No sound on burned DVD

[deonholt]

Hi there.

VS 11+

I have managed to create my 1st DVD with the menu & 5 chapters. I have made the DVD from the 5 video files I have rendered and have made a PAL DVD 4:3.

For some reason the 5 chapters don't have ANY music on them. My sound system doesn't play any music. Interesting enough, the music on the menu plays 100% correct.

Ok, I have changed the audio from stereo to surround, but did not think that it could be a problem.

The same time the DVD should have written, I have also chosen to make a copy on my HDD. Funny enough there are no files in the AUDIO_TS folder where as the VIDEO_TS folder has the video files.

How could this have happened? I obviously made a mistake somewhere?

I will really appreciate any direction here.
How important is it not to have any other programmes running while compiling & burning the DVD. Some parts of some chapters are very bad with the video stopping for a second or 2 and the picture is very pixelite.

Thanx again!
Regards,
Deon

[2Dogs]

The same time the DVD should have written, I have also chosen to make a copy on my HDD. Funny enough there are no files in the AUDIO_TS folder where as the VIDEO_TS folder has the video files.

How could this have happened? I obviously made a mistake somewhere?

Hi Deon, and sorry to hear you're having some problems!

The lack of files in the AUDIO_TS folder is not caused by a mistake on your part! I believe the folder has to be part of the DVD structure to be in compliance with the DVD standard, that's all.

Since you created DVD folders on your hard drive as well as the DVD, can you play the project from those folders? In your chosen software DVD player, WinDVD or whatever, choose "DVD from folder" as the source, and point it to the VIDEO_TS folder. It should then play the project.

I'm not sure what your audio setup is on your pc - you might have just a small pair of speakers, but even if you don't, you could use headphones. If you've used 5.1 sound, you should be able to get sound output from some of the audio outlets, often times both on the front and rear panels of your pc.

I've not bothered with surround sound myself, since my own audio system is stereo, but if I output a file using 5.1 sound it seems to play the audio OK thru my regular stereo pc speakers. Did you add the music and put it on a particular channel/channels? If so it raises the possibility that your sound system isn't hooked up to those channels. Certainly if playing the DVD on your pc with only stereo speakers, you might not hear the music in that case. I suspect the music on the menu might just be using the normal stereo channels rather than 5.1.

(it's funny though, isn't it - since the advent of surround sound, all Hollywood movies have a helicopter hovering around somewhere!)

Regarding the other issue of not running other programs whilst running VS - that depends on the programs and also on your pc. I would recommend that you disconnect from the internet whilst video editing, and that you disable any scheduled anti-virus scans, and do not have a screen saver enabled. Since Video Studio does not make full use of dual core or quad core cpu's, those cpu's seem to hardly benefit from my usual recommendation, which would be to use a dedicated video editing profile, minimising the number of active Windows services - but in other respects, such a dedicated hardware profile is still a good idea since it helps eliminate conflicts with other programs.

The problems you mention, however, with the video stopping for a second, and seeing a very pixelated image, do not sound like errors caused by interference from other programs. If they are seen when playing the DVD disc, they could indicate a poor quality burn to the DVD, which raises a whole host of other issues! You could search the forum for some recent posts on that subject, but the advice would be first and foremost to find suitable media for your particular DVD burner, and to try burning to the disc at a slower speed for the media you've experienced problems with. If the problems you report are seen when playing the DVD disc, you should be able to compare it with playing the DVD project from the DVD folders you made on your hard drive. If they play OK, it would strongly suggest a problem with the burn quality to the DVD disc.

Some brands of DVD burner, for example Liteon, BenQ, Samsung and Plextor can usefully run disc quality scans which can be helpful in identifying burning problems, and also really useful in finding the best media for your burner.

If you let us know the make and model of your DVD burner, say by looking in Windows Device Manager, I could suggest suitable blank media, but in the absence of that information, I would recommend Sony 16x DVD+R and Verbatim 16x DVD+R, usually giving good results with most burners. Cheap off-brand blank media can be a real lottery!

