VS11 burned DVD video hangs or stutters

babyleon · Post by **babyleon** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 6:18 am

Progress Report: I found a process which worked!!!

I opened my shortened project in a blank timeline and went Share>Create Video File>DV which created a large .avi file, 13.8 GB. Then I opened a new project with that single .avi file in the blank timeline. Then I rendered it to both a DVD and to a Folder, still with no menu or chapters. Both the DVD and the Folder files worked with no jerky video!

I subsequently tried the same Share>Create Video File>DV with my original, slightly longer project and that process just died on me with no substantial progress or activity after 2 hours and I had to terminate VS11 and re-start it. This same thing had happened to me several days ago and I don know why the program stalls there. I will have to do some more experimenting there to see if I can determine what is causing that.

I am currently re-editing my shortened project to be even shorter, hopefully less than one hour, and I will try to add a menu and chapters and see if that works.

I will report further when more results are available....

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 6:28 am

Babyleon... I'm not sure if you have mentioned this before but I've just noticed you have 1.5 gig RAM... Not 100% it would make a difference to your problem but you're whole system would work better if your two sticks of ram were matched. Just a tip...

babyleon · Post by **babyleon** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 6:38 am

I have four slots, two have 250's and two have 500's. Are you saying that four 500's would work better? My computer is a Sony Vaio and the specs say filling the slots the way I have is approved. But I am willing to buy two new 500's and pull the 250's if it will make a noticeable performance difference.

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 7:05 am

babyleon wrote:I have four slots, two have 250's and two have 500's. Are you saying that four 500's would work better? My computer is a Sony Vaio and the specs say filling the slots the way I have is approved. But I am willing to buy two new 500's and pull the 250's if it will make a noticeable performance difference.

There probably won't be a MASSIVE difference but XP will manage the memory better if the sticks are in matched pairs. With the orices on RAM so reasonable it's worth a go anyway and not just for VS.

When I upgraded from 1 to 2 I threw out my old 1gig stick and bought 2 matched sticks and the difference was very noticable for me.

Re-installed Sim City 4 and it was actually fun to play again!

babyleon · Post by **babyleon** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 9:02 am

I opened my new, even shorter re-edited project in a new project blank timeline and created a new DV .avi file. I inserted the resulting .avi file in another new project blank timeline and proceeded to add chapters, no menu, and to render it to a DVD and folder. But it would only proceed for about 16 minutes with 7%/22% completion and, though the elapsed time kept ticking, nothing else happened - for two hours when I had to bail out of the program. It did this two times so I bailed on that workflow. I started over and rendered the project to a DV file on a different Firewire drive. That file burned fine to a DVD and folder (no chapters). Now I am going to try adding chapters again and then try burning again from the different Firewire drive. (Maybe it was a hardware problem or maybe the chapters?) That will perhaps be determined tomorrow. All of the above, more snow and a power outage have finished me for today.

More to come.

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 9:36 am

When you finished editing...render out to a DVD compliant Mpeg file. (It's one of the main options).

To burn:

Begin a new project, with nothing in the timeline, go to Share/Burn. IN the burn modual import the mpeg file you created earlier. Create the menu and chapters. Then Burn.

Is this the work flow you have been following?

Post by **Ken Berry** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 11:53 am

Clevo -- if you look at page 1 of this thread, you will see we have been through all this several times at tedious length...

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 12:14 pm

Ken Berry wrote:Clevo -- if you look at page 1 of this thread, you will see we have been through all this several times at tedious length...

Always worth repeating...

babyleon · Post by **babyleon** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 5:40 pm

Clevo,

I have rendered to a DVD compliant Mpeg file through several different variations, empty timeline burning of same and had the same jerky video outcome. For whatever reason, the only thing that has worked at all so far is to render my convoluted project to a .avi file then render/burn that.

I am at present in the render/burn process from a .avi file with chapters.

If this is getting to be too long, let me know and I will stop posting on it.....

