No audio after half of the movie only on Intel Machines

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sebastian76
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No audio after half of the movie only on Intel Machines

Post by sebastian76 »

Hello Handbrake people,

First of all, thank you for giving us such a great application for free. Im the ones that would really like to donate "something" for this altruist project.
Most of it, to keep it fresh and to assure the very necesary improvements.

THE BUG: Have an Intel an a Power PC computer using Mediafork latest build. Have done multiple tests, and yes I can confirm that the NO AUDIO after half the movie happend only or more often on Intel machines. Most of the times when I switch to Handbreak on this Intel Macs the thing gets worked, but it is no guarantee.

Then again, do the same thing on my G5 Dual Mac, and the audio is back in the whole compressed movie.

Im using like I said Mediafork and Handbrake
AVERAGE BIT RATE 2000kbps, 2PASS ENCODING, H264 enconder, Main Profile.

THANK YOU
AND STILL WAITING DESPERATELY FOR THE NEW REVISION.
loyalty_anchored
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Post by loyalty_anchored »

i also have an intel mac and have just made an interesting discovery. i have noticed a direct link between the dropped audio and a severe decrease in encode performance.

i was encoding "robocop" ripped using MTR 2.66 and at about 80% of the second pass i noticed the encode speed go down from about 25fps to 8-10 fps, this crippled performance continued until the encode was done and the speed picked up with the next job.

now, i played back the movie once it was done encoding, and it seems that right around 80% into the movie.... THE AUDIO DROPS :-)

i honestly have no idea what this means or why it happens and how it can be resolved. but i now have found out that there is a significant performance drop in the encoding correlated with the dropped audio.

what can we make of this? if there are any big brains on the forum that would like me to run some tests with this let me know and i can try to help out.
nightstrm
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Post by nightstrm »

loyalty_anchored wrote:i also have an intel mac and have just made an interesting discovery. i have noticed a direct link between the dropped audio and a severe decrease in encode performance.

i was encoding "robocop" ripped using MTR 2.66 and at about 80% of the second pass i noticed the encode speed go down from about 25fps to 8-10 fps, this crippled performance continued until the encode was done and the speed picked up with the next job.

now, i played back the movie once it was done encoding, and it seems that right around 80% into the movie.... THE AUDIO DROPS :-)

i honestly have no idea what this means or why it happens and how it can be resolved. but i now have found out that there is a significant performance drop in the encoding correlated with the dropped audio.

what can we make of this? if there are any big brains on the forum that would like me to run some tests with this let me know and i can try to help out.
This is the same scenario that a number of people, including myself, have experienced. I know that it has been talked about in the IRC channel and elsewhere on the forums, but no definitive answer has been found.
rhester
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Post by rhester »

There appears to be one consistency at this point. DVDs ripped with AnyDVD on Windows, then copied back to a Mac for processing, never exhibit transcoding issues, either in the form of incomplete conversions or audio drop-outs.

This is clearly a MTR issue. It's too bad the Mac platform doesn't have other choices.

Rodney
cdaiger
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Post by cdaiger »

rhester wrote:There appears to be one consistency at this point. DVDs ripped with AnyDVD on Windows, then copied back to a Mac for processing, never exhibit transcoding issues, either in the form of incomplete conversions or audio drop-outs.

This is clearly a MTR issue. It's too bad the Mac platform doesn't have other choices.

Rodney
I have found that MTR Main Feature is the problem. Something is going wrong when it writes the new VOBs. I now only use Full Disc.
jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

Since I have *never* had an audio drop issue and I've *never* used anything but Full Disc Extraction...

...and since rhester says it's an MTR problem...

...and since cdaiger confirms it...

...and since cbud can't reproduce it...

...and since sr55 has successfully ripped a DVD that was causing audio drops by using AnyDVD...

