Operation Aborted?

VitaminEJO · Post by **VitaminEJO** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:17 pm

I tried making two dvds (one with two movies (I did it with another dvd that held two movies and it worked fine) and another with a few episodes of a TV show). Both times when the files are being converted, at about the hour and ahalf mark the 'operation aborted' window pops up when I havent even clicked on the 'stop' button. Both were being burned at long play (180 minutes) and both were around 4gb in size when the disc was 4.4gb.

Anybody know why that keeps happening?

Should note that between the two dvds, I made another dvd with episodes of a TV show with no problem at all.

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:19 pm

Your original file may be corrupt. (It's not unusual for a file to play OK, but cause trouble when you try to edit or convert/re-code it... I call it "sneaky" corruption.)

Your file may have been corrupted during capture (This could happen if you were multitasking while capturing, etc.). And apparently, some formats can become corrupted during editing.

What format is your original file? Did you edit it? (See the Read This First... post for the information we might need.)

VitaminEJO · Post by **VitaminEJO** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:30 pm

The format is AVI, but the compression for the ones that I tried burning that failed says XVID and the others that worked are DIVX. Im not sure if all the ones that failed were XVID, but the random ones I checked (3-4 of the episodes then both movies) were all XVID under compression.

Would it help if I used Videostudio to convert the files? Only because I want to take the DVD-R discs I have now and turn the files on them into actual DVD's that can be played in DVD players (right now I can only play the discs in a computer, since they are more or less "data discs")

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 11:35 pm

the ones that I tried burning that failed says XVID and the others that worked are DIVX.

That's probably it. Both of these formats seem to cause lots of trouble, as do all of the highly-compressed formats (MPEG-4, WMV, MOV, etc). These formats don't cause trouble for everyone, so it probably has something to do with the format variations.

Would it help if I used Videostudio to convert the files?

That's certainly worth a try! As a first-pass, try converting to MPEG-2 with the same settings (bitrate etc.) that Workshop uses for "long play". That way, Workshop won't have to re-convert it. That will save you time, and it will prevent any additional quality loss from the extra conversion.

And, if Video Studio can't do the conversion, try SUPER or SVCD 2 DVD MPG (Both FREE!!!). SUPER is kind-of a screwy program, but it got me out of trouble a couple of times. I've never actually used SVCD 2 DVD MPG, but it claims to convert almost anything to DVD-compatible MPEG-2.

For future reference...
I assume that your video capture hardware/software* can capture to MPEG-2 or AVI/DV. DV seems to be the most reliable format. (At 13GB per hour, it's less-compressed.) And, it seems to be the only format that can be reliably/easily edited and transcoded.

MPEG-2 is the 2nd best format, since it's already DVD compatible (assuming the correct settings). If your capture device has a built-in hardware MPEG encoder, this can work quite well with one possible exception. MPEG-2 can sometimes be "difficult" to edit too. I have an MPEG-only capture card, and I had to buy a special-purpose MPEG editor.

But, if DivX is working for you that may be the way to go. We are all working with different hardware, different file-types, and with different types of projects and project-goals. So, we all have to find a procedure that works for our situation...

* I am assuming that you captured these programs yourself. But, if you are downloading these files them from the Net, and you have no control over the capture or format, then SUPER will probably be very useful to you.

VitaminEJO · Post by **VitaminEJO** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 5:49 pm

I tried converting the files using both Videostudio and that Super program, but both times the converted files ended up having no audio. Not sure what happened with it.

I checked the format of two movies I burned, and two of them are XVID so that peeves me off more that those two XVID movies got burned but anything else in the XVID format fails to burn (usually around the hour/two hour mark after the video conversion is nearing completion).

DVDDoug · Post by **DVDDoug** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:33 pm

OK, Let's try this...

Can SUPER play the file with audio? If so, it can probably transcode it. Try converting the audio-only to WAV (48kHz, 16-bit). If that works, you can use that "extracted" WAV file as your audio.

VitaminEJO · Post by **VitaminEJO** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:43 am

Figured the no audio problem out. Originally using Videostudio I just tried converting the AVI movie file. Second time around I took the movie file, put it into Videostudio as if I were going to edit it, and saved it as a project and converted the project. Audio came out fine doing that.