Thanks.

babyleon · Post by **babyleon** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 10:37 pm

I tried to render/burn the .avi file, with 51 scenes/chapters, using different Firewire drives. Once again, VS11 just stopped dead at the same point: 7%Total Progress, 22% Detailed Progress. The elapsed time kept ticking (it was up to more than four hours) and all I could do was control-alt-delete out of the program. I guess I just won't do chapters on this DVD.....

Question: Shouldn't the DV/.avi file I create from the project look the same to VS11 as one I would upload from my mini-DV camera?

Anyway, if I have any further news on this topic, I will post it.

Thanks again for all the assistance. I have learned quite a lot through this process.

Wayne Hall
Anchorage

Post by **Ken Berry** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 10:51 pm

For some reason or other, I missed your earlier mention of Firewire drives.

For what it is worth, my own use of external drives, both hard disc and burner (though in those years it was only a CD burner!

), started with Firewire enclosures. They worked fine for a while, but I am not sure for what reason, both the Firewire hard drives and burner drives started behaving erratically and the incidence of errors increased with time. The hard drives would hang for no discernible reason, and sometimes (not always) I would get a write error message (saying there was a problem in writing to the cache, even when I was only using the hard drive to draw information from). And the burner drive would similarly hang for no discernible reason, and I don't recall ever receiving an error message for that.

On looking into the matter (good old Google), I found that there has been a long-standing problem with Firewire enclosures which use particular chipsets. Various solutions were suggested, mostly revolving around flashing the drive (which if it did not work, would have ruined the drive).

It all seemed a bit too difficult to me. In the end, I transferred the burner into a USB 2.0 case, and never had a problem since. So I decided to do the same with my external hard drives as well, with again no subsequent problems. I now have 2 external DVD burner drives and 6 external hard drives in USB 2.0 cases and all work fine.

babyleon · Post by **babyleon** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:39 am

Thanks for that tip Ken. I am presently creating a DV file from my project to an external USB drive, no chapters on the first try. If that works and burns okay, I will try adding chapters and see if it hangs up. I will post the results. It should indicate if Firewire is the problem

I have specifically avoided USB drives for video as I had read somewhere that Firewire was better than USB for video. Is that not the case?

I have not had any problems with any of my several Firewire drives previous to this but then I have not dealt with such a conglomerate project previously either.

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:07 am

If that still will not work, I would try burning a smaller project, completely different from the one you are trying. You could have a corrupt clip, whether it be video or audio, that is hanging things up.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 5:00 am

Firewire is slightly faster than USB 2.0 (480 Mbps compared to 400 Mbps maxium throughput). The downside of USB is that each USB device connected to your computer at the same time, takes a portion of the overall available bandwidth, and this can slow things down a bit. But there is still more than enough oomph in it for the throughput speeds required in maintaining a smooth video transfer. Firewire devices do not have this failing.

babyleon · Post by **babyleon** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 8:14 am

Sorry for the delays in posting results.

I went ahead and rendered my original, shortened project to a DV/.avi file on an external USB drive. Then I brought it into the burn module via the add media function and burned it to a DVD and to a folder on the USB drive, still with no chapters. Worked fine. The I tried the same thing with chapters added to the .avi and burned it to a DVD and folders. When I got past the 7%/22% completion marks with no hang-ups, I thought I had made it, but when the process seemed done, I got an "Unspecified error"message. I checked the files in the folder and they played fine with chapters and all. But when I tried to play the DVD all I got was a thumping sound from the drive. Then when I tried to open the drive door, it wouldn't open all the way. Turns out, some fool computer operator had placed TWO blank discs in the drive! (That would be me...) When I got them out, one had interesting circular patterns etched on its working surface and the other seemed still pristine. I popped it back in and burned the DVD with chapters. It too worked fine. So I guess the Firewire drive thing was the problem.

I will be trying other projects, not from so many different file types, using the Firewire drives again and will report on any further similar problems, if any. As for this particular birds ID project, I don't think I will try adding a menu and will just leave it as a self-playing DVD. I have to get going on the next project which is brown bears here in Alaska - only about 12 hours of film and all from this year.....

Thanks again for all the help and suggestions. I certainly would have been totally stumped on this one without the help. And I learned some functions I otherwise would have been too scared to try.