I am moving this train-wreck of a thread to Support where it belongs.
loyalty_anchored
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Post by loyalty_anchored »

just to solidify your current stance, i have NEVER used full disk mode, i do main feature to save time in the rip process.

i will rip robocop today when i get home from work in FULL MODE and re-encode and post the results back.

but it does looks like the problem is MTR in modes other then FULL DISK.
Last edited by loyalty_anchored on Tue Apr 03, 2007 6:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
nightstrm
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Post by nightstrm »

I will also add that I have had this happen using both the extraction built-in to Handbrake, as well as using Title Only mode on MtR.
loyalty_anchored
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Post by loyalty_anchored »

guys i have some bad news, i got home today and as promised, i ripped robocop with MTR 2.6.6 in FULL DISK MODE and ran the encode, i am at about 80% and the encode speed has dropped to 8FPS from 25FPS which is telling me the audio has dropped once again.

i thought i read that the problem arises only and only when you rip with MTR in a mode other then FULL DISK MODE because it has to recreate the VOBs. I would have to say that my testing proves this theory wrong and that you can also get dropped audio when encoding a VIDEO_TS created by MTR 2.6.6 in FULL DISK MODE.

i am 99% sure that if i rip this disk with AnyDVD then encode using MF that there will be no dropped audio issue. having said this, i will complete the test by decrypting the same DVD with AnyDVD, encoding in MF and posting my results.

:x
loyalty_anchored
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Post by loyalty_anchored »

ok guys, more news on this robocop rip.

attempt 1: MTR2.6.6 feature only -> MF,H.264 = Audio Drop :(
attempt 2: MTR2.6.6 full disk -> MF,H.264 = Audio Drop :(
attempt 3: AnyDVD -> MF,H.264 = Audio Drop :?

What in the world is happening here? my next test is to run this with MF using the FFMPEG encoder to see if audio drops as well.

will post when results are ready.

UPDATE:

I ran an encode using the same rip from "attempt2" and the ffmpeg codec and there is NO audio drop. I really do not know what to think right now.
rhester
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Post by rhester »

Appears other applications are affected as well but in a different manner:

http://handbrake.m0k.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=937

Looks like this is a combination of poor mastering + a very unforgiving codec (x264).

Rodney
loyalty_anchored
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Post by loyalty_anchored »

ok, now i really can no longer think the problem comes from the ripping software.

i just used the rip from attempt2 with the H.264 codec, just this time i used a smaller video resolution, 320x176 and gave it a 2 pass @ 1000.

the audio did not skip a beat.

any feeback guys?
t1937r0
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Post by t1937r0 »

I ripped my copy of Eragon using MTR Main Feature on my powerbook G4. After that finished, I used handbrake to encode the video using ffmpeg to MPEG-4/AAC on the same powerbook. The resultant video worked flawlessly.

I then copied the previously ripped VIDEO_TS folder, and dumped it on my Intel mac mini, and used handbrake with the same settings. The resultant video only had audio for the first 27 seconds. Strangely enough, as was mentioned earlier, the encode speed dropped significantly at the same point in the transcode. I noticed that the first chapter was 27 seconds long., so I went back into handbrake and did the transcode again, this time choosing chapter 2 as the start. It worked fine until about 45 minutes into the film, at which point the encode speed dropped from ~60fps to ~14fps, and once again, the audio dropped.

So, just for the sake of completeness, I tried the process with mediafork. Identical results.

From this I conclude:

1. The probability that MTR is responsible is low.
2. The probability that the issue is ffmpeg's MPEG-4 codec on Intel is high.
Just my thoughts...

I did this with MTR 3.0 beta r14d on PPC, Handbrake 0.7.1 on both Intel and PPC, and mediafork 0.8.0b1 on Intel
jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

t1937r0 wrote: 1. The probability that MTR is responsible is low.
2. The probability that the issue is ffmpeg's MPEG-4 codec on Intel is high.
Just my thoughts...
1. Your test doesn't prove or disprove this either way. It's not that MTR would be responsible...the idea is that something about MTR 3's MFE output and/or badly mastered raw dvds makes the dvd scanner choke, which makes video codecs cranky, which screws up the sync, which makes audio get dropped. Even expensive, good quality DVDs will often be strewn with MPEG errors like audio timecode breaks. Which often happen at chapter marks.

2. Hilarious. Yesterday, loyalty_anchored kept insisting the problem was with the x264 codec and ffmpeg worked fine. I hope you can see why this is a difficult problem to isolate, let alone fix :)

At this point, I'm really starting to think it's the optical drives in these new Intel Macs doing something differently than the old ones, when they hit weird unexpected formatting on media...
dynaflash
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Post by dynaflash »

We have just been talking about this on the irc channel. I am starting to be interested in hearing success rates on ppc vs. intel as well.

