Menu didn't turn out as created

CycleWriter · Post by **CycleWriter** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 8:13 pm

Well, last night I burned this 16 minute video I've been working on. Created a menu from my preset chapter markings. Used a standard menu template that showed all my chapters. Renamed the chapters to match my video, then clicked on burn. Took just over an hour to render and burn the project (never saw the CPU go above 50% with my AMD Dual Core) and got the message that all had completed properly. Went to play the disc in my home DVD player and all my work to create a chaptered menu was for naught. The template I used was there, but there was only one menu item, no chapters. What could have caused this?

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 9:15 pm

Please view:
Part 5. Authoring a DVD.

CycleWriter · Post by **CycleWriter** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:43 pm

sjj1805 wrote:Please view:
Part 5. Authoring a DVD.

While your reference is to a good tutorial on HOW to create a menu, it doesn't answer my question of WHY a menu I created using those steps did not transfer to the finished DVD. Thanks anyway.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:50 pm

OK. You set your chapter points during the editing phase -- is that correct? Then, when you finished your editing, what did you do? Did you select Share > Create Video File > DVD and produce a DVD-compliant mpeg-2 of your project? Or did you go straight to Share > Create Disc > DVD, and insert your project .VSP file?

Although the latter is not part of the general recommended procedures, it seems to be the only way VS10 will 'see' and and use the preset chapter points. And of course you then, in the burning module, select Create Menu and click on the Add/Edit Chapter button to make sure all your preset chapters are in fact there...

CycleWriter · Post by **CycleWriter** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 1:06 am

Ken Berry wrote:OK. You set your chapter points during the editing phase -- is that correct? Then, when you finished your editing, what did you do? Did you select Share > Create Video File > DVD and produce a DVD-compliant mpeg-2 of your project? Or did you go straight to Share > Create Disc > DVD, and insert your project .VSP file?

Although the latter is not part of the general recommended procedures, it seems to be the only way VS10 will 'see' and and use the preset chapter points. And of course you then, in the burning module, select Create Menu and click on the Add/Edit Chapter button to make sure all your preset chapters are in fact there...

I used the former procedure, but I will try the latter and see what the results are. Is this a known bug of VS10+? I'm going to be doing some videos of considerable length and waiting until they're done to find out the menu wasn't created will be a serious PITA. This is the kind of thing that really pisses me off about VS. I'm using standard DV settings, minimal editing, no transitions or special FX, standard 4:3 sizing, no special audio, and still I can't get the program to do what it says and should be able to do.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 2:34 am

I am not sure it can be called a bug. Rather, it seems to be a work flow imposed by the new feature in VS10 of the chapter points you can insert during editing.

The real bug lay in previous versions of VS not being able reliably to go straight from the timeline/editing phase to the burning stage, jumping production of a DVD-compatible mpeg-2. Theoretically, though, this has always been possible, and some people do it regularly and successfully. For others, it works some of the time, and for others still, it doesn't work at all. This is what led to the recommended procedure to always first produce the DVD-compatible mpeg-2 before even opening the burning module.

For those of us who still follow that recommended workflow, we also stick to the established pattern of only inserting the chapters once we are in the burning module.

CycleWriter · Post by **CycleWriter** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 6:06 pm

Well, I created a 30 minute holiday video I edited together from 8mm clips that were converted to VHS years ago. I converted them to DV (since VS isn't so good with analog video) and then transferred them from the DV camera as MPEG-II files (since I didn't plan to do much, if any, editing). I added some SmartSounds background music, some still photos, titles and some sound effects. I made a few appearance tweaks (still not happy with how poor the preview video is) and that was pretty much it. My first attempt to burn this video left me with a single menu and only one choice: to play all. Even though I had all my chapters marked, they showed up in the Chapter Select page at the start of menu creation, and I renamed each chapter individually, I got this lousy one page menu with only the one choice. To top it off, the menu was full of compression artifacts and noise.

OK, so I go back and instead of going to Burn CD from the timeline, I load the project manually from within the menu editor. For some reason, it won't let me use the multi-thumbnail template I want, so I create my own from a background picture included with VS. It only allows me 3 chapters per page so I'm stuck having to create a 5 page menu instead of the simpler 2 page menu I wanted. Go figure. While in the chapter editor I notice that I can move the starting frame of each chapter (which would have been nice since each chapter has a titled intro 2 seconds in), but there's no way to save the changes. ??? An aggravating situation immediately becomes apparent when I leave the chapter editor. VS will not let you delete elements from menu templates, only the choice to display or hide them. This leaves several bounding boxes scattered on your template that continually get in the way of the elements you DO want. And every time you switch menu pages you get a warning that "elements are overlapping, do you wish to continue?" Aaaaarrrggghh! Even if you click "Customize" to edit the template, you can't delete anything that was originally there. What's the point of that? To preserve the original template? Then why bother having a "Save as New Template" feature if it isn truly editable?

