I have a QuickTime file created by my still photo camera. Need to convert it into dv-file to edit it in Kino. So I use ffmpeg. Apparently, in the process, many frames are dropped, the output file is quite unusable:

this is Debian Lenny system:

~/tmp $ uname -a
Linux Gel-DeskT 2.6.24-1-486 #1 Thu Mar 27 17:00:17 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux


~/docs/Photo/tmp/20080414 $ ffmpeg -i ./20080414_121847.mov -target ntsc-dv ./delme_2.dv
FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-swscaler --enable-pthreads --enable-libvorbis --enable-libtheora --enable-libogg --enable-liba52 --enable-libdts --enable-libgsm --enable-dc1394 --disable-debug --enable-shared --prefix=/usr
libavutil version: 1d.49.3.0
libavcodec version: 1d.51.38.0
libavformat version: 1d.51.10.0
built on Jun 23 2007 14:31:53, gcc: 4.1.3 20070601 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.2-12)
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from './20080414_121847.mov':
Duration: 00:11:08.5, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 11481 kb/s
Stream #0.0(eng): Video: mjpeg, yuvj420p, 640x480, 30.00 fps(r)
Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: pcm_u8, 8000 Hz, mono, 64 kb/s
File './delme_2.dv' already exists. Overwrite ? [y/N] y
PIX_FMT_YUV420P will be used as an intermediate format for rescaling
Output #0, dv, to './delme_2.dv':
Stream #0.0: Video: dvvideo, yuv411p, 720x480, q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 29.97 fps(c)
Stream #0.1: Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
Press [q] to stop encoding
[dvvideo @ 0xb7eb4b48]Can't process DV frame #1. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7eb4b48]Can't process DV frame #1. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
.
.
.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1336. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1336. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
[dvvideo @ 0xb7e74b48]Can't process DV frame #1337. Insufficient audio data or severe sync problem.
frame=20055 q=0.0 Lsize= 156680kB time=668.5 bitrate=1920.0kbits/s
video:2350195kB audio:125344kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead -93.670886%



What is wrong?

Thx,
Arkadi

I have no idea if this is affecting your audio sync problems, but your output video bitrate is only 200kb/s, which is the ridiculously low default level ffmpeg uses when you don't set it explicitly. You need to add a "-b 11000k" or somesuch to get an output quality comparable to your input (it says the input video is 11481k).

If all else fails, try processing the audio and video tracks separately and then recombining them after conversion (or I'll bet kino can handle separate audio and video tracks). I've never used dv, but I've found that exporting the audio track to a simple pcm/wav file often helps work around sync problems.