Please note that this page assumes you did everything in the ‘readme’ files accompanying the setup programs.

This will cover the usual video glitches.  For weirder stuff, you’ll have to hit the search engines or try one of the sites in the ‘Links’ area.  Video provides endless pleasures, but it also provides endless heartache.

Sorry.  Meant to mention it sooner.
 

Aspect Ratio

As noted earlier, what you’ll do is compare the height of the top border against a known good type.  Leaving the ‘Width’ alone, just keep jacking the ‘Height’ number in VirtualDub up or down and you’ll hit it.  You only need a few seconds of test clip, remember.
 

Audio/Video Sync

First off, if the source file spit out an error message regarding the audio track when loaded into VDub, go to File Menu, ‘Save as WAV’, save the WAV audio track.  Then Audio Menu, ‘Audio from other file’, load the saved track.  That might fix it.

The bad news is, doing this manually is never pleasant.  The good news is, adjusting the delay works right away, so as soon as you make an adjustment, you can play it in VDub and check it out.

Set the Audio Menu to ‘Full processing mode’.  Open ‘Interleaving’.  You’ll be playing with the ‘Delay’ box.  It measures in milliseconds, so 1,000 = 1 second.  Plus numbers delay it more, minus numbers speed it up.

If it’s just a tad off, then you’d start with a few hundred ms, one direction or the other.  When you get in the ball park, reduce it to 50, then 25.

When it’s looking good in VirtualDub’s window, render a test and see how it looks full-screen.  While things like balls bouncing off of walls are a good test, nothing beats a close-up of fast-talking lips.  It’s almost eerie how quick our eyes are.  Being off by just 10 ms might be enough to look unnatural and catch our eye.

The above is what’s called a linear A/V sync problem; being off the same amount throughout the clip.  A ‘progressive’ problem, however, gets more and more off as plays, so if you run into one of those bad boys, you’ll have to try another method of demuxing the original file and hope for the best.
 

Won’t Load, Render or Save

As noted, some of these formats are kinda flaky (FLV, MKV, WMV), and some of them (VOB, TS) were never designed to be played or edited in the first place, so it’s understandable if some of the more polished programs occasionally reject one that doesn’t meet the basic standards of video.

And it’s not uncommon for a program to load a file but quit partway through when it hits a corrupt spot.  Unfortunately, there’s never been a good "video fixer" program for any format.  About the only ‘fix’ is to try loading it into different programs that have a ‘Save’ feature, even if it only saves in a format you don’t want.  You might get lucky and that particular algorithm overlooks the error.  You can always convert it back later.

Stopping during a render could also be lack of drive space and the program’s too lame to let you know the drive’s full.  Video burns up gigs pretty fast when saving in a ‘lossless’ format like Huffyuv.

On the subject, if your storage drive has a FAT32 file structure, it also has a 4-gig limit, and you’ll go over that in a heartbeat using Huffyuv.  To accept huge files, it needs to have a NTFS file structure.  The tip-off is the size of the file when things stop.  If it’s right at 4 gigs, that’s the problem.  Click here for how to fix it.
 

A/R Okay as Computer File, not DVD

DVD is kind of an odd duck, video-wise, and a vid can look terrific on the computer, but the aspect ratio can be off slightly when it comes out as a DVD.  This is because normal videos only have one dimension, the exterior resolution, whereas DVDs also have an ‘interior’ resolution, and sometimes things get a little confused during the conversion process.

This will primarily depend upon the source file, both format and how it was encoded.  You might find that the first three WMV or MKV downloads from some site look perfect as DVDs, but the fourth one doesn’t, simply because a different person created it and either used a different program, or the first program with different parameters.  The first person might have figured you’d eventually put it on DVD and designed it for such, whereas the second person figured you’d run it as a computer file.  Or maybe somebody just screwed up.

The fix is to load the original back into VirtualDub, use Video Menu, ‘Filters’, ‘Add’, ‘resize’, and try out some different heights.  Just make 10-second test clips of a few different heights, dump them into VS and make a quick test.  You’ll nail it in a try or two.