So I finally get all my menu pages labeled and done, I change the recording parameters (for some reason it defaulted to field based even though all the source material was already MPEG-II and should have been frame-based), and I trepidatiously hit "Burn DVD" to start the process and head off to bed. I awake this morning to find the message "Burn Completed Successfully" awaiting me, so with eagerness in my heart, I slip the completed disc (I used a DVD-RW, just in case) into my home DVD player and wait for it to load. Amazingly, the menu I created appears on the screen EXACTLY as I designed it. No artifacts that I can see and the buttons work as they should. The only real grip I have is that when I move through the title of each chapter, the frame displayed varies from a dark screen to a jumbled mess, the result of the menu editor using the first frame of each chapter and not allowing me to save the changes I made earlier. Other than that, the video looks and works great and my family will be very pleased with it. One down, 5 more to go. Not perfect, but this is what I bought VS for. Although I've been using it since ver. 4, this is the first time that most of it has worked as advertised. I'm still using the demo version of 10+, but my boxed version (I took the chance and ordered it a week ago) should be here in the next few days. One thing I noticed while rendering is my CPU usage never went above 51%. I have an AMD 64X2 so I hope Ulead will issue a patch to take advantage of these CPUs sometime soon.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:15 pm

I am glad that a little bit of satisfaction has finally, if tentatively, entered your life!

I am a little surprised about your difficulties in customising your menus -- though I hasten to add that I don't really know what comes with the trial version since I have never used it. But you will find in the boxed version that though the number of templates is smaller than those which comes with VS 9 (though the latter can be transferred), the templates now include a category called 'Smart Templates' which are extensively customisable, even down to only using text menus, instead of those little preview screen buttons.

Regarding burning properties, by default the 'Do not convert compliant mpeg files' box is checked in the second icon in bottom left of the burning screen. This means that if you have, after the editing phase, indeed produced a fully DVD-compliant mpeg-2, VS10+ will use that file unchanged, regardless of what might appear above that check box as the properties which would be used if the 'do not convert' box were *not* checked... Mind you, being the untrusting person I am, I usally alter those properties to exactly match those of the files I am burning, just in case...

CycleWriter · Post by **CycleWriter** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 12:26 am

Ken Berry wrote:I am glad that a little bit of satisfaction has finally, if tentatively, entered your life!

Yeah, maybe I won't be so quick to jump on the clueless for awhile.

I am a little surprised about your difficulties in customising your menus -- though I hasten to add that I don't really know what comes with the trial version since I have never used it. But you will find in the boxed version that though the number of templates is smaller than those which comes with VS 9 (though the latter can be transferred), the templates now include a category called 'Smart Templates' which are extensively customisable, even down to only using text menus, instead of those little preview screen buttons.

Since I upgraded from 8 to 10+, is there any way to get the templates included in ver. 9?

Mind you, being the untrusting person I am, I usally alter those properties to exactly match those of the files I am burning, just in case...

Since I captured in MPEG-II, I'm pretty sure I didn't need any conversion, but like you, I always check my settings to make sure nothing I don't want to happen does.

jchunter · Post by **jchunter** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 2:54 am

CycleWriter,
I agree with your assessment of the DVD menu creation in version 10+. Using It is like learning to play a calliope. You have to push all the bells and whistles and blow every horn to get it work at all.

Version 9 had a good menu creator that was intuitive and I don't know why Ulead trashed in favor of the POS in 10+.

Now the little brown bugs that infest the timeline, if you happen to mouse in the wrong area, are another prize PITA. They mislead users into thinking they will work as chapter markers and actually lure new users into risky workflows that force transcodings to unknown properties in the Burn module.

However, 10+ is still head and shoulders ahead of all the other video editors

I just wish Ulead would listen to its user base more.

CycleWriter · Post by **CycleWriter** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 3:11 am

jchunter wrote:CycleWriter,
I agree with your assessment of the DVD menu creation in version 10+. Using It is like learning to play a calliope. You have to push all the bells and whistles and blow every horn to get it work at all.

Version 9 had a good menu creator that was intuitive and I don't know why Ulead trashed in favor of the POS in 10+.

This is what happens when a company succumbs to the pressure of having to one-up competitors and uses the kitchen-sink methodology of code design instead of focusing on eliminating bugs and making the product work properly. Features are nice, but I'd prefer the next iteration of VS to be rock-solid stable, more intuitive (menu creation certainly isn't), and able to operate with fewer workarounds. That said, I moved to VS after having had my fill of problems with Pinnacle Studio and being fed up with Adobe's money-grubbing attitude towards its customers. While not perfect, VS has proven to be the best low-priced video editor I've used. If Ulead paid more attention to what some of the people in here have to say and address those concerns, they could easily have the best low-to-mid-priced video editor on the market and even give Vegas, Final Cut and Premiere a run for their money.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 7:18 am

Re your question about transferring older menu templates, they are all in .ufo format in VS8 and will all be 4:3 format. All I would do is copy them in the VS 8 templates folder to the VS10+ Content\Menu Template\4:3 folder. Next time you open VS10, they should appear in the template section.

kphutch · Post by **kphutch** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 7:57 pm

Ken -- I just want to make sure that I have this right in my mind......
I just spent a lot of time setting up and naming chapter points during the editing phase of my project. I finished and then chose to create a (Mpeg) file. After 3 hours of rendering, it finished. I opened a new project and hit share, create disk and loaded the mpeg file......to my dismay none of my chapter points are there.

From what I read in your post, I did this wrong (with version 10+). With version 10+, you cannot create chapter points until the burn phase?? Why even offer it as a menu choice during the editing phase then??

If that's the way it is with 10+, so be it....please let me know now before I waste any more time trying to figure out what went wrong with my missing chapters.

Thanks

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 8:09 pm

You can create chapter points during editing and they will remain present if you go straight to the burning phase, which goes against the Recommended Procedure.

But, as you have found out, if you follow the RP and create a video file first, your chapter points disappear.

If you are going to follow the RP then you will have to add chapters in the burning stage.