No audio after Scenarist authoring with time delay?

The NTSC movie I'm trying to backup is Sweet Home Alabama. I've made changes to the audio soundtrack. This I did by demuxing the m2v and ac3 files using VobEdit, then using BeSweet to create 6 separate WAV files from the ac3. Using Audacity, I edited the Center WAV (only blanking out words I did not wish to hear -- not deleting or adding audio). Then used Soft Encode to encode the 6 WAVs into a single ac3. Using Scenarist to mux back together original m2v and modified ac3, the resultant VOB contains a video delay of about 2 seconds (audio is ahead of video). I have studied the Scenarist guides by doom9 and trilight. I made sure to set the drop type for both video and audio assets to "drop frame". I have no chapters, no subs, no menus...real simple...just the main movie and that is all. So I have set a time delay of 2 seconds for the video asset in the Track Editor (added 2 seconds to "Start Time to Video" which made it 01:00:02:00 -- don't quite understand why the 1 hour is there instead of starting at zero?). After muxing, the resultant VOB has no audio at all! What did I do wrong? I can play either the m2v or the edited ac3 file in a DVD software player so they seem to be intact. I'm not using the IFO files -- just playing the files directly. In using Maestro, the m2v file shows the length as 2 minutes instead of 1 hr 48 min which Scenarist correctly displays, BTW. So when I create a VOB in Maestro, it is only 2 minutes long. No surprise there! In using SpruceUp, the m2v file correctly shows the length of 1 hr 48 min, but after compiling to create the VOB, the VOB is 1500 KB and the VOB has no audio and shows nothing for a short time when played. I have even tried to mux the original m2v and ac3 files just as a test. Same results as when using my edited ac3 file. I have been successful with several other movies using this same procedure without having to set any time delay since no audio and video synch problems occurred. I suppose backing up this movie is turning out to be an interesting challenge or was I just lucky with previous authorings? Any advice or thoughts from a guru?

I have backed up this title and there is nothing really interesting about it. It's a rather "normal" title. You're just doing things differently. As for why the audio is not there, I am uncertain what you are doing wrong. There are any number of things you could be doing incorrectly. One, of course, is attempting to play the VOB by itself. Just because you are able to do this doesn't mean that you should. The IFO files are there for a reason. They tell the player exactly where streams are located in the VOB files and how to properly access them. You're circumventing this when you try to just load up a VOB and play it. Sure, sometimes you can do this and there is no issue but that's no guarantee you can use it as a valid test. It's not. As for your delay problem, that is easily corrected using the utility AC3delay which is mentioned throughout the Doom9 site and can be downloaded from here as well.

Encoded w/ Soft Encode but ac3delay won't accept? 

Thanks Trilight for your quick reply! I have known about ac3delay but the version I tried some time ago complained about a missing file. At your suggestion, I searched further and located a newer version which seems at least runs for me under WinXP. Now I cannot get ac3delay to accept my ac3 file encoded with Soft Encode. I have successfully encoded 6 WAV files into a single ac3 file. When I try to add a time delay to the ac3 using the ac3delay program (I'm want to add 2000 ms to the file in order to sync with it's corresponding m2 video), ac3delay gives an error message in the message area saying "No AC3 file information or header is corrupted". I am able to play the ac3 file in a software DVD player. Also no complaints when opening it in Sonic's DVD Audio Creator and Sonic's Scenarist. I'm thinking ac3delay is looking for something I cannot figure out. The original ac3 file I muxed from the DVD is accepted just fine by ac3delay. Any ideas?

Well, it's probably looking for timecode and you did not select to write the timecode to the file when you made it. Of course, you could always load each WAV file into something like Soundforge or CoolEdit and add 2 seconds of silence to the beginning of each clip. As long as you're adding the same amount to each and they are always in sync before, there is no reason they shouldn't continue to be by adding the 2 seconds to each. I think the timecode in SoftEncode should be all you need to mess with though.

My second attempt at creating the ac3 file from SoftEncode indeed included enabling the timecode option. Sorry, I forgot to mention that in my last post. Anyone know the contact info for the author of AC3delay? He might be able to shed some light on what the program is looking for in the AC3 header. Trilight, great idea of a workaround instead of using AC3delay by adding the delay directly to the WAV files! I'll try it and report back.