[MPlayer-users] AC3 trouble with mencoder's avi and DVP 642

[Giacomo Comes]

I have found what seems to me a problem with avi created by mencoder containing ac3
audio and the Philips DVP 642 dvd player.

Consider the file "http://n.ethz.ch/student/fhoesli/video/Feature-Test-DivX.Certified-Only.('20th').avi"

It has mpeg-4 video and ac3 audio. The file plays fine on the Philips DVP 642.
(using ac3 spdif)
Now I just make a new avi using mencoder with:

mencoder -ovc copy -o test.avi "Feature-Test-DivX.Certified-Only.('20th').avi" -oac copy

The file test.avi plays on the DVP642, but if I use ac3 spdif the audio and video 
are out of sync of 1-2 seconds.
It doesn't matter if I encode or simply copy the video. I tryed also -noodml, 
rebuild the index but I always had the sync problem with the DVP 642.
At the beginning I was thinking that the cause was the DVP 642 itself, until I
have seen that it is possible to have avi with ac3 that the DVP642 plays fine.
(the Feature-Test-DivX file).

Is there anybody with good knowledge of the avi format that can analize the 
differences between Feature-Test-DivX.avi and test.avi and come out with a solution?



As side remark, I tryed to make the avi using -of lavf, but I had the following 
problem:

normally mencoder does the following if making an avi:
1) with -ovc copy copy the fourcc of the source video
2) with -ovc lavc set FMP4 as fourcc
in both cases the option -ffourcc overrides the default.

In case of -of lavf the fourcc is always set to FMP4 completly ignoring the option
-ffourcc.
So I could not test with the DVP 642 the avi made with -of lavf because the DVP 642
does not understand the fourcc FMP4 and the option -ffourcc does not work.


Giacomo