I just sent this e-mail to Support, so rather than re-phrase everything here, I'll just copy the e-mail. If anybody has any suggestions or contributions, please feel free:

Hey there. I have tried a trial version of the AVS Video Editor program and was using it to edit a video of a birthday party. My video was recoded with a Kodak Playsport ZX5 and it records video at 29.970 fps. Thing is, when it's time to publish my video and I select 29.97 from the FPS choices (doesn't matter if I'm encoding to an MP4, AVI, or whatever else), this program encodes the video at 29.969 instead of 29.97, which is what I selected.

I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the program only selecting 2 decimal places for the choice (29.97 instead of 29.970), and for some reason resorts to 29.969 instead of 29.970. Perhaps if you guys changed "29.97" to "29.970" in all of the areas that said "29.97" (this includes when creating a DVD in the program), this issue would go away.

There's no good reason that a video recorded at 29.970fps should be encoded at 29.969fps using this program when you select 29.97 as the option. I really like this program and am interested in buying it, but it's useless if I can't encode the right framerate for my videos right off the bat. The way it is now, I have to use an additional program to adjust the framerate afterward.

Also, another minor suggestion... When using the program to encode H264 video, I've noticed that the AVC "Level" is 5.1 (this can be checked and changed with a program like TSMuxer). Since every Blu-ray player and everything else that does hardware encoding maxes out at AVC Advanced Level 4.1, perhaps you guys should tweak the encoder to encode at Advanced Level 4.1 instead of 5.1.

Doing a Google search of "AVC level 5.1" will show you various pages of people wanting to make their videos 4.1 instead, so it might be cool to have this program (and AVS Video Converter) do that right off the bat, that way everyone's videos are compatible with their Blu-ray players, PS3's, and their hardware accelerated graphics chips.

Thanks for listening and I hope you get back to me.

- Mike

Re-reading this, I'm probably off about the need to change it from "29.97" to "29.970" as it is actually the same thing. I guess I just figured that since this program decides that it needs a third decimal place (29.969 instead of 29.97), maybe that has something to do with it. If it's not a stupid bug like that, I'd really like to know what the problem is. I can't think of any good reason why a video recorded at 29.97 and put in at 29.97 in this program ends up outputting a video of 29.969.

To: AVSMike

Hello Mike,

We need some more details:

- do you face this problem only converting Kodak Playsport ZX5 files or files of other formats too?
- what does program show 29.969 frame rate in resulted files?

As for your suggestion about AVC Level 5.1., I will forward it to our developers.

Best regards.

To: Vlad
Hey Vlad. Please make sure to tell them to use AVC Level 4.1, instead of the current 5.1. 4.1 is compatible with Blu-ray players/HDTVs that support DivX HD, the PS3, and WDTV Live products - 5.1 is not. Thanks!

As for the rest, the Kodak Playsport Zx5 is the only device I have that captures video at 29.70fps, so that's the only stuff I need to encode at 29.70. If I put a 29.97fps Playsport file into the AVS Converter, it converts just fine at 29.70 - but if I use the AVS Editor, it comes out at 29.969 - which makes me think the problem is with the Editor and not the file, if the Converter can convert it at the proper frame rate.

The freeware program tsMuxer tells me that the framerate is 29.969 and that the AVC level is 5.1. The freeware program Handbrake tells me that the framerate is 29.70 - so I'm not sure which one to believe. If I re-encode the file using Handbrake, and make Handbrake re-encode it at 29.70 - and then put the file into tsMuxer, tsMuxer will then tell me that the framerate is 29.70 (which in tsMuxer is listed as 30000/1001 - they list 23.976 as 24000/1001 - it has to do with the pulldown process involved in film framerates).

It's possible that tsMuxer is wrong when telling me that the framerate is 29.969, but then I have to wonder why it tells me the proper framerate after re-encoding the file into Handbrake.

If I put my original Zx5 file into tsMuxer, it tells me that the framerate is 29.70 (30000/1001) - so the only time I ever see "29.969" is after using the AVS Video Editor. If I encode a Zx5 file into AVS Video Converter, tsMuxer displays the proper framerate - so the Editor is the only program causing the 29.969 problem.

(Further note, the AVC Level is 1.3 when converting to a high quality h264 MP4/MKV with the AVS Video Converter - while 1.4 is pretty much compatible with everything 4.1 is, I figure it's worth mentioning to the engineers just in case. But, definitely go from 5.1 to 4.1 with the Video Editor as that would give all of your customers greater compatibility with their hardware.)

I have decided to take a small video with my Zx5 and uploaded it here. Perhaps it could help you sort this out and you could tell me if tsMuxer is only wrong when it sees a video used by the Video Editor, or what.

( I generally have other programs to tell me the framerates of files but I recently uninstalled my codec pack. I'll be re-installing it once the bugfix comes out this week.)

So, hopefully with the file I have uploaded, you guys could test it out and tell me what the problem is here. Thanks a bunch.

To: AVSMike

Thanks for all the details.

We will download TsMuxer and test the issue with framerate carefully. I'll get back to you with the results.

Sorry, but the attachment has not gone though. The file should be in zip archive and less than 10 mb.

Regards.

To: AVSMike

I uploaded another video - this time, it's zipped. It's just a 4 second clip of the wall next to me, just so you can work with the file and see where the error is coming in. Thanks!

To: AVSMike

Thanks for the file attached.

We have tested the issue with frame rate and only tsMuxer shows 29.969. Other video players, such as quicktime player, media player classic, VLC player, etc and other programs, for example AVI Demux, show 29.97 fps for files created with our software. Seems that it is the bug in tsMuxer showing wrong frame rate for mp4 files. We have tried saving to mpeg with 29.97 and txmuxer showed proper frame rate. Avi format is not recognized by this program.

Regards

To: Vlad

Thanks for the response. I too, thought it could be a tsMuxer bug, but when I re-encoded the file that the Video Editor created, using Handbrake (I re-encoded it to 29.97fps and AVC Level 4.1), tsMuxer displayed the correct framerate, and not 29.969.

tsMuxer only shows 29.969 when it is a file created using the Editor. If I use AVS Video Converter, txMuxer shows the correct framerate. If I re-encode the MP4 using Handbrake, tsMuxer shows the correct framerate. When I use the Video Converter and Handbrake, I encode to MP4, so it's not strictly an MP4 bug... It's an MP4 bug with AVS Video Editor files. I have absolutely no idea if there are any other factors involved (when using the Video Editor, I do select the option MP4 ISO v.2 - but I'm pretty sure I also use that with the AVS Video Converter, too, so I don't think that's the problem).

Strange...

To: AVSMike

That's very strange that TS Muxer is the only program which shows such bitrate for files from AVS Video Editor, but other programs show 29.97000. We will investigate the issue further.

To: Vlad

Thank you!

To: AVSMike


You are welcome!