Audio Sync problems halfway through the video

[Unreality17]

I've been having audio sync problems that occur about 1/3 to halfway through a video. It tends to lag slightly, but improves by the end of the film. I'll try to provide all the info I can on what I've tried. I've been reading the wiki and searching the forums (and google) trying to understand the problem, but nothing seems to mirror what's occurring.

DVDs: MST3K and the Firefly TV show, all official releases, all ripped to the HDD by AnyDVD. Audio is fine if played directly from disc. Audio is fine if the vob files are played directly as well. I've tried 4 discs so far.

HB settings: I've tried [normal], [High profile], and [universal] settings. Sync issues seem to be less on [normal], and worse on [high profile]. CFR/VFR exhibit same results. Setting [same as source] framerate vs manually selecting framerate has no effect. MKV exhibits same problems as MP4. Setting it to [universal] then setting [reference frames] to 1 seemed to be the best...but of course the file size was really big.

Playback: I'm not putting these on handheld devices. This is solely for playback on my PC. I've tried WMP12, GOM (my preferred player), and KMPlayer. Lag doesn't seem to be as bad in WMP12.

I've tried the nightly build and had the same results.

Encode log:
http://pastebin.com/7E6wx8Hu

This is my first time posting, so please let me know if you need anymore information. Thanks ahead of time for any suggestions you can offer.

[JohnAStebbins]

If the lag is actually changing with x264 settings changes and with different players, then it is highly likely you've gotten a hold of a dodgy media player plugin or something. So you might want to try a few more combinations to be sure this is the case. For example, try setting bframes=0. Try using a different video encoder (like mpeg-4 or theora even). If you are certain that you are seeing better/worse lag when you change these settings, it is highly likely a playback problem.

[Flo]

Have you tried a media player that doesn't rely on external codecs, such as VLC?