VS9 Bug with DVD chapter/title sequencing

[gillou]

Hello, I have a problem with VS9, no in fact two, but let's tackle the first one.

I am trying to use the "hide" capability of the "add/edit chapter" command to create chapters that do not appear in the DVD menu. This allows nice "skip" possibilities whilst avoiding a very fat DVD menu...

Now the problem is that there is a bug that means that when I do this the DVD stop playing after the first chapter (whatever I put in the "clip playback" option). Now all the other chapters (if I skip the first one!) are ok...

Interestingly enough, if I do not use the "hide" function then it works perfectly fine (but the DVD menu is pretty awful). So to me this clearly says "bug"...

So did someone have a similar problem? And if so did you find a workaround?

Now my second problem is about ulead support: I wrote them a nice VSP file (using their video samples, so no relink problem) , I sent them a DVD output (which fails on 4 different players!) and I am still battling trying to tell them there is a bug. The last one was the final straw: The support guy is having troubles making the difference between a "title" and a "chapter" )... So quite honestly I really think I did my part but I don't know what to do anymore; except probably switching software, but this is really a shame (because when you play with VS9 you can feel the engineering team is quite good but I can't say as much of the support team ).

Regards,

Gilles.

[BrianCee]

I find myself a bit confused about what you are trying to do - if you do not want chapters to appear in the menu structure then why create them in the first place - rather than 'hide' chapter menus why not just not create them or remove them at the add/edit chapters page.

We all know that Ulead Tech support is not very good - thats why these user forums are so busy - don't bother with tech support - state your problem here - let the world go round a few times so that everyone gets a chance to reply - and *most* problems are then resolved.

[Ken Berry]

I am also a little confused about your intentions. It might also be useful if you explained your work flow in the burning module. When you click on 'Create Chapters', what did you then do: choose Auto, and then time-related or scene-related chapters? Then did you select each of the chapters you wanted to hide and individually click the Hide button? When I do that, then move to the next screen (where you choose menu background etc), and click the Advanced Settings button, the 'Add chapter menu' selection is greyed out. If, on the other hand, I don't Hide any of the chapters, then on moving to the next screen, I am asked if I want to create a chapter menu, and of course can choose to or not.

Also, in the cogwheel icon down at the bottom of the burning screen, at the very bottom of screen, there is Playback Option. What is selected there -- 'Continue to play the next clip' or 'Back to menu'?

I'd also second Brian's comments about Ulead support. But on the 'title' and 'chapter' question, there could be extentuating circumstances. We just had a similar confusion here a week or so ago over the meaning of 'title'. In the general sense, a title is the words/animation etc you add to your clip to give it an on-screen name -- in VS9, of course, using the Title screen. But in DVD terms, including in VS9 (see Insert DVD/DVD-VR), a title is also an individual clip on a DVD which of course may then be broken down into Chapters ... or not, depending on the choice made when constructing the DVD structure at the menu/chapter stage.

[gillou]

Ok, what I am trying to do is have two videos of around 30 minutes each. The DVD menu shows these as two possible options and allows the user to select which one to show (so I have two titles).

Then I also want to segment each of these 30 minutes video in chapters of around 3 minutes. The purpose is to allow the viewer to skip some sections of the video. However, when I do this by default these chapters also appear in the DVD menu. But I don't want that to happen I just want the DVD menu to show only the two main options and not all the chapters I have created.

Now to do that I use the "hide" button in the "add/edit chapter" dialog box. But as soon as I start doing that then VS9 creates an incorrect first chapter on the DVD (at least when the DVD player reach the end of the first chapter it stops). All the subsequent chapters are ok and behaves normally (if I don't press the skip button then it plays all the chapters until the end of the video).

The funny thing is also that this works perfectly fine when I preview the DVD in VS9 but it fails when I really create it...

Ken, to answer your question yes I have set the playback option to "Continue to play the next clip". And it works fine as long as I am not in the first chapter...

Also to answer your other question yes I used the "auto" option and I used the "insert chapters at fixed intervals" (3 minutes) option. Then once this is done, I hide all the chapters except the first one (as I said I don't want the chapters to show in the menu but I still want the hability to skip them when playing the video...)

I hope this time I was a little less confusing (and thanks for helping me).

Gilles.

[gillou]

Ken, I am currently trying your idea of graying out "Create Chapter menu" rather than playing with the hide functionality.
And, currently on the DVD preview it did mostly react as I want to (not sure yet about the behavior of the skip chapters). So I am currently creating the DVD output and I will see if the skip works as I hope and if this got rid of the chapter 1 problem.

I will keep you updated. And thank again for your ideas.

Gilles.

[gillou]

Thanks for your help. I can confirm that disabling the "create chapter menu" worked and does not create issues with the first chapter.

I am still convinced there is a bug when using the "hide" fonction and I will try a last time to convince the support guy of it, but as we can disable the chapter menu, this is not a painful problem anymore (definitively less flexible but not really painful for most DVD).

Gilles.

[Ken Berry]

I've been thinking about that some more, and there could be some twisted logic in Ulead thinking. If you press the Hide button for certain chapters, or all but the first, which you can't hide anyway, then when you start playing the first chapter, then from 'its' point of view, the other chapters are all hidden and so of course it cannot find them to go on and play them. If, however, you manage to start playing in one of the hidden clips, then from _its_ point of view, it is one of a group of hidden files and can happily display its camaraderie by going on to play each of the hidden files sequentially... Though you are possibly right and it is just a bug!!!

[beernose]

...

Now to do that I use the "hide" button in the "add/edit chapter" dialog box. But as soon as I start doing that then VS9 creates an incorrect first chapter on the DVD (at least when the DVD player reach the end of the first chapter it stops). All the subsequent chapters are ok and behaves normally (if I don't press the skip button then it plays all the chapters until the end of the video).

...

Gilles.

The problem exists in DVD Movie Factory 4 as well (v4.04)

It truly is a bug. I found a workaround but the workaround sorta bites. But it proves my point that its a bug.

I too am joining several 15-30 minute video clips from my sons growing up. I create "hidden" chapters within the individual video clips as well so that the Menu shows the big chapters (ie Birthday, Xmas, Raking leaves, etc). Then I create the "hidden" chapters so that I can quickly skip forward or backward through one of the larger 10-20 minute segments (like when you want to quickly skip ahead to the section where you catch him picking his nose ).

If you choose the option to "Play next clip" in the clip options dialog in the Project Settings, the bug is there.

The BUG, is that when playing any of the titles, as soon as the DVD is about to transition from chapter 1 to chapter 2, the DVD skips to the next title instead of the next chapter. If you use the DVD remote to skip from chapter 1 to chapter 2, everything is fine, the remainder of the "hidden" chapters play perfectly. But if you let the DVD player play at 1X speed through the transition of Ch1->Ch2 it jumps to next title instead.

If you choose to go "Back to Menu" in the clip options and rebuild the DVD, viola! the problem goes away! The DVD plays properly through the Ch1 to Ch2 transition. But of course at the end of the title, since you chose "Back to Menu", the DVD player goes back to the DVD chapter menu.

Can we get a 4.05 patch? I'm really satisfied with my purchase of DMF4 after trying several other applications (Sonic, WinDVD, Nero), but this one glitch has me stopping my VHS conversion process until a patch is released.