Good luck!

[deonholt]

Thank you very much for your reply.

Since your reply I have again played around with some options.

My discovery (burned DVD files & not DVD for these tests):
When burning from already rendered avi files which were made through "make video file", files imported to the timeline in last step before burning, there is NO audio.

But, when using VSP files which were not rendered through the "Make Video File" process, the sound is there.

Am I doing something wrong at the "Make Video File" option? I understood that the way to go is by making video files and use these files then for burning.

Any comments/suggestions?

Thanx again.
Deon

[Black Lab]

There apparently is a mismatch between your clips and your project. Please right click on a clip and list its properties here. Next, go to File>Project Properties and list them here. And finally, when you get to the burn window, click on the cogwheel icon in the lower left and list those properties here as well.

[Ken Berry]

When burning from already rendered avi files which were made through "make video file"

If you had read our suggested workflow correctly, then you would have realised that your should not be converting your project to "avi" but to DVD-compatible mpeg-2 by using Share > Create Video File > DVD. Using "DVD" as your target format is also important in this step since if you use "mpeg-2" instead, you could get an mpeg-2 file which is not DVD compliant.

[deonholt]

Understood, can see where you are going. Here we go:

Clip:
PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Upper Field First
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 9100 kbps)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 2/0(L,R)

VSP Project:
PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Lower Field First
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 6000 kbps)
Audio data rate: 384 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 3/2(L,C,R,SL,SR)

This project I have "Make Video File" to AVI. Can this be the problem?

Burn Properties @ cogwheel:
PAL (25 fps)
MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Upper Field First
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: Variable (Max. 9100 kbps)
Audio data rate: 256 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 2/0(L,R)

I trust that you can learn something from this.

Can I just ask one more thing?
I use PAL. Is this automatically 25fps. My files are MPEG.
I have noticed that AVI files are NTSC and 30fps.

Am I stuck with 25fps or can I go to 30fps?

Thank you so much for your kind help.
Regards,
Deon

[deonholt]

When burning from already rendered avi files which were made through "make video file"

If you had read our suggested workflow correctly, then you would have realised that your should not be converting your project to "avi" but to DVD-compatible mpeg-2 by using Share > Create Video File > DVD. Using "DVD" as your target format is also important in this step since if you use "mpeg-2" instead, you could get an mpeg-2 file which is not DVD compliant.

Mr Berry.
thank you, I have realised this only now.
I have done what I have done to "upgrade" my video file.
I believe the golden rule is not to change your video format.

Thanx for your kind and true words of advise.

Deon

[Ken Berry]

Your original files are already DVD compliant -- I am assuming they are from a hard disk or mini DVD video camera, as they use Upper Field First. Your VSP file properties, have changed not only the bitrate (from 9100 down to 6000) but most importantly, they have also changed the Field Order to Lower Field First.

This is the very big forbidden thing to do in video editing. If your video was captured using Upper Field First, it must remain UFF throughout the entire project -- that includes the editing stage AND the burning stage. In your case you have first converted it from Upper to Lower Field First in the Editing stage, then converted that to AVI format (though we don't know which Field Order you used for that). Then converted that, during the burning process, back to Upper Field First again, as well as using 9100 as the bitrate, instead of the 6000 your used in the project properties. I am not surprised at all that your final DVD looks so jerky!! Jerkiness is one of the main products of using wrong Field Order.

How long is your total DVD supposed to be i.e. with all 5 titles? If it is around one hour, then you could use your Clip properties throughout the entire project, up to and including the final burn to disc. To do this, make sure in File > Preferences > General, that you have ticked 'Show message when inserting first clip in timeline'. Then, when you insert the first clip with those properties in the timeline, a message box will appear asking if you want the project properties to match the clip properties. Say OK to that.

Then you do your editing. And when editing is finished, you go to Share > Create Video File > DVD, and you choose "Same as first clip" or 'Same as project properties" (they are both the same in this case). You will then have final mpeg-2s in very high quality and ready to be burned to DVD.

