Anyone having playback issue on C4 downloads?

[HorseTears]

Okay, so here's the situation:

• I use Replay Media Catcher 4 (latest version available) to download streams from Cam4.
  
• I used to use VLC Media Player to watch the downloads (automatically saved as FLV files by Replay Media Catcher 4).
  
• A couple of mos ago, VLC Media Player stopped being able to play the audio on any of the downloads - just the video. No problem there. I just switched to viewing the videos downloads on RealPlayer or Media Player Classic, both of which could play the files with both the video and the audio.
  
• Then, 2-3 weeks ago, something weird started happening. Whenever I would open a newly downloaded FLV capture from C4, within 20-30 seconds of starting, the video would suddenly start "fast-forwarding" and then slowing down to regular speed and "fast forwarding" several times until the audio was completely out of sync with the video and the video rarely played at normal speed. This happened on both RealPlayer and Media Player Classic and Windows Media Player. This weird stop-and-start speeding up was NOT happening on VLC Media Player, but the sound was still not playing on that one.

So:

1. Any idea what's causing this weird start/stop fast-forwarding thing when playing back the downloads?
2. Anything I can do to fix it via Replay Media Catcher 4 settings and/or the settings of RealPlayer or Media Player Classic?
3. If not, any alternatives you'd recommend?

Should note: when downloading C'bate vids using TubeDigger (which does not work for C4) this issue is not present. It only happens when downloading C4 streams w/ Replay Media Catcher.

[itsme]

fast forwarding = video player is skipping parts without audio

[HorseTears]

Don't think that's the case. You can hear the audio while the vid's fast forwarding as well. And sometimes when the vid's at regular speed there's no audio at that point. Also, why would this randomly start happening a couple of weeks ago and only on C4, but not on any other stream downloads?

[slim10]

Originally Posted by HorseTears

Okay, so here's the situation:

• I use Replay Media Catcher 4 (latest version available) to download streams from Cam4.
  
• I used to use VLC Media Player to watch the downloads (automatically saved as FLV files by Replay Media Catcher 4).
  
• A couple of mos ago, VLC Media Player stopped being able to play the audio on any of the downloads - just the video. No problem there. I just switched to viewing the videos downloads on RealPlayer or Media Player Classic, both of which could play the files with both the video and the audio.
  
• Then, 2-3 weeks ago, something weird started happening. Whenever I would open a newly downloaded FLV capture from C4, within 20-30 seconds of starting, the video would suddenly start "fast-forwarding" and then slowing down to regular speed and "fast forwarding" several times until the audio was completely out of sync with the video and the video rarely played at normal speed. This happened on both RealPlayer and Media Player Classic and Windows Media Player. This weird stop-and-start speeding up was NOT happening on VLC Media Player, but the sound was still not playing on that one.

So:

1. Any idea what's causing this weird start/stop fast-forwarding thing when playing back the downloads?
2. Anything I can do to fix it via Replay Media Catcher 4 settings and/or the settings of RealPlayer or Media Player Classic?
3. If not, any alternatives you'd recommend?

Should note: when downloading C'bate vids using TubeDigger (which does not work for C4) this issue is not present. It only happens when downloading C4 streams w/ Replay Media Catcher.

I don't know why you are having those problems with other players.

The no audio problem in VLC is because C4 is now using the Speex audio codec. VLC will play standalone Speex audio files (*.spx), but it doesn't like Speex audio when it's packaged with a video.

I would use FFmpeg to convert the Speex audio to MP3 or AAC. Use the "-vcodec copy" option with FFmpeg so that the video will not be re-encoded when you convert the audio in your C4 recordings.

[HorseTears]

Slim - thanks for the recommendation. I'm sorry to be a giant pain in the you-know-what, but any chance you could provide some more detailed instructions? I'm not a developer/coder/engineer and I feel a bit lost. I downloaded FFMPEG and after an hour reading through dozens of articles I'm having trouble even verifying if it's actually installed let alone learning how to use the program. The FAQ pages on FFMPEG's site are clearly written for people with at least some coding/developing experience. I'm lost.

[slim10]

Originally Posted by HorseTears

Slim - thanks for the recommendation. I'm sorry to be a giant pain in the you-know-what, but any chance you could provide some more detailed instructions? I'm not a developer/coder/engineer and I feel a bit lost. I downloaded FFMPEG and after an hour reading through dozens of articles I'm having trouble even verifying if it's actually installed let alone learning how to use the program. The FAQ pages on FFMPEG's site are clearly written for people with at least some coding/developing experience. I'm lost.

Download the latest static build from: http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

Extract the contents to a folder on your drive.

Add the folder containing ffmpeg.exe, e.g "C:\ffmpeg\bin" to your Windows environment path.

Open the folder containing your video files in a command prompt.

Here's an example of a command line that would convert the audio to AAC, and copy without re-encoding the video, from a file named inputfile.flv to a file named outputfile.flv:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.flv -vcodec copy -acodec libvo_aacenc outputfile.flv

[Leifman]

Originally Posted by slim10

Download the latest static build from: http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

Extract the contents to a folder on your drive.

Add the folder containing ffmpeg.exe, e.g "C:\ffmpeg\bin" to your Windows environment path.

Open the folder containing your video files in a command prompt.

Here's an example of a command line that would convert the audio to AAC, and copy without re-encoding the video, from a file named inputfile.flv to a file named outputfile.flv:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.flv -vcodec copy -acodec libvo_aacenc outputfile.flv

actually remuxing it to flv with aac or even to mkv with vorbis changes nothing..
cam4 fuckedup something on their part so that capturing the stream (no matter how u do it... rtdump or rmc) is impossible without that stupid "speedup" if u play it in a player that can decode speex.. if u play it with one that can't then the video will be fine but audioless but with audio it will be jumpy and ff'ing randomly and often.
it all started when they implemented their "HD" option and changed/fucked something with their video encoding (the speex/audio was there before and worked fine and in sync + speedup free)

[itsme]

as I said , it's the missing audio tags, along with the first tag being an audio tag. The player trying to maintain this track, go ahead dump the flv tags and you'll see all timestamps fitting the "jumps".

encode them with -async 1, the command is deprecated by now, but that always worked when I still cared about converting

[Leifman]

Originally Posted by itsme

as I said , it's the missing audio tags, along with the first tag being an audio tag. The player trying to maintain this track, go ahead dump the flv tags and you'll see all timestamps fitting the "jumps".

encode them with -async 1, the command is deprecated by now, but that always worked when I still cared about converting

oh wow, thanks bro! i had no clue about the "-async 1" and it totally fixes the issue for me (still requires re-encode which isnt too long anyways) but totally fixes it for me

[HorseTears]

Hey, guys, could someone provide the step-by-step instructions to fix this audio/video sync issue with the "-async 1" command? Not quite sure where that fits in in the process. Thanks!