PD7 - no audio on rendered mpg (HELP)

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Newbie Joined: Nov 24, 2008 09:39 Messages: 5 Offline

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Nov 29, 2008 14:05

I've been playing with the trial version of Power Director 7 and generally like it except for an audi issue I have.

When I render to mpg using any setting OTHER THAN an HDV option, the resulting mpg is except it has NO AUDIO (played on Windows Media Player); audio can be heard if I play it on the VLC player. If I render using the HDV (720 or 1080) then the audio plays in the mpg just fine. If I choose a basic DVD setting, for example, the audio will not play on the resulting rendered mpg.

Thinking this was an issue with PD7, I then tried Sony Vegas 9 Platinum and had the same dropped audio on rendered mpg files. In Sony Vegas, only when I output to a WMV will the rendered file's audio play.

I have made doubly sure that audio in PD7 is not muted prior to any rendering so it's not a user error. SInce I don't have a BluRay burner yet I can't test the BD output. For now, I just want to output some edited MPGs for creating DVDs that the family can play.

EQUIPMENT:
Canon HF100 (great performer)
Custom-built Intel DualCore PC, XP, 4gb RAM, Nvidia 7600 GT.
I've rendered miniDV tape to mpg for the past year with this rig before adding the HF100.

pjc

Senior Member Location: Aus Joined: Sep 12, 2008 03:48 Messages: 262 Offline

Nov 29, 2008 14:49

Hi BW,
Some comments.

I am not sure why there is no audio. But as you say it seems to be a WMP problem (audio codec incompatibility?) not a PD problem. My HF100 footage converted to DVD HQ plays fine on WMP. You might want to download ffdshow codec pack which might help.

When creating SD Mpeg format from AVCHD, lots of compression artifacts are introduced with PD. My advice is after you are happy with the project and have test rendered to a file on the PC, do not use this file for the DVD authoring but skip to Create Disc. I have found that the resulting file has fewer artifacts if you use the disc burning module compared with the Produce module (it doesn't make sense but it is so).

Another suggestion (which I am sure you are doing), is to make sure you are making HD files of all your projects now so when you have a Blu-ray playback ability you haven't wasted all that nice HD content.
PD again is not very good at rendering AVCHD and introduces artifacts and I have found converting to Blu-ray format (HD mpeg2) gives a better result.