Ripped DVD AVI problems

SickAsAParrot · 7 May 2013 at 09:19

I'm trying to free up some DVD-RW's i've recorded off the telly, at the same time trimming the ends and getting rid of the ads.

I use Xmedia Recode to convert the DVD into a (2 hour) DV-AVI file so that Premier Pro 4 will import it (i've tried many other formats without success, PP either crashes or corrupts the import).

The resulting file watches fine in VLC, in windows media player it's juddery like it's interlaced wrong or something, may be a clue, but it plays all the way through.

BUT, when I import it into PP, the audio track is there in it's entirety but only the first 2 minutes of video, stretched out to 2 hours.

I tried the demo of Sony Vegas 12, and all the video is there, but only brief samples of the audio squashed together into the first few seconds, then the audio channel stops.

I've used PP for years with captured AVIs from analog tapes and digital video in all sorts of formats with no problems whatsoever so it's got to be something about the way the DVD is encoded or the transcoding process.

Does anyone have any ideas while I've still got some hair left?

Cheers, Ady

C.R.A.Z.Y · 7 May 2013 at 16:23

Use project X to strip the ad's and other trimming then convert the resulting mpeg2 into divx using a decent free program such as vidomi or handbrake

SickAsAParrot · 7 May 2013 at 23:39

I've just had another play, Sony Movie Studio can import a DVD directly which seems to work OK. I can't output the result though presumably because it's the trial version. Pity PP can't do this.

I also read in another forum this is a common fault and the 'best' fix is to convert to audio-only and video-only files seperately and re-combine them in PP. PITA.

I'll have a look at Project X ta.

SickAsAParrot · 9 May 2013 at 06:52

Update: Converting to video only didn't work. I converted to DV/AVI (24Gb file) and PP only imported the first 4 seconds of it.

I tried using the streaming/convert on VLC itself, which did work, although it breaks the file up into smaller chunks, so either it's Xmedia Recode screwing with the format so PP can't understand it, or PP is just not good at importing long video files.

Ah well, got a solution of sorts at least, cheers!

Edit: No I haven't, I've been trying all weekend to get VLC to repeat the above and I can't get it to work any more, I just end up with a short file of the first few minutes or it won't convert at all. I cannot find any info on why it broke the file up into chapters the first time I tried it, all subsequent attemps it tries to generate a single file and fails miserably.

I've started using Handbrake now, after many hours of frustration with this it would generate an mp4 file OK but the sound would go out of sync when imported into PP. I discovered eventually that PP can't handle variable framerate files and once that was sorted it worked OK.

Countdown to that stopping working in 3....2.....1.......