Very slow thumbnails selection in DVD chapters menu

bblobby50 · Post by **bblobby50** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 3:10 pm

Hello,
I recently had a very very slow experience when creating DVD disk with large chapters menu

I first create the video MPEG2 file (3Gb / 1,5 hour)
Then I import the file in the "create DVD disk" part of an empty project.

I manually add 50 chapters and get a 6 pages chapters menu (with a 9 thumbnails a page template)

But in the next step, as all my chapters begin with a black screen (I use fade to black to separate chapters)
I want to change the thumbnail for every chapter...

There begin the trouble...
The first thumbnails selection are very fast (1 or 2 seconds) but seems longer each time...
after 10 chapters I need more than 1 minute... and the 25th thumbnail selection needs around 5 mn !!
I finished once the job with 30 chapters, having a coffee between each clic... but for 50 chapters I could not...

I re-installed UVS11+, I updated DirectX 9.0C with 07nov patch as I read in the forum...
I did open a question at Ulead (Corel) Support but was answered "3 Gb file is so big... use more memory"
Finaly I used an old version of DVD Movie Factoy 4.0 which can handle without any problem this project.
Any idea would be welcome.

cpagonis · Post by **cpagonis** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 1:37 am

I am having a similar problem. I recently upgraded from VS9 to VS11.5Plus. Using VS11.5 Plus I rendered a 58minute dvd compliant file (avi to mpeg). The more chapters I add, the longer it takes to execute any task whether related to the chapter, ie changing thumbnail image and chapter text, or not. Infact everything to do with DVD authoring is crawling to a stop. I only have 20 chapters in the clip! VS11.5 is freezing constantly (task manager regularly reports the program as not responding). I cannot preview my menus and the program always hangs when I try any kind of burn. I have tried with and without motion menus but the result is the same. Each time I re-open the project it takes a long time to load. The same clip works happily in VS9 and I managed to complete the project with that, but with inferior looking & behaving menus.

The video editing part of the software works fine. I have lost a week trying to sort this and will probably lose my wife as she is fed up of me being on the computer 24/7 trying to resolve this.

Anyone got any ideas?

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 1:43 am

bblobby50 wrote:.....
But in the next step, as all my chapters begin with a black screen (I use fade to black to separate chapters)
I want to change the thumbnail for every chapter...

There begin the trouble...
The first thumbnails selection are very fast (1 or 2 seconds) but seems longer each time...
after 10 chapters I need more than 1 minute... and the 25th thumbnail selection needs around 5 mn !!.......

Why not change your approach and instead of starting a chapter with a fade from black - instead - end a chapter with fade to black. This way you would not have to alter any of the thumbnails because they would start at the beginning anyway.

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:20 am

50 chapters seems exsessive IMHO for a 1.5hour video. That's a chapter for every 1 minute & 45 seconds of video

May I ask why so many chapters?

Just curious

bblobby50 · Post by **bblobby50** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 12:35 pm

Thanks sjj1805 for your advice.. I will use it if I cannot manage the trouble (but i would prefer starting chapters in the mile of black fade).
Clavo is right, 50 chapters for 1,5H was for testing purpose, but my real need was 50 chapters for 3 Hours (my kids's video, very shorts sequences around 3 mn each) but as cpagonis could experience it, and as I said to Corel Support (where I posted a call) it is easy to reproduce the problem even with a 30 Mb film during 30mn. if you add 30 chapters, changing thumbnails is longer and longer each thumbnail (more than 90s for the 30th)... And you don't get the problem with DVD Movie Factory... So I hope developper can fix it... I let you know the result.

cpagonis · Post by **cpagonis** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 9:23 pm

Dear all,
My video is a collection of dances, separated by 3 seconds of black colour. I wanted the transition from the end of one dance and the entry into the other to be gentle, so I have a 'fade to black' transition on either side of the inserted black colour. Each chapter by default starts onblack screen. I then need to scrub through the clip to search for an interesting frame to represent the dance in the thumbnail on the menu. This doesn't sound too complex, so why can't VS11.5 cope with it but VS9 treats it like a walk in the park?

I have often debated whether to buy a separate DVD authoring package, but always feel that I will be spending money twice. VideoStudio and Movie Factory appear to be the same product but with different emphasis. Is this a right or wrong assumption?

bblobby50, you say that Movie Factory can cope with your demands. If so, why use VS? Do you recommend I purchase it?

