Error 80041c21 - Need Help

[virg2673]

Having read your valuable post Ken, as well as Jeff's "step-by-step guide to the suggested workflow," now multiple times, I say thank you and send a tip of the hat to you both. As a brand new user trying to learn how to use VideoStudio 8, I had recognized the need to document my workflow in order to speed up the learning process. Obviously, it was a "work in process." I will try to share it with you via email so as not to clutter up your forum. I will also now set about to revise my workflow, to take advantage of your sound advice.

BTW, earlier I was ready to give up on VideoStudio because I couldn't get any advice and counsel on how to properly use it and couldn't get into your User Forum. I had tried repeatedly to sign on using AOL. Our daughter came to my rescue and suggested trying to access the forum using MS Internet Explorer. It worked instantly, I registered, and people like you were found. Again, I say thanks.

[Black Lab]

I will try to share it with you via email so as not to clutter up your forum.

I would actually advise you to keep us posted via the forum. That way, other users can be enlightened and maybe find answers to their problems as well.

[virg2673]

Per Jeff's request, the workflows that I was using prior to Ken's suggestion to produce the DVD-compatible mpeg-2 file before burning, are listed below. I am now trying to revise these workflows to reflect the DVD-compatible mpeg-2 file approach.
VideoStudio 8 - EDIT WORKFLOW
1. Open Ulead Video Studio 8 software and select,
“Video Studio Editor,” over Movie Wizard
“File” from top right menus bar to open a new or existing Project
2. “Edit,” and select the home movie to be edited, and then drag & drop
the selected video file into left side of film strip
3. “Play” to preview, just to insure the video file is the correct movie to
be edited
4. “Clip” over Project, and then, “Multi-trim Video” from the pop up
5. ???? Select “Story Board View” from lower left corner
to get “Project” displayed ????
6. Advance movie to the desired frame, and enter a start & end for each
Chapter segment, and click “OK” when all Chapters are marked
accordingly
7. “Effect” from top tool bar to select desired transition effect at Chapter
breaks
8. Drag & drop selected transition effect in between Chapters
ie; 3D for “Barn Door” or Stretch for “Box”
9. To add DVD Title, advance to, or click on the opening frame and click
“Title” and then double click on the Preview Window to add a title for
the completed DVD
10. “File” from top right Menus Bar and then,
“Save As” to name and save the selected editing, transition effects
and title for this specific Project

VideoStudio 8 - SHARE/CREATE DVD WORKFLOW
1. Load blank Single Layered DVD (for about 1 hour of edited movies)
into Sony Rewritable Drive
2. Open Ulead VideoStudio 8 software, and select the file name (Home
Movie/Project) to be burned
3. “Share” from top tool bar
4. “Create Disc” from left side pop up
5. “Add the VideoStudio Project” either current or previously created for
this DVD number
6. “Add/Edit Chapters” and then “Insert Scenes as Chapters”
7. “Auto” > “OK” > “OK” >& “Next”
8. To add DVD Title, if not already done, advance to the opening frame
and click on stop, click on
“Title” and double click on the Preview Window to add a title to
completed DVD
9. Change “Main Menu,” at the top, to reflect the project name to get
access to the Chapters Menu page
10. Insert Chapter Menu title
11. Insert individual Chapter titles
12. If more than 6 chapters, click double black arrow for 2nd page of
Chap. Menu
13. “Next” > “Next”
14. Under “Disc burner,” change drive to “<E>Sony DVD RW etc. etc.”
15. “Output” in lower right corner, and allow significant time for process
to complete

[Ken Berry]

Thanks for the detailed explanation of your current workflow. At least it confirms that you were jumping the intermediate step of first producing a DVD-compatible mpeg-2 of your project before you moved to the burning module.

The only modification of the first phase - Editing - would be to save the project from the beginning and regularly save it thereafter, so as to avoid the possibility of losing all your work if something untoward happened before you reached step 10!! You can give your project a name right from step 1. (Mind you, I have never used the Movie Wizard -- just the straight Editor -- so am not sure if these comments apply in those circumstances...)

As I have already said, your current workflow is used successfully by a lot of people all the time. It also works for other people *most* of the time, and for yet others, it never works at all. We are not sure why and nor is Ulead (which apparently, in the past, has had difficulty even getting your current workflow to ever fail! They therefore have refused to treat it as a bug since a bug has to be replicable. )

Nevertheless, if not a bug, it is a significant problem for a significant number of users. And as I also say, that is why we suggest to people in your position that you try our alternative workflow. We will be most interested to hear the results... Good luck!!

[virg2673]

Thank you Ken. I hope to try your suggested revisions to my workflow today and will certainly report the results.[/b]

[virg2673]

Tried your suggestion to produce a DVD - compatible mpeg-2 file right after editing. I saved the new project and then went to Share > Create Video File > DVD and it immediately started Rendering. If I'm understanding your explanation correctly, this was not the desired outcome. Did I miss something?

