Audio Issues

[Thinus Britz]

Good day,

I'm having audio issues of my downloaded videos I'm doing lately. Never had this issues before.

The video starts playing with audio no problem (besides some scratching noises which is also new), at some point the audio just disappears. When I then exit out and start the video again it will do the same thing, but the sound disappears at a different time interval every time I restart. It is never at the exact same spot.

I have a Mac and are using Firefox both with the latest version/software and my downloads are MP4's.

Here's a video I downloaded today with this problem https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cFjTcFFlXet5wDUfrBJAS85_VEHSBnR0/view?usp=share_link

Can you please help me fix this issue?

Thank you.

[mjs]

What is the original source of the video where it was downloaded. Can you post a link for others to test.

--

A vdh user

[mjs]

I got your private message. I'm asking where did you download the video that was saved to Google drive.

Is it a public video or something behind a login & password.

[Wild Willy]

Right. That may seem helpful but it's actually not. You're just showing us your faulty
results. But we need to look at the original to see what might be tripping up VDH to
lead to the faulty results. I do hope this is not something behind a user ID & password.
In that case, we wouldn't be able to do any more than offer you tips to try to figure it
out yourself.

[Wild Willy]

Yes. Please don't use Reply to author. Always use Reply all. Let everybody see your
comments. Post them here. Don't send private E-mails.

[Thinus Britz]

Okay got it. Reply to all.

Yes this is something behind a user Id & password unfortunately. It is from a learning platform. But it is not just from this learning platform. I download videos from various different platforms, all with user id's and passwords and they all have the same fault.

[Wild Willy]

I decided to download your item from Google Drive. I used VDH as my download tool, not
the download button provided by Google Drive. I thought I would put it through ffprobe &
it would tell me something. But it told me nothing. According to ffprobe, this is an
ordinary video with a video track & an audio track. So I played it back. I did not sit
& watch the whole thing. It didn't look interesting to me, plus it's nearly an hour
long. So I sampled it at intervals. It seemed to have decent audio all the way to the
end. The video resolution claimed to be 1280x720 but to my eye, it looked considerably
worse than that. But it played fine, no audio problems of any kind.

But my playback tool is VLC. If that's not what you're using, switch to VLC. This video
seems to prove to me that if you are having trouble playing it, you are using a bad
playback tool. Switch to VLC.

[Thinus Britz]

Thank you for the feedback Wild Willy. Yes, I'm using VLC as my playback tool. The sound usually disappear after about 2 to 3 minutes of continuous play. If you just jump around the video you'll hear sound where ever you land no problem because I did that as well.

But if you start the video and let it run continuously for about 2 to 3 minutes you'll hear the sound disappears. And then no matter to where you skip it stays gone.

[Thinus Britz]

Also forgot to mention this issue also happens randomly. Sometimes the downloads from the same platform is 100%. It's only every now and again that this issue happens with a video.

I also just click the download button on VDH. Not sure if I should rather select download and convert or what the best download option are?

[Wild Willy]

Interesting. I have deleted the file I downloaded & I'm not wasting another half hour of
my bandwidth to download it again & see if it happens for me the same as for you. I'll
trust you on that. I think, on balance, since this is intermittent, that it would be
hard to pinpoint VDH as the culprit. It could be a problem with VLC, with the audio
support in your system, or with several other things.

Yes, half an hour. That's how long it took to download the file. But that's no
surprise. It's Google. Downloads from YouTube, which is also Google, usually take about
half the duration of the video. If it's a 5-minute video, the download will take 2 1/2
minutes. If it's a 10-minute video, the download will take 5 minutes. If it's a 2-hour
video, the download will take 1 hour. That's what Google does. My bandwidth would
support a much higher download speed. I download multi-gig files in just a couple of
minutes from other sites. Google throttles their downloads mercilessly. They think
everybody should just play their content on their site & they don't think you should do
that any faster than twice normal speed. They adjust the service they give to fit that.
I have seen everything from 20,000 bytes per second to 6 million bytes per second on
YouTube. The constant is that the download time will be half the duration of the item.
They don't acknowledge downloading as something people might want to do.

[Wild Willy]

Forgot to mention. There is no recommended function. Quick Download, Download, Download
& Convert, whatever you want to do is fine. I will say that I stay away from Download &
Convert. If the download succeeds but the conversion fails, you're left with nothing &
you have to start over again. If you Download, you have a result on your system. Do the
Convert separately. That way, if the Convert fails, you can just try it again with
different settings. You won't have to do the Download again.

[Thinus Britz]

Thank you so much Wild Willy. I appreciate all the feedback.

[Thinus Britz]

Hey all,

So I figured out that this is not a VDH issue. It looks like it is more of a VLC issue that the sound just intermittently disappears and reappear.

I did a Google search to see how to fix this and implemented all the suggestions but it still happens on my Mac. I also uninstalled and installed VLC again. When I do one of the suggestions which is go to the audio setting in VLC choose audio track and click disable. Then click enable again the sound comes back immediately but then disappears again shortly after.

I know this is not a VDH issue but maybe there's someone here that can help me fix this issue.

Thank you so much. 

[mjs]

Your not tied to using VLC so perhaps you need to experiment and try other media players on the Mac and see if there is any difference.

You can even play mp4 files in Firefox.

[Thinus Britz]

Thank you for the feedback. I did try to play it with QuickTime player and the interesting thing is the audio is perfect in QuickTime player but the visual keeps on stuttering.

I tried to see how to play MP4's in Firefox but it doesn't seem to just be straight forward. Looks like you need some external plugin.

[mjs]

I found I had a copy of the video in my google drive, must have been shared to me at the time of this discussion. Now that I look at your last

post it sounds like you were downloading HLS stream videos the default way. This causes problems with the file stuttering as well as

video / audio sync problems. You should enable HLS as M2TS in the settings and see if this helps. Also for playing mp4 files in Firefox you

can just drag & drop the file anywhere on a new tab page. Works for mp4's and webm files.