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 3:33 am

cpagonis wrote:.........you say that Movie Factory can cope with your demands. If so, why use VS? Do you recommend I purchase it?

Although the DVD Burning parts are similar the easiest way of describing these two programs is this.

Think of VideoStudio as being a program containing two sections.
Section 1 - Editing
Section 2 - DVD Authoring

Using that as a basis for comparison DVD MovieFactory only contains
Section2 - DVD Authoring.

Some people want to edit, others do not. You select the program best suited to your needs.

cpagonis · Post by **cpagonis** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:52 am

Thanks for the response sjj1805.
I appreciate the superficial difference between the two products but what I am unclear about is performance. If I have VS do I need DVDMF? Is the DVD authoring within VS11.5 actually DVDMF? If the DVD authoring module integrated within VS11.5 trips up and hang on my project will the stand alone version of the software also do the same? Is the difference between the two just content or actual programming and performance? This is why I asked bblobby50 the question: why author with VS11x if he found DVDMF to cope better?

If the answer is that the two are the same in looks, content and performance then I may have to look to another product for DVD authoring.

By the way I am running Windows XP Home (SP2) on a 3GHz Pentium 4 machine with 2GB RAM and 120GB HDD. I have both VS9 and VS11.5 loaded on my C drive. All my projects and files are stored on external HDDs.

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:21 pm

No. You are able to do more with MF than VS when it comes to authoring. On the other hand you can do more with VS than MF when it comes to editing. The two compliment each other.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 6:45 am

For example you can do this with MovieFactory but you cannot do this with VideoStudio.

cpagonis · Post by **cpagonis** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:33 am

Thanks guys, teh results look good and I am tempted to buy DVDMF.

I downloaded the trial version and noticed a much faster performance, but then again it was the bare minimum program with limited functionality. Frustratingly it did not allow me to save the edited chapter thumbnails between sessions so I was not able to exactly reproduce the conditions that caused VS11.5+ to stop responding. I appreciate it has more bells and whistles but I still cannot gauge whether the performance of the software will be better than the integrated module in VS11.5+, ie that the execution of each instruction doesn't slow the program to a crawl or halt each time I add and edit more chapter points, as witnessed by myself and bblobby50.

Initial signs are that it will not crash on me but I have no assurances. However I may still take the plunge and invest in it.

Cheers

bblobby50 · Post by **bblobby50** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:39 pm

Well... I do not use DVDMF because... I only got 1 licence for UVS... And I thought I could manage all the process with a single product. But It's also because I like to understand everything that I would like to understand why there is such a big performance difference between so close products... (I hope the UVS developpers can fix it and make this nice software better)

Post by **Ken Berry** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:54 pm

Évidemment Vidéo Studio n¡¦était pas inventé en France parceque ce qui n¡¦est pas clair n¡¦est pas français!!!

The two programs were never intended to be identical. Video Studio is essentially an video *editing* program which just happens to have a pretty good video authoring module incorporated. Movie Studio is meant to be a full *authoring* program, and it just happens to have a basic video editing capacity. The idea was to allow people who regarded either video editing or authoring as the most important aspect to them, still to have the capacity to do the other (authoring or editing) in the same program. But neither was ever meant to have exactly the same capacity as the other. And I doubt whether this will ever happen...

bblobby50 · Post by **bblobby50** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:11 pm

I can understand that the two products do not have same authoring capacity, but with a common functionnality (changing chapters thumbnails) I would have thought Ulead would have re-use part of the code, and so performance would have been near... that's why I am a bit amazed when I see so big difference...

jeffy · Post by **jeffy** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 10:22 pm

I also noticed that as you move through the chapters, it takes longer for the start position box to appear...Also, the preview window doesn't show the movie, just black. but setting the timer does work even though you have to guess at the time (it's from the beginning of the chapter, also). I also had problems making dvd folders and iso's, with the program freezing. I found that if after it froze I went to my computer->properties->advanced->performance->settings->advanced->virtual memory->change (really?) and look at memory usage, i found that the system was using up to the amount of pagefile that I had allocated, so I boosted the size until it stopped crashing. it's at 8192mb now.

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Very slow thumbnails selection in DVD chapters menu

Very slow thumbnails selection in DVD chapters menu

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