[virg2673]

After re-reading your helpful explanations again for the umteenth time, I fear that I have failed to insure that I "ticked the 'Do not convert compliant mpeg files' in the second icon." I did not find that prompt, so perhaps I skipped a key item in your suggested work flow that I'm trying to adapt. When and where should I be able to locate this "second icon?"
Thanks so very much for your help.

[Ken Berry]

Virg -- no. Once you go to Share > Create Video File > DVD, and it starts rendering, that is *precisely* what it is supposed to do. It is supposed to render your project into an mpeg-2. So don't worry, you are doing the right thing.

Once the rendering is finished, you will find a new video icon in your library pane with an .mpg extension. That is your mpeg-2. You then save and close the project by opening a new one. Then with the empty timeline, you select Share > Create Disc. And the burning module will open.

I am mystified why you could not find the 'Do not convert compliant mpeg files' command in the second icon in the bottom left of the VS8 burning screen. It is the icon which looks like a little cogwheel. I have just fired up my "ancient" version of VS8, and it is indeed there.

When you click on that icon, there is a pane at the top showing the properties which the program would normally use to burn the DVD.

Under that pane is a button labelled 'Change MPEG Settings" so you can edit the above properties if you want. And directly under that are the words 'Do not convert compliant mpeg files' with a check box which should be ticked by default. Are you sure it is not there???

Anyway, that is the important thing: that it be ticked. If not, and you insert your new mpeg-2 into the burning timeline, and it has different properties to those displayed in the pane above this 'Do not convert', then the program will render it again to match those properties. And it is this that you definitely do NOT want.

Hope that's clearer...

[virg2673]

Thanks to your detailed coaching Ken, I've had some success, and now have four questions for you if you don't mind.

1. After completing my editing, I created the DVD compatible mpeg-2 video file and saved it. The new icon did appear in the library pane indicating that it was in fact an mpeg video file. I then did the File > New Project and got an empty timeline. Then selected Share > Create Disc and found the "little cogwheel" icon and ticked the "Do not convert compliant mpeg files" box.

However, after selecting "Add Video" I was not able to click and drag the new mpeg icon onto the timeline, but I was able to open the new video file by selecting it by name. Is this the correct procedure or did I miss something?

I followed your workflow suggestions for adding the scenes as chapters, inserted chapter titles, and the burn process took about 20 min. for an hour long movie.

2. The original Super 8 home movies had been consolidated onto VHS tapes, and then transferred on to DVD's, which were used for the capture process. When I compared the final edited DVD outcome against the original VHS tape, there is rather significant degradation in picture quality. Would it help maintain picture quality if I were to use the original VHS tape as my capture source?

3. During the burn process, it indicated that it was "Writing at 16.0 x (22160 KB/s)." Is this telling me that I'm not using your "recommended speed of 4x?"

4. At the burn process time, there was an option to select more than a single copy. Since I'm trying to produce three final copies of each DVD, am I better served to repeat the process three times or should I select three copies the first time through the burn process?

Thanks again for your time and detailed help in guiding me through this process.

[Ken Berry]

1. The way you inserted the video into the burning module is correct.

2. You are never going to get any better quality that was on the VHS tapes, but at least capturing from them direct -- if you have an appropriate analogue capture device -- would at least minimise degradation. As it is, they have been captured and converted to DVD, which means they have already gone through at least one recoding, and its inherent loss of quality. You are then importing it and re-encoding once again, with a further loss in quality.

While each recode probably does not entail a huge quality loss in its own right, it is there and it is cumulative. So minimise it by capturing direct from the source VHS AND also capturing with relatively high quality settings. Given that it is VHS, however, there is probably little to be gained in using a bitrate any higher than say 6000 kbps, or at absolute maximum 7000.

3. Yes it means you are burning at 16x speed.

4. If ultimately you intend to burn more than one copy, you can do it the way you suggest and select 3 copies first off. However, if it is bad quality, then you are simply wasting discs.

It would probably be better not to burn to a disc first time, but instead burn either an image file (ISO) or (as I do) a DVD folder (Video_TS). Both options are on the final page of the burning engine. Just untick the actual burn to disc.

With either, you can then replay the ISO or Video_TS folder and see if it is decent quality. And if it is, you can burn either to disc any number of times you want -- the ISO file with the burner in VS or a third party program, or the Video_TS folder with a program like Nero...

[virg2673]

Thanks Ken. I'm going to try your idea of using my VHS tapes as my capture source and then compare the video quality results to what I got using the VHS to DVD to capture. Before doing that, shouldn't I make the bitrate adjustments that you discussed? My property settings under Video are;

Video Type: MPEG-2 Video, Upper Field First
Total Frames: 220,263 Frames
Attributes: 24 bits, 720 x 480, 4:3
Frame rate: 29.970 Frames/Sec
Data Rate: Variable bit rate (MAX.3999 kbps)

Although my bit rate says MAX, it also says .3999 kbps, which is much lower than your suggestion of "6,000 kbps, or at an absolute maximum 7000."

