MPEG/VCD out of sync on PC

[madphilb]

I know I saw this problem mentioned on here a long time ago, I think by Bobtheduck in reguards to some SH MPEGs he had downloaded.

The problem is that on 2 occasions I've made a VCD using Nero, both times it came out fine and plays wonderfully in my sister's computer (aside from some interface issues), however when I play either disk in my machine the audio goes out of sync with the video. (the most recent one it was quite a bit off by about 1 minute into the video).

Searching the internet and I come up with the opposite problem as being fairly common, usually related to a compression issue or another with going from something like DivX to SVCDs (usually as part of ripping DVDs).

If anyone's got ideas I'm open to them.... and if whoever it was (bob?) figured out how to fix it before, please let me know.

Thanks

[madphilb]

bump..... Heeeeelp!

[TheMelodyMaker]

This is going to sound odd, but is your hard drive's DMA setting enabled? How about your CD-ROM drive's DMA setting? Maybe finding the right combination of these settings would help. If not, try running ScanDisk and Defragmenter. I have no idea if any of this will help, but it's all I can think of (and no one else has replied yet so I figured I should).

Edit: Something else I just thought of is possibly updating your sound card/chip drivers.

[madphilb]

Hmm... might have to look at the DMA settings on the drive, but I don't have problems with DVDs, just the 2 VCDs I've made... and I think maybe a MPEG-1 file I downloaded at one time....

As for the sound chip/drivers, it's some crummy Crystal thing that's on-board... I'll be replacing it with something else once I've upgraded the PC, and even then I'll be using an old Sound Blaster clone card then... but that's another story....

Thanks for the input... I'll check the DMA and see if it makes a difference.

[Lynx]

what program are you using to play it?

[madphilb]

PowerDVD is my weapon of choice (happens to be what they included with the DVD-ROM drive).... might be either the software or maybe my system just is too slow for it or something.

Haven't had a chance to check the DMA yet though.

[TheMelodyMaker]

Cool, I use PowerDVD too! In that case, let me tell you something: I use Windows 98 and XP on the same computer, and I had PowerDVD installed on both OSes. Now, with an older version of my sound chip's driver, the program worked perfectly fine under both; but since I upgraded the driver, while it still works fine under XP the sound is really choppy under 98 -- and I never even touched the DMA settings. So I uninstalled PowerDVD from 98 and now I just use XP to watch DVDs.

In other words, based on my own experience, I'm thinking that simply upgrading your sound drivers might help -- if it doesn't, try downgrading to a previous version (if you can). Don't touch the DMA settings (assuming you haven't already) except as a last resort.

(And yes, I've so far made the assumption that your system is fast enough to handle it, which I really shouldn't do. )

[Lynx]

have you tried using divx? sometimes i have this problem and divx seems to fix it.

[Mithrandir]

How can you use divxx to play VCDs? I've been looking for a better program to do so myself...

[madphilb]

I was wondering that myself, figured it was a reference to encoding the video, but a VCD is a standard format and only as MPEG-1 (SVCDs support MPEG-2 I believe, but I don't have the software to convert to that).

I think I saw mention of stand-alone VCD viewing programs, it might be worth it to see if I can find one and try it, maybe that'll do it for me.... who knows.