When you open the burning module (Share > Create Disc > DVD), you manually insert your 5 new mpeg-2s. Importantly, look at the middle icon down in the bottom left of the burning screen. There is a box which says 'Do not convert compliant mpeg files". That little box should be ticked by default. Make sure it is. That way, the burning module will not seek to convert your mpeg-2s in any way. Instead, it will burn them directly to DVD as they are.

If your project is longer than one hour -- say 90 minutes or more -- then when you have finished editing and are making a new mpeg-2 (Share > Create Video File > DVD), then change the bitrate to 6000 kbps, but leave everything else the same i.e make sure it is still Upper Field First. After that, do as I have just described in the burning module. A bitrate of 6000 kbps will allow more than 90 minutes of video to be burned to a single layer DVD with good quality.

As for your question about speed, yes PAL speed is ALWAYS 25 frames per second, and NTSC is 29.97 fps. Leave them that way -- that is the way they are meant to be!! And in fact, your mention of 30 fps (instead of the more exact 29.97 fps) makes me think that apart from changing the format from PAL to NTSC, you in fact were producing an AVI file using one of the highly compressed formats like DivX or XVid which are often set by default to NTSC, and moreover always state their NTSC speed as 30 fps...

If you were in fact doing that, then there is absolutely no wonder that your final DVD was a total disaster. You were starting off with excellent, DVD compliant mpeg-2. Then you were downgrading it to lower quality bitrate (6000) AND changing the field order. Then you were converting it from PAL to NTSC and using a highly compressed format. Then in the burning module, you were converting it once again to PAL mpeg-2 and using the original high quality framerate of 9100 and Upper Field First again...

[2Dogs]

As you can see, Deon, there's a whole lot of information in the above posts, and you can probably appreciate that there are many potential pitfalls for the unwary!

Perhaps you could let us know what make and model your camcorder is, if indeed that is your source for the video. We're guessing it's a digital hard drive or DVD camcorder from the file properties, but you could equally be taking footage from an existing DVD with those file properties.

As you correctly mention, one general rule is to minimise re-encoding in your workflow in order to maintain the highest possible picture quality. So as Ken says, with the clips you appear to have started out with, you should be able to make a roughly one hour long DVD, and if you're new to the program, I'd try to keep things simple by limiting your project to an hour in length.

The great advantage of that will be that when you have everything set correctly, Video Studio will be able to render the whole project to a DVD compliant mpeg-2 file - or in your case, if you want to break things down into "bite-size" chunks, five such files - very quickly, assuming that you are not adding lots of video filters and overlays. Having produced those five files, you can use the Suggested Workflow and insert them in the "Create Disc" step into a new, empty project to author your DVD - i.e. add menus, chapter points and so on. Burning the disc, or preferably creating DVD folders or an ISO file on your hard drive, from this project should only take a few minutes, depending on the complexity of your menus, and then actually burning the DVD disc will take another few minutes.

By contrast, if you had to re-encode the files to a lower bitrate, say 6000 kbps to enable a longer project duration, the re-encoding could take a couple of hours or more.

You state your cpu speed as 1.6GHz - if it was a Pentium M or Celeron M in a laptop, that would be OK, but I wouldn't expect to see an FX5200 used in such a pc, so is it maybe an AMD Athlon? Could be towards the lower end of the scale as far as required cpu power to run VS, so it'll be extra important for you to defrag and clean up your drive. Don't forget to check the drive for errors every once in a while too. If you do have a single core or non-hyperthreading cpu, you will also benefit from using a dedicated video editing hardware profile, which minimises the number of active windows services. Search the forum for details of how to set one up.

[deonholt]

Thank you again for your very thorough replies.

I'm filming with a Sony HandyCam which itself burns to DVD.

I will follow every suggestion to the letter and keep on trying till it's perfect.
This specific DVD is < 20 minutes.

My PC is an AMD Sempron(tm) processor 2600+ 1.61GHz.

Thank you very much again.

Regards,
Deon