You also confirmed that I'm "burning at 16x." Since I have experienced significant video quality degradation, shouldn't I also adjust that burn rate to your suggested rate of 4x?

I'm just thinking that I should make any recommended adjustments prior to doing any video quality comparisons. Your help has been the source of my renewed confidence, that I am actually getting close to being able to start my process of converting all of our home movies to edited DVD's with Chapters and titles. My workflow, which I created as an MS Word document, has been revised many times, but it's becomming more and more stable. Hopefuly, I'm getting it close to the point where no more revisions are needed.

I'm sure that I'll have some problems when I adjust my workflow to match your suggested burn "a DVD folder (Video-TS)" instead of burning directly to a DVD.

[Ken Berry]

The bitrate to a large extent depends on the quality and nature of the source video. In this case it is VHS tapes created from 8mm film. I suspect the quality would be reasonable but probably not what you or anyone else would call superb.

Depending on how one captures analogue video such as VHS, the results can be good or at least reasonable. But the resulting digital video quality might be equivalent to, but will *never* be better than the original analogue source material. The old saw 'you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear' springs to mind!

Some people say as a result that there is simply no point, when capturing VHS, in using a bitrate higher than around 4500 kbps, and many will use less on the principle that if you can't improve the quality, at least you will fit more on the eventual DVD with a lower bitrate. So your setting of around 4000 kbps fits right in here...

However, you are capturing your mpeg-2 using a combo VCR/DVD stand-alone unit, so in principle, the quality should be good in that transfer. To digress for a moment, I use a Sony DCR-TRV450 Digital 8 video camera for my analogue captures these days. It will take old 8mm and Hi8 analogue tapes and play them directly to my computer via Firewire in DV format. (And I can connect a VCR to it and capture VHS tapes using the camera as a digital pass-through device.) To my mind you can't do much better than that, and I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised at the excellent quality. I experimented with bitrates in these captures, using a maximum of 8000, 7000, and finally decided that above 6500 or 7000, I could see no improvement in quality. Below 6000, the drop-off in quality was a bit more noticeable.

So that is why I specified that particular bitrate in my earlier post. But you need to bear in mind that it depends on the quality of the source material and the way you capture. As to the latter, as I say, you are using a method which in theory should give you about as good a capture as you can get from VHS. So I say, if you have sufficient hard disk space, why not maximise the chances of a good final product by using a higher quality bitrate. In other words, I feel you could safely change the capture bitrate on you combo unit to a higher one. This will probably entail selecting HQ or whatever your unit uses to distinguish between capture settings... And it might also involve using more than one DVD for capture if it isn't a hard disk model. But you get around that, of course, by using RW DVDs.

But you should also experiment a bit to see which quality setting gives you the best results.

As for the speed of the burn, this does not affect the end quality so much as the playability of the disc in a wide range of stand-alone DVD players. To put it simplistically, burning at lower speeds gives the laser more chance to embed the signal more 'firmly' or 'deeply', if you will, into the DVD. The higher the speed, the 'lighter' the burn. (Experts will dispute my analogy, but this is just to give you an understandable idea.) Correspondingly, a DVD which has a high speed 'light' signal burned on it might cause some DVD players to skate over it, giving erratic playback, if it will play back at all. (High end, high cost players are the most finnicky in this regard.)

So yes, definitely reduce the burning speed. And my own preference for 4x should not be taken as gospel. Some recent high speed burners (now up to 18x and even 20x) won't even burn as low as 4x, so you might have to select 6x or even 8x. Just much slower than maximum.

[harry_hariz]

im usin uvs 9...now the problems is i have problems with rendering to mpeg 1 from mpeg 1 video format..it read as cannot read audio?i think i wrongly put any audio format in my project?but i x know what format is wrong...is there any audio format that uvs 9 cannot support?i had put wav,mp3 and wma format audio...got any wrong?please help me as soon as possible...i want to output it for vcd....

[Ken Berry]

Depending on the codec used, mp3 causes problems for Video Studio. I would find a third party software to convert the mp3 to .wav format. And if you are doing that, I would also convert the .wmv files to .wav just to be uniform.

What output setting are you using for the audio in your VCD?

[virg2673]

Have been away for a while, but now back at it and getting ready to apply your many helpful hints and workflow suggestions to try to transform our home movies onto DVDs. During my learning/practice stage, I have been using "Verbatim 4.7GB 16x Certified" DVDs from Walmart. Now that I think I'm close to being able to produce my final edited output DVDs, is there any justification to pay the additional cost to use "name brand" DVDs, like Sony, etc.?