Hi.
I have just upgraded to VS11+ (from VS9), and yesterday I tried to make my first DVD on the new software. First I render the individual titles as MPEG2 as recommended. Then I start from scratch with the burning module. I wanted to try the new "SmartScene Menus" that weren't in VS9 (I don't know about VS10).
But when the DVD was to be built, my PC took its time...... Looooong time.
It stopped at "Building motion background of the menu page [001/030]". It used all the CPU power, but I didn't see any harddisk activity. I tried to leave it like that, and eventually it proceeded to [002/030] after 12 minutes. With the prospect of having to wait 6 hours for the DVD to complete, I aborted.
I didn't do anything special, all settings were left at standard. I had a total of 6 titles, some with chapters defined.
My PC is a P4 2.8GHz (single thread processor). 2 GB RAM. Win XP SP2 with all updates.
I rebooted my PC, and tried again with my firewall/antivirus/security sw disabled (and the network plug unconnected), but the result was the same.
I then tried to install VS11+ on my laptop (2.0 GHz Pentium M, 1 GB RAM, slow harddisk), and there it can render each background scene in less than two minutes, so I had my DVD made within the hour.
Should my P4 2.8 GHz really be that slow?
Very slow DVD menu generation
Moderator: Ken Berry
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Trevor Andrew
Hi
The new menu structures of VS 10 and 11 seem to take some time in rendering. Much longer than creating the Thumbnail type menu¡¦s
The Smart Menu¡¦s being more complex.
Try a Thumbnail type menu to compare with VS 9 times.
Using VS 10 /11 you WILL get the message about ¡¥ rendering will take some time¡K.this was not the case with VS 9.
If the first render ¡¥blue scroll progress bar indicates ¡¥Creating Titles¡¦ then the main video file is being rendered, Not what you want.
The first progress bar indication should be for creating menu¡¦s not ¡¥Titles¡¦
The new menu structures of VS 10 and 11 seem to take some time in rendering. Much longer than creating the Thumbnail type menu¡¦s
The Smart Menu¡¦s being more complex.
Try a Thumbnail type menu to compare with VS 9 times.
Using VS 10 /11 you WILL get the message about ¡¥ rendering will take some time¡K.this was not the case with VS 9.
If the first render ¡¥blue scroll progress bar indicates ¡¥Creating Titles¡¦ then the main video file is being rendered, Not what you want.
The first progress bar indication should be for creating menu¡¦s not ¡¥Titles¡¦
I am not comparing with VS9. I have tried VS11 on both my 2.8 GHz stationary PC and my 2.0 GHz laptop, and with identical menu generation settings, and my laptop is much faster for this type of job. For actual rendering of MPEG2 movies, they are more equal.trevor andrew wrote:Try a Thumbnail type menu to compare with VS 9 times.
Using VS 10 /11 you WILL get the message about ¡¥ rendering will take some time¡K.this was not the case with VS 9.
If the first render ¡¥blue scroll progress bar indicates ¡¥Creating Titles¡¦ then the main video file is being rendered, Not what you want.
The first progress bar says "Convert menu...", so it isn't the titles that are being converted (which would also have made a lot of harddisk activity).
I will try to disable the menu transitions when I get home later today, but I believe those are made after this "Building motion background..." that is my problem.
Regards,
Mikael
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Trevor Andrew
Hi
Sorry for the confusion, the fact is that rendering Smart Menu¡¦s takes longer, a lot longer than Thumbnail Menu¡¦s.
When you compared the two pc¡¦s did you use the same 30 mpeg video files????-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I just ran a test and these are the times I produced using the default settings, Smart Menu for VS 10.
Added 12 Mpegs, total 56 minutes.
Time to render background 17 minutes
Build Menu Transitions 5 minutes
Encoding Menu 40 seconds
Multiplexing 3 minutes
Finalising Vobs 2 minutes (creating a DVD Folder)
(Burning to disc would take 12 munites longer)
A second test showed for Thumbnails and no motion menu the total time was under 5 minutes. Now that¡¦s a big difference.
Sorry for the confusion, the fact is that rendering Smart Menu¡¦s takes longer, a lot longer than Thumbnail Menu¡¦s.
