Separating chapters from main film

rallyman2008 · Post by **rallyman2008** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:12 pm

We're trying to encode a DVD using a main feature and a separate very short feature so that they both appear as options on the first menu. When we brought them in as separate .m2p files although everything worked menu wise, when we tried to 'burn' the files to .iso we kept getting an error message. So we removed the short film and everything worked fine. I can only guess that the two films together were just a bit too big to fit onto one disc.

After that we encoded the two films as one .m2p with the short one at the end of the long one, but now although we can make it appear as a separate film on the first menu, we can't stop it playing at the end of the main film. How do we do that please?

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:26 pm

You can't, at least easily. I suggest you go back to the separate titles ans reduce the bitrate of the main one, so that it fits. I recommend you aim to reach 4.0-4.1 Gb for SD.

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:59 pm

As it fits on the end of the main film, I wonder why it wouldn't fit as separate?
What sizes are the two films?
What bitrates did you use?
What was the error message?

rallyman2008 · Post by **rallyman2008** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 7:47 pm

skier-hughes wrote:As it fits on the end of the main film, I wonder why it wouldn't fit as separate?
What sizes are the two films?
What bitrates did you use?
What was the error message?

When we re-exported it we put them both together and they were about 4.3

Separately they were about 4.3 and less than 200mbs

We allowed Workshop 2 to chose them the first time and then they were too big.

We've re-exported the main film (which is 82 minutes) incidentally and using bitrate calculator we set this at 6600 and it came out at 4.8

I can't remember the error message now, but I was able to search using it and it was quite a regular one which seemed to indicate that the whole file was going to be too big to fit onto one DVD.

We're encoding as a programme stream by the way and one other thing that we have done now is to change the audio setting from PCM WAV file to 224 mpeg2. It's encoding at the minute so it's fingers crossed.

We've exported a lot of programmes in the past possibly 40 or 5o and never had any problems - it's just that we want to have the small film separate on this occasion

skier-hughes · Post by **skier-hughes** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:19 am

Why not use AC3 audio, far better quality and better compatibility and a decent size.

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:56 am

"About 4.3" is too much. Aim for 4.0-4.1 Gb for reliable results.

rallyman2008 · Post by **rallyman2008** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:59 am

Thanks for the input. We did change settings last night as I mentioned, changing the PCM WAVE to mpeg2 and adjusting the bitrate so that we got just under 4.0 so that's all fine now.

I am interested though in the audio output compression. I have always used PCM without thinking, but I do seem to remember that once I did read that mpeg2 wasn't always compatable. Am I right in thinking that? We use Procoder 2 to encode and I'm not sure that that has a AC3 audio option?

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 12:51 pm

I think (not 100% sure) that if you make your settings AC-3 in WS2, you take your video file into WS2, in Edit, make sure 'Convert to disk template' is unchecked in in the video tab but checked in the audio tab, should allow you to re-encode to AC-3, without affecting the video quality.

Some older machines were fussy with audio formats but I think all new players are ok with all the formats. Certainly, I've used AC-3 @ 192 kbit/s for many years with no problems.

rallyman2008 · Post by **rallyman2008** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:01 pm

Thanks for that. Unbelievably we're still having problems.

We've reduced the two films down to a total size of 4.0gb and we're still getting the error message 8004138b.

We're baffled to be honest as we've never had any problems with encoding a single film and this is only happening when we add the second film.

rallyman2008 · Post by **rallyman2008** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 2:21 pm

If I may clarify the situation.

If we try to 'export' with just the one film then it works perfectly.

If we add the second film which is only 200mbs and still only brings the file up to about 4.0 then we get the error message 80041386 after it has produced the VOB files but before or during the production of the ISO file.