Frame Rate Issues

[thelibraniniquity]

Yes, it's that old chestnut again. I'm currently trying to cut that House/Wilson vid in my shiny new Pinnacle with my shiny new RAM, and although Pinnacle vs11 is way better than vs9.3 in that it will import avi files with 23 frames per second (fps), it does however display those clips out of sync in the preview box. Basically meaning that if I drag a clip to the timeline that looks like Wilson's standing with his hands on his hips, when I play it in the timeline it will actually be House pouting.

Gets annoying very quickly ;)

All of this of course comes back to the fact that whatever idiots in charge decided to release the region 2 House DVDs in two different aspect ratios; my season 1 DVDs are fullscreen, while my season 2 and 3 DVDs are widescreen. Which is a pain. Last year though I downloaded a set of widescreen season 1 DVD rips, so I could make widescreen House vids without having to go through the rigamarole of figuring out how to rip seasons 2 and 3 to a non-distorted fullscreen aspect ratio.

Then I learned the hard way that Pinnacle vs9.3 did not like avi files with 23fps (ie ripped from American TVs or DVDs). It did not like them At All.

Started making the House video in Windows Movie Maker, started becoming murderous with frustrated rage because WMM is shit. And then I also learned the hard way that Windows Vista is stupid and not compatible with anything, including Pinnacle vs9.3.

Then along comes drakcir who bought me Pinnacle vs11 for my birthday, which is both Vista-compatible and 23fps-friendly. Except for the synchronisation issue, which is now really, really bugging me.

So I googled possible solutions for altering the frame rate of avi files. And I found this nifty looking program that does just that - changes the given frame rate of an avi file to one of your choice. What it doesn't do, however, is alter the audio, so the file itself now plays out of sync. The theory is, however, that the video will now be represented as it should be in Pinnacle, and since I only rarely use episode dialogue in vids, the sync issue will be negated by me clicking mute and just listening to the music I'm using.

I think it's supposed to annoy me that once I finish converting all the avi files (which by the way takes less than a second, which is actually pretty awesome) I'll essentially have an unwatchable first season of House on my external HD, but if it means I can make House vids now, and in widescreen, without having to go home and spend a week or so re-ripping seasons 2 and 3 and figuring out how to cut them down to fullscreen, then an out of sync season 1 isn't so much of a problem after all.

Now to see if the theory works :)

ETA: IT WORKED. OMFG IT WORKED!! :D