Problem with movies encoded in mp3 with Sony Vegas

[Elzar]

Hey all, just wanted to say I've pretty much exhausted my options so I decided to ask someone for help.

Vegas does not detect any sound when I try adding movies that are encoded in MP3 to my project. If I try opening the clip in the trimmer, I get an empty sound track, and Vegas crashes if I try right clicking on it.

The sound is there though, as I can play it on my media player.

I read somewhere that Vegas does not like movies encoded in MP3 or something like that, but that can't be the case here - I'm trying to open an old project. Vegas did read the sound of these files before, and I've already rendered that project (with sound and without any problems), and when I wanted to change something I ran into this...

Also, Vegas can add mp3 sound files without any problems, and it can also encode movies using mp3. As a test I tried rendering a quick movie with an avi file I had and an mp3 file, and it all worked (except the avi's sound, the media player could play it with sound). I then tried adding it to Vegas, and Vegas did not detect the sound.

To cut a long story short - It seems Sony Vegas can encode movies in MP3, but can't decode them.

The only thing that could be different from the last time I worked on this project is that I may not have had the K-lite codec pack then, and have it now. But I say may not, as I'm not sure of that.

[Steve Grisetti]

I don't know about Sony Vegas specifically, but as a general rule, it's easier to turn another video into an MP3 video than it is to turn an MP3 video into an editable video format. If you do a Google search, for instance, on MP3 video converters, you'll find lots of free converters for turning videos into MP3s, but few if any that do the converse.

It's best then to consider MP3 videos a delivery format. In particular, it's a delivery format for Zune, iPods and similar MP3 players that can play video. You definitely don't want to store your video as MP3s if you plan to edit it later, in other words.

That's a long way of saying that I would not expect any video editing software to be able to edit MP3 video from its native format.

I couldn't find a converter for turnin MP3 video back into an editable format -- at least there's not an obvious converter out there. But I think that's what you're going to need to find and use before you'll be able to edit this video clip.

[Chuck Engels]

You might want to install Audacity (free) and convert one of the MP3s to WAV and see if that makes a difference.
There are a few Vegas users here also, they may be able to give you a hand with a solution.

[RJ Johnston]

Somewhere I read on Sony's web site that MP3 audio with MPEG video isn't editable. However Nero doesn't seem to have any problems with it. I created a video with uncompressed video with MP3 audio using Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. Now that did work on the timeline in Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum.

[Elzar]

Thanks for your answers, for starters

None of them explain why it worked before and doesn't work now though. Sound Forge also seems to be having problems with those files - it manages to open them, play them and save them, but when opening the files when it tries to preview the file I get an error message.

Generaly, codec problem seems to be the surest bet on why this is happening. Any suggestions on that?

[Elzar]

Windows Movie Maker manages to read the sound from the avi's, Vegas doesn't.

Could the Vegas MP3 plugin be the cause of this? If so, how can I fix it?

[RJ Johnston]

I don't have an MP3 plug-in with Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8d -- that is, I didn't have to purchase a separate plug-in. I can import video with MP3 as long as it isn't MPEG video. Someone with whatever version of Vegas Pro you have might know why it worked before but now it doesn't. Possibly you are missing an MPEG splitter. Did you try reinstalling Vegas and the plug-in?

[Elzar]

I don't have a separate MP3 plug in, and I don't recall installing one back then. Yeah, I did try reinstalling vegas, reinstalling K-lite, comletely removing K-lite and just installing DivX (the movies i'm trying to work with are DivX). Nothing still...

[Elzar]

Anyone got any ideas? This is pretty annoying...

In a nushell - Vegas 8 can't read the sound from avi files encoded in mp3, files which it managed to read sound from in the past (old projects).

[Andy_E]

Can you run GSpot on one of the files and check to see if it reports any problems?

I know that Vegas can have problems with VBR MP3 audio streams (although I believe that's more about A/V sync than anything else) but as you say the fact that it was working and now isn't points to codec installation/configuration problems.

[Andy_E]

This morning I created a DivX file with MP3 audio and imported it into Vegas. Played back with fine with video and audio.

[Elzar]

Its all there and working according to GSpot, although its possible I had a different codec configuration when it did work. I can play the files in my media player without problems anyway.

Any idea how I can clean up my codecs? A "codec cleaner" of sorts perhaps?

[Andy_E]

I can play the files in my media player without problems anyway.

Your media player may be using DirectShow (like WMP) to playback which doesn't point to a working setup for VfW apps like Vegas.

Any idea how I can clean up my codecs? A "codec cleaner" of sorts perhaps?

Wel, the problem will be knowing which codecs need cleaning. GSpot can report problems. If you go to the system menu and choose "List codecs and Other Filters" (this is on v2.70a) any problematic filters will be highlighted in red.

Did you play around with the "Proposed Code Solutions and Tests" section or simply open the file in GSpot?

EDIT: Another good program for checking out codec problems is Filmerit from Paul Glagla here:

http://paul.glagla.free.fr/filmerit_en.htm

You actually delete problematic filters with this program. Useful is you've got problems where an uninstall hasn't cleaned up properly. GSpot will let you unregister filters or downgrade filter merits but not actually remove the registry entries.