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DVR recording and Vegas, AAC audio problems
Does anyone know why Vegas Pro 11 cannot read the AAC audio part of a H.264 (AVCHD) file recoreded from the Hauppauge DVR?
I have several captures using this device, all of them play in every player I have with AAC and those files will load in other editors also.
Captured using AC3 loads fine in Vegas, but anything with ACC – only the video will import???
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5 Replies
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I don’t know, but Vegas uses Dolby to generate AC3 files and I know that Vegas does not edit them. My guess is that it is a licensing issue with Dolby labs. Perhaps someone else has all the details.
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PC DVRs often produce slightly weird files.
It could the combination of media type and file wrapper. For example, Vegas would expect AVC and AAC in an MPEG-4 file, but it would expect AC-3 or MPEG Layer 2 audio in an MPEG-2 Transport Stream or Program file.
Certainly some of this is due to Sony’s using their own built-in decoder/splitter for MPEG and MPEG-4 files, rather than Microsoft’s DirectShow system… at least last I checked. While you can technically put any audio or video type in any given file wrapper, there aren’t always respected standard for things like, say, AAC in an MPEG-2 TS file.
I’ve also noticed that some DVRs use just plain weird video formats; maybe intentionally so. For example, Microsoft’s recording uses a format called DVR-MS, which isn’t generally understood by video editors. A few others do weird modifications to .MP4 or .TS files… not sure why, but it happens.
-Dave
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Here is the file info…
General
ID : 0 (0x0)
Complete name : E:TS Video Filesmovie1.TS
Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 8.22 GiB
Duration : 2h 1mn
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 9 644 Kbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 18.0 MbpsVideo
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 2h 2mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 9 038 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 20.0 Mbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 59.940 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.164
Stream size : 7.70 GiB (94%)
Color primaries : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
Transfer characteristics : BT.709-5, BT.1361
Matrix coefficients : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : LC
Muxing mode : ADTS
Codec ID : 15
Duration : 2h 2mn
Bit rate mode : Constant / Variable / Variable
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Minimum bit rate : 111 Kbps / 111 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 185 Kbps / 185 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -50ms
Stream size : 112 MiB (1%) -
Yeah, that’s what I guessed.. you have an MPEG-2 TS file, which includes streams for AVC and for AAC. The importer for this kind of file in Vegas seems to be a built-in, it’s not being run via Microsoft’s DirectShow, which is what most players will use.
That might be a good decision, technologically, I don’t know. Vegas has this weird mix of doing file import via Video for Windows, but using DirectShow (until recently) as the only plug-in architecture… a Windows standard, but not an industry standard for video plug-ins. But the needs of an editor aren’t necessarily aligned with the needs of the player, so maybe they have a good reason for this.
Anyway, in the TS stream, each stream is identified by a pre-defined code… you see that as “ID” in your dump. For any reader, it either knows that that means, or it doesn’t. The MPEG-2 Transport Stream is used largely because it solves the problem of digital video transmission well, no need to change it. But new media types need their IDs… and the ID for AVC in an TS file was established by AVCHD, if not before. But AVCHD uses AC3 as its audio CODEC, not AAC.
There are camcorders that leave behind the AVCHD spec for maybe a more generic MP4 file wrapper. AAC is basically the standard audio format for MP4, though I’m sure others are supported.. at least in some readers.
Ok, enough with the story… here’s a real life thing to actually try. Go find “YAMB”, download it, run it. See if it can figure out your .TS format, export to .MP4. If it understands the AC3, it may be able to create a legal .MP4 file that Vegas understands.
Another alternative… Go find “VLC”, load up your file. It almost certainly plays, with audio.. VLC is like that. If it does, find the conversion tab, and just write out an audio file, convert to WAV or whatever. Then load that in Vegas aside your already imported AVC, check that there’s no audio sync loss, and you should be good to go.
-Dave
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Thanks for all the info! I was able to get a WAV file out then reloaded everything back in Vegas, all is good now.
Since the DVR has the AC3 option that works creating a file that Vegas will load, I am going to keep it on that setting.
When I first started to use the DVR I had on AAC audio, at least now I can fix those earlier vids.
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