Studio 8 hang-up at end of video conversion

[soldalen]

I have made but one dvd before this problem arose. I have a 58 min .vsp project that seems normal in that it plays back as designed. Now, when, after 30-45 min it completes the video conversion, it goes into a funny mode at the 99% value. The process is running and the hard disk still gets activated very infrequently but when I check, it is using only about 1-2% of the processor. Last night it stayed in this mode for hours with the "Create Disc" window at some point going inoperative; ie, I have to control-alt-delete it and thus lose all the conversion time. The disc I have inserted is a -R dvd and I'm trying to write a plain dvd. I'm desparate because the dvd i'm trying to make is for a 101st birthday soon.
Hope someone can help. Thanks,

[TDK1044]

Are you burning your file from the timeline? If so, delete everything from the timeline and then go to Share....Create Disk....Add Media and select your file. All versions of VS are quirky about having files in the timeline during a burn.

[soldalen]

Thanks, Terry.
So, what I did was go from editing to titles to sharing to inserting chapters and then tried to burn the dvd. What you are suggesting, if I understand, is to open videostudio 8, go to share, add the correct .vsp project, add the chapters, check it out, and then burn the dvd. Is that correct. I'll try that and thanks for the quick reply.

[Ken Berry]

First of all, you need to read the Recommended Procedure in the top sticky post. You also don't tell us any of the properties of the video you are using, where it was captured from, or how -- much less about your computer set-up. We need all this information in order to be able to give you some proper advice.

But essentially, as a quick guide, you should be doing the following:
1) If capturing from a digital video camera, you should be capturing to DV/AVI format using Firewire.
2) You should do your edits in the same format.
3) You should then go to Share > Create Video File > DVD. This will produce a DVD-compliant mpeg-2 file.
4) You should then close your current project, and start a new one. Do NOT insert anything in the timeline.
5) Click on Share > Create Disc > DVD. The burning screen will come up. Choose Insert Media (it might be Insert Video -- I no longer have VS8 on my system.) Do NOT/NOT insert your VSP project file. Instead, use only the the new mpeg-2 file (or files) that you produced in Step 3 above.
6) Make sure you have checked the box saying 'Do not convert compliant mpeg files' in the little cogwheel icon in the bottom left of the burning screen.
7) Build your menu, add chapters if you want, and burn. Either burn direct to disc or, if you intend to make more copies or want to check on the final result before burning to disc, 'burn' either a disc image .ISO file or else a Video Folder (Video_TS). You can later burn either of these to actual disc with a third party program such as Nero. You can also burn the ISO image using 'VCD DVD Disc Image Recorder' which comes as part of the VS installation -- you will see it at the bottom of the drop down menu which appears when you are selecting VS8 in Windows' main program menu.

[soldalen]

First, thanks for your prompt help. It worked beautifully even if it took close to 3 hours for the 58 min of video. (1.6 GHx laptop running XP Pro with a Gbyte of DRAM) I should have mentioned that I got VideoStudio 8 recently as an inclusion with a Plextor A/D converter for old Hi8 tapes. As such there seems to be scant documentation...only the help notes that are embedded in the program. I will spend some time in this forum to try to learn more of the craft. On this project I edited .AVI files and did some inserting of .jpg slides and some .wav music. It all seemed to some together until it wouldn't complete the Share sequence. You'd think that having the timeline present when burning would be flagged if that was verboten.
Oh, I should mention that it plays well on our dvd player. Thanks again to both of you for your prompt support. Though irrelevant here, I was a leader of a project in 1976 when the first internet transmission (TCP) occurred. Still I am continually amazed at what you and others like you have made of this medium. Don

[Ron P.]

Hi Soldalen,

What an honor to have you, a pioneer to this great medium, here on the forum...

The link below takes you to an older Ulead page, that has the tutorials for VS8. Viewing them may help you with your endeavors in video editing.

http://www.ulead.com/learning/vs8.htm

I might also add that VS8 was a real buggy version. It took applying patches to get some of the bugs lined out. However since you are using a freebie version, probably VS8 SE (one that comes bundled with hardware), you can not apply any patches or fixes.

If you are considering doing much video editing, you may want to download the trial version of VS10+ and give it a whirl. It's many, many times better, then VS8..

Best regards..

Ron P.