Video Conversion Messes Up Audio

[EdwardATeller]

Summary: Video conversion of HD material to DVD material (DVD Long Play format) causes system-wide audio problem. System Restore fixed the problem.

Detail: My system was working fine last night. Before going to sleep, I set STV to convert two movies to DVD Long Play format. Note, I did not choose the AC3 audio option. Waking up this morning, one conversion had finished and the other conversion was 12% complete. I canceled the incomplete conversion and played the other converted file. The audio stuttered, sounding sort of like it was playing through a fan. The whole interface was sluggish. I rebooted, and for some reason the canceled video conversion started up again. I canceled it again and played the other converted file. Same problem. I deleted the converted file, thinking it was corrupt and played another file. Same problem. Oops! Then I play Winamp and had a similar problem. Checked all the connections, and they were fine. Now I suspected the audio conversion messed up my audio codecs. After trying a few ineffectual things, I rolled the system back to the last System Check Point. Now it works fine again. Posting for the record.

Trying another conversion right now, but I chose the AC3 audio format this time, and I'll see if that recreates the issue. I also suspect that the second movie might have been an issue since it really should have finished encoding overnight, and the restart was odd.

If I get any more useful info, I'll post it here.

UPDATE 1: First re-conversion using AC3 audio worked fine. Redoing the 2nd conversion now.

UPDATE 2: Second conversion doesn't work. Seems to create a memory leak in the Sage Transcoder. I suspect it's the audio portion that causing the trouble. This particular file has Dolby 5.1 AC3 audio. Putting it into a GraphEdit graph shows the audio is not handled correctly vs. the file that converted fine. Somehow STV and Media Player Classic play the file with audio, but NeroVision 4 and GraphEdit don't. From the STV recording detail:

Format: MPEG2-PS[MPEG2-Video 16:9 1080i@29.97fps, AC3@44.1kHz 5.1]

I've attached screenshots of the two graphs.