It just occurred to me that I have been starting to get audio dropping since upgrading my venerable G4 PB to an intel MBP.
t1937r0
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Post by t1937r0 »

jbrjake wrote:[At this point, I'm really starting to think it's the optical drives in these new Intel Macs doing something differently than the old ones, when they hit weird unexpected formatting on media...
Except this was ripped on a powerpc based powerbook.
Handbrake worked with this rip on the PPC, and failed on the Intel.
loyalty_anchored
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Post by loyalty_anchored »

i must say i also am starting to lean twards hardware issues. although not sure if it would be the opticle drive or the processor.

i may go to best buy and get a nice external opticle drive to try ripping from on my MBP. i can do this after work today.
jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

t1937r0 wrote:Except this was ripped on a powerpc based powerbook.
Sorry, missed that bit.

OK, so not optical drives. At least, not all the time.

<thinking out loud>
So what's left to cause it? Are these really multiple problems? Some fixed by using AnyDVD, some fixed by using full disc extraction with MTR, some fixed by using a different optical drive, some fixed by using a different processor, some fixed by using a different codec, etc etc? That could be really messy. On the other hand, the disc mastering has to be involved in some way--there's a recent report that a disc that had audio drop-out in HB lost audio sync at the same time when encoded with another tool. And if it really is isolated to a CPU-type, that makes it really weird. And some people have had success just fixing timecode breaks in Streamclip, I believe...
incubowski
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Post by incubowski »

Here is what I have to offer and help solve this situation. I am not testing this throughly since I had not experienced dropped audio until last night. So this is just the settings I was using so someone may be able to bring it all together with other peoples findings to help solve this. I am using an iMac G5 (NOT AN INTEL), I set it to h.264 main profile, 192 AAC at 4800 (to DPLI/stereo, not 6 channel aac) audio from the 5.1 AC3 English audio track, 74% quality, chapters enabled, anamorphic selected, auto. cropping, am forcing the .m4v extension, using CRF, no other h.264 options enabled, and I am using SVN build 472. Here are some interesting rips I had with NO DROPPED AUDIO. I ripped stranger than fiction and running with scissors using MTR 3.0 r14, and I did main feature only (PRESCAN was ENABLED, not disabled like some say you should do, these both have the new Sony Protection, and these rips encoded fine, audio throughout. I have also encoded rips from MTR 2.6.6 using full disk and they are fine. Here is where I hit a snag, I ripped Fast Food Nation in MTR 3.0 r14 using main feature only, encoded it and sure enough DROPPED AUDIO after like 1 minute when I watched the complete rip. I havent had a chance to redo it so I am not sure what would work but I think I know. Here are the Steps I would take to ensure no dropped audio, if you follow these I expect you may not have dropped audio but if you do it would be great to know since it would mean I don't have it figured out.

Scenario 1: Open MTR 3.0 r14, insert a DVD (make sure prescan is enabled, and I always do the output to region 1, dunno why, dunno if it makes any difference), if MTR 3.0 r14 reports it is a disc with "generic warning, dont remember what it is, something about arcoss and whatnot, use main feature". Here you should use main feature, I have done this and had no dropped audio.

Scenario 2: Open MTR 3.0 r14, insert a DVD (make sure prescan is enabled, and I always do the output to region 1, dunno why, dunno if it makes any difference), if MTR 3.0 r14 reports no warnings either rip it full disc or switch to MTR 2.6.6 and do full disc, I have had success with both.

I think my dropped audio with Fast Food Nation came because I did main feature only and MTR 3.0 r14 did not have the warning suggestion to use main feature only. I suspect if I had done full disc in either version of MTR it wouldnt have had dropped audio, I have yet to confirm this. Once again I am using an iMac G5, not intel, and I am using the stock DVD drive. Sorry this is so long, hope people try it, by closing following instructions and report when following these ripping instructions you still get dropped audio.
Last edited by incubowski on Thu Apr 05, 2007 2:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
loyalty_anchored
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Post by loyalty_anchored »

jbrjake wrote:Are these really multiple problems?
I do believe so.
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s55
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Post by s55 »

http://handbrake.m0k.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=849

Guys, I'm going to close this thread. Further discussion should be held in the above forum. Its just a bloody pest for us to try and have a converstion over a half dozen different threads.

Feel free to copy/paste posts on any results you may have. Be as detailed as possible

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