Elfen Lied video I have in progress also loses sync if saved as DV-AVI, same way as the Evangelion one.

The G Gundam and Evangelion videos both use 23.976 FPS source footage. The Elfen Lied video I didn't Decimate it before saving the clips, so the original clips are 29.97 FPS (except for a few scenes from the OVA, which used 120 FPS...).

I can provide example videos showing the phenomenon if need be... but hopefully someone out there has experienced this and figured out a countermeasure. Being able to do one single encode sure would save me a lot of time... :)

Purge · Post by **Purge** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 9:14 am

it probably wont fix it but try exporting from wmm without the audio file in the timeline so there will be no audio. then just open the avi file directly with vdub - mux and export

shiro_clanclan · Post by **shiro_clanclan** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 3:33 pm

Nope. WMM added in a "blank audio," or DirectShow thought there was audio. One of the two. In any case, they continue to be out of sync. Here's an interesting tidbit...

Changing the framerate to 29.864 matches up the end time of the video to the length of the MP3... but that's a really awkward framerate, so something else must be afoot here. Even with the framerate adjusted, things look a tad bit off... but that could just be the inaccuracy of Movie Maker at work.

So, any suggestions?

P.S. "Use another editor" is not a valid answer. :wink:

Arigatomina · Post by **Arigatomina** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 5:05 pm

I thought the new guide warned about that problem - it's the speed change effects in wmm. When you slow down a clip or speed it up, DV-AVI doesn't read the new speed properly. So the more of those clips with speed changes in your project, the more off your sync will get.

Ways around it -

Don't use the speed change effect. If you need the clip to be slower, add in extra frames until it's slow enough. If you need it to be faster, cut out extra frames. Or do your speed changes in vdub - wmm can "read" speed changes better than it can "export" its own speed adjustments.

Don't use dv-avi. If you use the high quality large option you can open and clean it up in vdub without much difference in quality. And the wmv option won't add interlacing to your footage like dv-avi does if you're working with progressive (or already deinterlaced) footage.

Sync the video back up frame by frame. Export a wmv copy of the final video and a dv-avi copy. Convert them both to huffyuv 29.970. Open them in two minimized vdub screens - compare frame by frame. When you hit one of those sped/slowed clips you'll see the differences immediately - too many duplicate frames or not enough duplicate frames. You can use the 'direct stream copy' and 'append' functions to edit the dv-avi copy so the frames match the wmv version. Once that's finished and the two copies match frame for frame, your sync will match your original wav perfectly. This method takes an hour or two for a typical video, but it works every time.

You can play with speed changes, but doing a frame by frame comparison is the easiest and most guaranteed (though slower) way I found to get around that dv-avi sync problem.

shiro_clanclan · Post by **shiro_clanclan** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:33 pm

Arigatomina wrote:I thought the new guide warned about that problem - it's the speed change effects in wmm. When you slow down a clip or speed it up, DV-AVI doesn't read the new speed properly. So the more of those clips with speed changes in your project, the more off your sync will get.

I was worried that was it...

Arigatomina wrote:Ways around it -

Don't use the speed change effect. If you need the clip to be slower, add in extra frames until it's slow enough. If you need it to be faster, cut out extra frames. Or do your speed changes in vdub - wmm can "read" speed changes better than it can "export" its own speed adjustments.

Easier to split a project. Though now that I think about it, if I just compare the speeds and use new clips... okay, this seems to be a pretty good option, actually. VDub, you are my hero.

Arigatomina wrote:Don't use dv-avi. If you use the high quality large option you can open and clean it up in vdub without much difference in quality. And the wmv option won't add interlacing to your footage like dv-avi does if you're working with progressive (or already deinterlaced) footage.

Interesting thing I noticed. If I export to Uncompressed WMV (I

Windows Media Encoder), it looks quite good and is all in sync... but I have to split the project apart, since it's still WMV and still prone to the annoying export error.

However, when I compare something that's uncompressed WMV to DV-AVI... I find that all of Movie Maker's own material (transitions, effects, text) looks muuuuuch cleaner and smoother in DV-AVI than in any version of WMV.

On the other hand, I don't like how it interlaces things. That's really, really annoying.

Arigatomina wrote:Sync the video back up frame by frame. Export a wmv copy of the final video and a dv-avi copy. Convert them both to huffyuv 29.970. Open them in two minimized vdub screens - compare frame by frame. When you hit one of those sped/slowed clips you'll see the differences immediately - too many duplicate frames or not enough duplicate frames. You can use the 'direct stream copy' and 'append' functions to edit the dv-avi copy so the frames match the wmv version. Once that's finished and the two copies match frame for frame, your sync will match your original wav perfectly. This method takes an hour or two for a typical video, but it works every time.

You can play with speed changes, but doing a frame by frame comparison is the easiest and most guaranteed (though slower) way I found to get around that dv-avi sync problem.

You're... kidding, right?

Oh well... more experimentation is in order.

Arigatomina · Post by **Arigatomina** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:28 pm

shiro_clanclan wrote: You're... kidding, right?

Nope. I did that with every project for a year or so. I figure after the hours (weeks for multi-source vids) spent ripping and precleaning some of the footage for vids, an hour or two on the final video was nothing. No point using dvd footage if what comes out looks worse than your average fansub.

Then again, I didn't know what was causing the problem for a long time. And once I realized what it was, I'd already switched to Premiere. If I had to use wmm again, I'd probably stick with wmv and avisynth filters. I know a lot more about cleaning up compressed footage now than I did then. ^_^;

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:20 am

I was trying to post this earlier but I was having connection issues: http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJ ... ering.aspx

This is partly why you have some de-syncing problems. I've had it happen to me also when I used WMM.

shiro_clanclan · Post by **shiro_clanclan** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 4:11 am

Awesome information... too bad the guy only used music he didn't like merged with some panning JPEG file. I think if he'd done some good action music with a bunch of movie clips, he'd change that thing at the end of the article about not detracting from using Movie Maker...

That and the thing at the end about making two sets of DV-AVI files is bunk. If the first one is messed up, making a second one isn't gonna magically improve it. :roll:

Ah well... I guess I'll take a hit and just encode to WMV... it's safer in the long-run than the buggy DV-AVI exporter.

Ah yeah, speaking of which. Two things that have been on my mind as of late:

1.) Has anyone suddenly lost the ability to open uncompressed WMVs in DirectShowSource? Could this be related to WMP11?

2.) How's Movie Maker in Vista? Any bugfixes?