When you compared the two pc¡¦s did you use the same 30 mpeg video files????-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I just ran a test and these are the times I produced using the default settings, Smart Menu for VS 10.
Added 12 Mpegs, total 56 minutes.
Time to render background 17 minutes
Build Menu Transitions 5 minutes
Encoding Menu 40 seconds
Multiplexing 3 minutes
Finalising Vobs 2 minutes (creating a DVD Folder)
(Burning to disc would take 12 munites longer)
A second test showed for Thumbnails and no motion menu the total time was under 5 minutes. Now that¡¦s a big difference.
That's because of the menu transitions and re-encoding that goes on for each "Title" on the smart scenes menu. As you move from Title to Title, the program is automatically transitioning to a new menu. It's a DVD Trick known as "Switched Menus" -- but the rendering of the transitions (and also background menu) takes a long time...trevor andrew wrote:Sorry for the confusion, the fact is that rendering Smart Menu¡¦s takes longer, a lot longer than Thumbnail Menu¡¦s.
Regards,
George
I think there is something seriously wrong with either my VS11+ installation or my PC (the slow 2.8 GHz one). In addition to it being more than 6 times slower than my laptop (but only DVD menu generating), it also regularly has a hanging uvPL.exe when I try to turn off the PC. That file is a part of VS11, right?
Also in the process list I sometimes see more than one vstudio.exe, even long time after I have closed the program.
I have one of those PC's that required the AVControlSDK=0 fix to install. Perhaps the installation didn't go as well after all. My laptop had no problem with the unmodified installer. I think I will try to make a compare between the two installations, and see if anything is wrong or missing on my stationary PC.
Also in the process list I sometimes see more than one vstudio.exe, even long time after I have closed the program.
I have one of those PC's that required the AVControlSDK=0 fix to install. Perhaps the installation didn't go as well after all. My laptop had no problem with the unmodified installer. I think I will try to make a compare between the two installations, and see if anything is wrong or missing on my stationary PC.
I have tried to compare the two installs, and they are equal right down to the last byte. So it has to be something odd with my computer setup.
But in the meantime I have "solved" it in a different way. I got myself a new PC (Core2Duo E6700, 4 GB RAM an so on). A real killer machine. And this one doesn't have any problems creating the DVD menus.
And before anyone gets a chock..... NO I did NOT upgrade my hardware because of this problem with VS. It's just a nice bonus that VS now runs much better on the new PC too.
But in the meantime I have "solved" it in a different way. I got myself a new PC (Core2Duo E6700, 4 GB RAM an so on). A real killer machine. And this one doesn't have any problems creating the DVD menus.
And before anyone gets a chock..... NO I did NOT upgrade my hardware because of this problem with VS. It's just a nice bonus that VS now runs much better on the new PC too.
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sjj1805
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A Brief explanation of "Smartscene Menus" will help you understand why they take so long.
There are 3 types of menu.
1. Text Only
2. Thumbnail.
3. Smartscene.
All of these menus can have a static background or a motion (video) background.
Let me start off by firstly providing an explanation of a DVD Menu.
Surprisingly - until you stop and think about it - it is a short video.
Superimposed upon that video are hotspots. When you move your DVD remote control (or on a computer use the mouse or arrow keys) you move from one hotspot to another. These hotspots are whereyou have images resembling navigation buttons, video thumbnails or simply text
such as play, next, previous, last.
Selecting a hotspot - or activating it - causes an event to occur such as playing the video or moving to another menu page.
Let's look at the simplest style of DVD Menu first - a Text only Menu with no moving parts. It may or may not include a background soundtrack.
This kind of menu can be created by DVD authoring software quite quickly.
The software doesn't have to do much - it simply creates all those hotspots. The duration of the video can be quite small irrespective of the length of the audio background.
Now move on to a menu with a background video. This will take the software a bit longer, it has to add that background video and also the duration of the DVD Menu will have to match the length of that background video clip.
Next style of menu is one with thumbnails. This will again take time because each thumbnail has to be created. The video forming that thumbnail has to be shrunk to the appropriate size. a menu with one thumbnail will be created a lot quicker than a menu with 12 thumbnails.
You may have also included a motion background - again time has to be allowed for that to be created.
