Trying to import some video from a PAL DVD.

wm_b wrote on 12/8/2005, 12:02 AM
I have a project that is giving me problems. I have a two hour live performance with 16 tracks of 44.1 audio. I also have a DVD of the same show. Strangely, the DVD is pretty badly compressed with all two hours coming in at just below 2 gigs on the DVD. Not sure why it was done this way.

I tried importing the video into vegas 6c. It worked but trying to sync the audio with the video is coming up short. Looking at the video properties of the files I come up with this...

00:22:06.160, 25.000 fps interlaced, 352x576x32, MPEG-2

Somehow things seem askew with those settings. The resolution seems off to me. 25 fps is expected but I gues that could be a problem too. The quality of the video from the DVD is pretty crappy.

The project was recorded in england and I am working in the US with the artist. The goal here is to produce an edited live DVD for promotional purposes. At the moment we are inspecting the quality of what was recorded to assess the viability of this project. It might be possible to get a better copy of the video as it was seemingly professionally recorded however bad the encoding seems to be.

The general problem at the moment is that the video seems not to sync with the audio for some reason. Is there something I am doing wrong by importing the DVD via the import DVD function?

Thanks, wm.

Comments

farss wrote on 12/8/2005, 12:15 AM
2 hours of vision in under 2GB!
It must look absolutely horrid. That alone would be reason to pull the plug on this.
The audio on the CD is not necessarily the same as what's on the CD(s), bits might have been edited out, I'd certainly not expect it to be as simple as just match the whole CD to what's on the DVDs, I'd suggest at least you'd have to do this number by number. You may need to go further and do some resampling in Vegas to get it to hold sync over each number.

Bob.
wm_b wrote on 12/8/2005, 8:31 PM
The 16 track audio starts about 1 minute before the point where the DVD begins. At that point they were nonstop for one hour. There is a break in the video where I assume the tape was changed and the audio plays on. Once the video picks up it coninues nonstop till the end of the tape again.

The video on the DVD is not a candidate for release but as a reference to what could work given access to the original media (which is believed to be intact). I just need to be able to view the video and hear the audio at the same time. The audio stream on the DVD is only good enough to tell what song is playing and that's about it.

The 16 track audio quality is very good to excellent. My criticisim of the sound has more to do with mic choice than any technical shortcoming.

I'm wondering if the 25 fps and the resolution of the video, 352x576 are part of the reason why they don't sync. Has the video been changed in some way that could affect the timing of the recording in some what. I can't tell from the DVD audio if there are pitch issues because the audio quality isn't very good.

I have done many sync jobs with DV and audio recorded independently. It can be done very easily provided both sources have a reasonably stable clock. I have even synced audio from an XM satellite radio broadcast with video shot of a personal performance. It's extremely easy to do.
mbryant wrote on 12/8/2005, 10:19 PM
WM,

I don't know why the sync problems are occuring, but can comment on the resolution and framerate. 25 fps is standard for PAL as you probably know... 352x576 is standard for a "half resolution" video. So while the quality will be poor, there is nothing unusual about these settings.

Mark
wm_b wrote on 12/8/2005, 11:01 PM
Mark,

Is there something I should set differently in the project properties compared to the usual stuff? I figured Vegas just made it all work together.

I'm fighting a cold at the moment and my fortitude is fading. Hopefully I will feel better and more determineed tomorrow.

Thanks, Wm.
mbryant wrote on 12/9/2005, 12:01 AM
I generally work with PAL source material, so have the project properties set for PAL. When I occasionally work with NTSC material I set the project for NTSC. But I kinda doubt that is the problem... as you say I think Vegas figures it out anyway. But if you have your project properties set to NTSC settings you might want to change them to PAL. You can still render to NTSC, with Vegas doing the conversion. I don't think the conversion could mess up the timing? Sorry, I'm over my head here.

Mark
farss wrote on 12/9/2005, 1:53 AM
Originally you said the audio is coming up "short", can you elaborate?
Do you mean if you sync the audio to the vision at the start by the end it's out of sync?
If that's all it is then that more often than not is the case.
The clocks in the video and audio recorders would not have been locked and over 2 hours it's pretty likely they'll get out by quite a bit. I'm having exactly the same issues syncing CDs used for a live performance back to the camera tapes. Vegas reads the CDs at exactly 44.100KHz but there's no guarantee that the CD players on the night did the same thing, it only takes 0.1% to get out a beat over a number.
So to get around this all you do is sync at the start and ctl/drag the end of the audio to get the end in sync. If there's breaks between number you can split the audio track(s) to redo the sync for each number, that reduces any problems due to drift in the clocks, by that I mean at the start of the concert they might have been +0.1% but at the end -0.1%. If that happens even though you have the start and end in sync the middle will be off, can happen over 2 hours as things heat up, shouldn't with modern gear but...

Hope the cold is better.

Bob.