Following on from several posts in this forum on audio sync problems with the WD TV I will share my findings that may possibly help others. Firstly I am no expert or even well versed in DVD authoring, file structures, formats etc. For me It’s pure trial and error and trying to identify common factors.
I had the same problem as others with files that seemed to play ok with software video players but on the WD TV after a while lost audio video sync to some degree. Using FF then Play would restore the sync for a few minutes then it would drift out again.
Those files giving me trouble were all recorded onto DVD-R disks (finalised) using a Panasonic DVD recorder and were a mixture of recorded TV and commercial DVD media. I had used VOB2MPG PRO to make the .mpg files to play on the WDTV (Gen 1 running ver 1.03.01 flashed firmware).
I had other files from other sources transcribed using other software (MPEG Streamclip, AVI Demux, DVD Shrink, Handbrake etc) that seemed to play ok without the audio sync problem. I firstly tried reverting to 1.02.07 firmware but that made no difference.
Using MediaInfo I then checked a selection of good and problem files to try to find what they had in common or what was different. The common factor with the problem files appeared to be that they all had in the Audio section of the MediaInfo text listing a Video delay of -80ms. Other .mpg files had a range of values both positive and negative but not -80ms. I have no idea what this means and what the relevance is but it was the only common factor I could find with my very limited knowledge of the subject.
I solved the problem (at least my problem) by recoding the files using MPEG StreamClip 1.2, checking the ‘Fix Streams with Data Breaks’, ‘Do Not Skip any Frames’ and the ‘VBR (Variable Bit Rate)’ in the AVI Settings options then creating an MPG file with ‘Save as …’. With these settings the Video delay came out at -16ms.
No doubt those better versed in the subject could make sense of this or show that the Video delay is nothing to do with the problem but what the hell … it works for me.