Next thing to be considered when looking at how long it takes to create a DVD is the number of Menu Pages. A simple DVD with one Title Menu and no Chapter menus will be created much more quickly than a DVD where you have several pages of chapters to select from.
Now to get to those smartscene menus and the reason why these take sooo much lonnnnger
They are an optical illusion!
What I mean by this is that they are a cross between a Thumbnail menu and a Text Only menu. Here you have one large thumbnail and several text choices such as 'play chapter one', 'play chapter two', 'play chapter three' etc..
What appears to happen is that when you select one of those text options, the video in the large thumbnail changes.
What really happens is that you move to a different DVD Menu Page.
You don't notice because most of the video looks exactly the same.
All that is different is the video in the thumbnail and your currently selected location.
So if you have a smartscene menu that has 4 choices, and you have 4 pages of menus, in fact you will be creating 16 menu pages and not 4.
(If you were using a standard thumbnail menu with 4 thumbnails and 4 pages you would still only create 4 menu pages.)
Hopefully this will explain the mystery of why smartscene menus take so long to create.
There are 3 types of menu.
1. Text Only
2. Thumbnail.
3. Smartscene.
All of these menus can have a static background or a motion (video) background.
Let me start off by firstly providing an explanation of a DVD Menu.
Surprisingly - until you stop and think about it - it is a short video.
Superimposed upon that video are hotspots. When you move your DVD remote control (or on a computer use the mouse or arrow keys) you move from one hotspot to another. These hotspots are whereyou have images resembling navigation buttons, video thumbnails or simply text
such as play, next, previous, last.
Selecting a hotspot - or activating it - causes an event to occur such as playing the video or moving to another menu page.
Let's look at the simplest style of DVD Menu first - a Text only Menu with no moving parts. It may or may not include a background soundtrack.
This kind of menu can be created by DVD authoring software quite quickly.
The software doesn't have to do much - it simply creates all those hotspots. The duration of the video can be quite small irrespective of the length of the audio background.
Now move on to a menu with a background video. This will take the software a bit longer, it has to add that background video and also the duration of the DVD Menu will have to match the length of that background video clip.
Next style of menu is one with thumbnails. This will again take time because each thumbnail has to be created. The video forming that thumbnail has to be shrunk to the appropriate size. a menu with one thumbnail will be created a lot quicker than a menu with 12 thumbnails.
You may have also included a motion background - again time has to be allowed for that to be created.
Next thing to be considered when looking at how long it takes to create a DVD is the number of Menu Pages. A simple DVD with one Title Menu and no Chapter menus will be created much more quickly than a DVD where you have several pages of chapters to select from.
Now to get to those smartscene menus and the reason why these take sooo much lonnnnger
They are an optical illusion!What I mean by this is that they are a cross between a Thumbnail menu and a Text Only menu. Here you have one large thumbnail and several text choices such as 'play chapter one', 'play chapter two', 'play chapter three' etc..
What appears to happen is that when you select one of those text options, the video in the large thumbnail changes.
What really happens is that you move to a different DVD Menu Page.
You don't notice because most of the video looks exactly the same.
All that is different is the video in the thumbnail and your currently selected location.
So if you have a smartscene menu that has 4 choices, and you have 4 pages of menus, in fact you will be creating 16 menu pages and not 4.
(If you were using a standard thumbnail menu with 4 thumbnails and 4 pages you would still only create 4 menu pages.)
Hopefully this will explain the mystery of why smartscene menus take so long to create.
I understand fully that it will take some time to generate these menu pages, but my problem is that it only takes under 2 minutes per page on my 2.0 GHz laptop. Then a desktop PC at 2.8 GHz should not use 12 minutes to do the same.
Actually, I've noticed that if I after 2 minutes changes the priority on vstudio.exe, it instantly continues to make the next page, but if I don't change its priority, it will wait the additional 10 minutes before advancing. Then when I add my problems with hanging applications, I now believe that it is my PC that has a task sceduling problem, and not a problem with VS after all.
Actually, I've noticed that if I after 2 minutes changes the priority on vstudio.exe, it instantly continues to make the next page, but if I don't change its priority, it will wait the additional 10 minutes before advancing. Then when I add my problems with hanging applications, I now believe that it is my PC that has a task sceduling problem, and not a problem with VS after all.