So the title is a bit vague but there is a lot going on so I have no better way to put. Let's start at the beginning.
I have a video that I downloaded that I want to put on a Video DVD. The video is called the Animix Project and if you want a copy to play with it can be found at animemusicvideos.org. It is in an avi container, about an hour long, with the following streams: video - MPEG4, 1.4Mb/s, 512x384(4:3), 23.976fps; audio - MP3, 128 kb/s, 44.1 kHz, stereo
The reason I want a DVD of it is to be able to play it on a CRT TV with a proper sound system. Sounds like a lot of work just to enjoy an old video but most of it is already done, I just need the video encoded on a DVD. I have CS5.5 Master Edition so all tools are available. Here is what I have tried and how it has gone wrong.
First I simply added the video to Encore as an asset, dropped it into a timeline, set the most basic of options so it would build, and let all the rest figure itself out. I ended up with black boxes around the video, no surprise there, and audio that both sounded worse than the original and that was out of sync by the middle of the entire movie.
Second attempt, add in Premier Pro. I imported the file into Premier and used the crop effect's zoom feature to upscale the video to 480. I exported the sequence with the Format set to MPEG2-DVD and the Preset set to Match Source Attributes Highest Quality. A quick preview showed a good looking upscaled video but the audio was again sounding worse than the original, it was set to PCM and 48khz. Still I imported it into Encore and ran a quick build, although I did tell Encore not to transcode the audio this time. It came out looking good, sounding OK, but still had the out of sync audio from the middle on.
Third attempt, mix in Audition. This time I tried to add Audition into the mix to possibly fix the audio sounding so bad. This failed immediately as Audition cannot open an avi file. So onto the next attempt.
Fourth attempt, third party audio software, Audacity. Unlike Audition Audacity will open the audio from an avi file. So I did just that and once opened exported the file as a "WAV (Microsoft) signed 16-bit PCM" file with the Project Rate set at 48 kHz. This audio file sounded just like the original, being a PCM of the original MP3 I would hope it did. I than took the m2v from the second attempt and the wav from Audacity and imported them into Encore. A new timeline and a quick check of the settings, especially telling Encore not to transcode the audio, and another build was complete. And the audio was still out of sync halfway through.
A quick fifth attempt similar to the second was made with the difference being that I used the Adobe Dynamic Link feature to send the sequence directly from Premier to Encore after adding the crop effect for the zoom. Unfortunately I got the same issues as in the 2nd attempt, poor quality audio and out of sync audio.
Other attempts were made while changing the export settings in Premier. These were mostly to get the top quality out of the video and involved topping out the bitrate settings and setting all the high end, and slow, settings to be used. This changed nothing during the Encore build. Another attempt tried using Dolby Digital instead of PCM when exporting the audio in Premier. The same quality drop was noted as before.
One quick addition to all this was that any attempt to use a Premier video in Encore failed during the build. I found another post that had that particular problem so I tried all this after adding the video 1 frame from the beginning of the sequence. I compensated when adding the separate audio in Encore by doing the same to the audio file in the timeline. Please note that this only occurred when exporting from Premier was involved and not in the fifth attempt when using Adobe Dynamic Link.
So this is where I am at currently. The two major problems to solve are as follows. First and foremost is to fix the audio sync error in Encore. Second is, if necessary to use the Adobe transcribed audio, is to fix the audio quality.
I can easily provide any more information if needed.