Slooow disc creation in VS 11+

[lyndonevans]

I am a new user of VS 11+ and have installed all the latest fixes. I have one of the fastest HP Pentium 4 Media Center PC's with latest graphics card and 3 G's of memory. The product performs pretty well until I do a "create disk" for a 35 minute DVD containing an MPEG home movie and several MPEG3 songs downloaded from the Internet. After 2 hours with 4% of title video conversion I am about ready to give the product back to Corel! The quality is great, but at this rate, it won't matter as my Christmas present of a DVD to my daughter of her wedding will be months late! If you have any ideas on what could cause this, please let me know. My email to Corel support contained only vague, elementary suggestions. Thanks.

[sjj1805]

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[Ken Berry]

One little thing you might want to look at is in the menu creation stage in the burning module. When you open the burning module (Share > Create Disc), you first insert your video in the burning "timeline". If you want to add Chapters, then click the Add/Edit Chapters button. Then you click next, and the page where you choose a Menu template appears. Once you have selected a template, you click on the Edit tab on the same page to select background music, change the background photo etc.

Down in the bottom left corner of the Edit page, though, is an innovation in VS11, and I have found that it slows down my burning stage enormously, and even brought it to a complete halt. Now I never use it.

There are two icons, one above the other, labelled Menu In and Menu Out. Using them is supposed to animate the transition from the menu to a selected video clip. You will see that the Menu In icon is disabled by default (circle with diagonal line through it). But the Menu Out button is enabled. And this was the culprit. Click on the icon and it brings up a choice of animations. Choose the disabling one identical to the default for Menu In. Then proceed to burn. I think you should notice a considerable improvement in the speed.

[lyndonevans]

Thanks for your advice! I tried your suggestion, but it didn't help. There are 2 possibilities that come to mind -

1. The format of my original video (MPEG2, I believe, from a VCR recording).
2. When the burning process begins, I have been assuming that the "converting video of the title" is referring to the menu background video I was using (a 1 minute clip). However, I deleted that video, then I deleted all reference to a menu, and it still comes up with that same message, "converting video of the title" and sits there for hours. Perhaps it's not hung up on the menu afterall, and is converting the full video, calling it a "title". If so, this would seem to point again to the format of the video. Why would it convert an MPEG video which was previously converted to DVD standards? I made sure I told the process not to convert videos which are compliant. I may have to try a different software package.
Thanks for your help.

One little thing you might want to look at is in the menu creation stage in the burning module. When you open the burning module (Share > Create Disc), you first insert your video in the burning "timeline". If you want to add Chapters, then click the Add/Edit Chapters button. Then you click next, and the page where you choose a Menu template appears. Once you have selected a template, you click on the Edit tab on the same page to select background music, change the background photo etc.

Down in the bottom left corner of the Edit page, though, is an innovation in VS11, and I have found that it slows down my burning stage enormously, and even brought it to a complete halt. Now I never use it.

There are two icons, one above the other, labelled Menu In and Menu Out. Using them is supposed to animate the transition from the menu to a selected video clip. You will see that the Menu In icon is disabled by default (circle with diagonal line through it). But the Menu Out button is enabled. And this was the culprit. Click on the icon and it brings up a choice of animations. Choose the disabling one identical to the default for Menu In. Then proceed to burn. I think you should notice a considerable improvement in the speed.

[skier-hughes]

To answer these questions we need the info that Steve has requested in his post. Also the answers to these would be useful as well.

How was the vhs captured?
Using what hardware/software?
What are the file settings?
What were your project settings?
What were your output settings?

DVD standards are at the same time quite small but quite large, if the vhs was captured using a dvd/vhs combined machine the input file may be 9800kbps and 702x576, your output settings may be 8,000 and 720x576.

Pentium 4's are now a bit out of date, so full specs would help. 3gb memory? Are you running vista or XP64 which utilise more than 2gb memory naturally, or do you have the 3gb memory hack installed?

MP3 files are notoriously bad, so I'd ditch those and use wav/wma instead. You can use something like cdex to convert them.
http://www.myvideoproblems.com/Tutorial ... o_WAV.html

Videos in a dvd are called titles, these can be split into chapters.

[DVDDoug]

The format of my original video (MPEG2, I believe, from a VCR recording).... Why would it convert an MPEG video which was previously converted to DVD standards? I made sure I told the process not to convert videos which are compliant.

For some reason it thinks your file is non-compliant. (Not all MPEG-2 variations are compliant.) However, whenever I've had that problem it hasn't taken "forever" to re-code. So, there may be some slight corruption in the file. It's not unusual for a file to play back OK, but to cause trouble when you try to edit or convert it. (I call this "sneaky corruption", and it can cause all kinds of weird problems.)

Are you sure it's MPEG-2? MPEG-4 can take "forever" to re-code. In general, the more compressed the format, the more likely you are to have trouble. The only fool-proof format seems to be AVI/DV (13GB per hour).

There is a FREE program called SVCD 2 DVD MPG that claims it can convert almost anything to DVD-compatible MPEG-2. SUPER is a FREE "universal" audio/video converter. Even if your file is MPEG-2, recoding it with one of these tools might solve the problem.

VideoReDo and Womble are both MPEG editors that include MPEG repair tools. Both offer free trials.

Did you edit the MPEG (cutting & splicing, etc.)? Editing MPEGs can sometimes (apparently) corrupt them. (I had to buy a special-purpose MPEG editor.)

I know it says "converting video", so the audio is probably not the problem. But, MP3s can sometimes cause trouble too. Again, the more compressed the file, the more likely you are to have problems. Uncompressed WAV files are the most reliable.

[lyndonevans]

I am running Vista Home Premium. I have an NVIDIA 7600 GS GForce graphics card. I have/used a Hauuppauge WinTV 1600 NTSC/ATSC/QAM Combo tuner to capture the video directly from a VHS player using SVHS output.

I upgraded to 3gb's of memory myself, using the memory type specified by HP.

Using another video product (old), I was able to determine that the video I'm using is MPEG-1 at 352 X 240 resolution, 24 bits audio.

Thanks for your advice.

[skier-hughes]

Mpeg1 = vcd = not full dvd, so no doubt this is why it's taking an age to convert and also I expect teh quality in the end will suffer.

[lyndonevans]

I went away and let the process run. After 4 hours, it completed and looks very good. Thanks for all your advice - now that I have a "backup" I will try them all out and re-capture the original video in WAV. However, despite the format, this software seems to have "improved" the original quality.

Thanks again!

[skier-hughes]

WAV is audio, you need to capture in dv.avi if your system allows.

[lyndonevans]

Thanks! I meant to say AVI and WAV, which sound like the basic, best way to go. I'm glad I got all your various advice before I tackled my other daughter's wedding, which is several hours long!

[etech6355]

You need to capture with the Hauppauge card in mpeg2 compliant dvd format. It's pretty easy to make a custom template with the hauppauge cards.

Never use 24 bit audio with VS, use 16bit 48khz stereo.