Unstable menus with Studio 11 plus

[Dennis Willis]

I produced a video of an amateur opera performance. It consisted of two acts; each of which fitted conveniently onto a single layer DVD. I generated a menu for each DVD using miniature scene shots plus titles. After assessing trial burns of each DVD, I went back in to modify the menu titles. On one DVD everything was exactly as I had saved it, but with the other most of the menu titles had changed. Some had reverted back to chapter numbers while others were a corruption of chapter number and my original title. This problem has occurred several times; what could be the cause?

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Dennis

When you Share Create Disc you ¡¥Add¡¦ your movies to the timeline. In your case Act 1 and Act 2.

What format are these movies in, are they VSP¡¦s or Mpeg files.???????
Did you ¡¥Add¡¦ Video files or Video Studio Project Files.??

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Dennis

And a bit more info is required

I am assuming you are adding ¡¥Projects¡¦ to the burner module.

The details of your project properties will be useful, both ¡¥Acts¡¦ should use the same properties.
From the edit timeline
File ¡V Project Properties, use your mouse to highlight the lower panel, CTRL+C to copy, CTRL+V to paste to the forum.
The total run time of both Acts will also be very useful

Whether you are in a Pal or Ntsc TV region would also help, so where are you?
Fill in your profile from the link at the top of your post.

[Dennis Willis]

Hallo Trevor, thank you for your quick response.

Originally, I imported video files into the clip archive and then onto the timeline; they were in both MPG and AVI formats. I also inserted some still photos, which were in JPG and BMP formats. Since I had used two cameras I did quite a bit of superimposing; so sometimes there would have been a mixture of formats there as well.

I work in PAL.

I went straight from the completed editing session to the burn programme.

Act 1 is 53 minutes long and Act 2 exactly one hour.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Dennis

When you say ¡§I went back in to modify the menu titles¡¨
Do you mean you returned to the Project Edit timelines?
Additional editing of the project will affect and change the chapter points.

It should be ok If you simply used the ¡¥back¡¦ button within the burner module.
So if you did not re-edit then I cannot understand what went wrong.

You appear to be adding the projects to the burner module. This may cause problems.
I would advise you to render each project to a new video file.
Use the new Mpeg video file s to burn the DVD.

As your run time is about 2 hours you will have to use 4000 kbps for the bit rate.
This will create a file small enough to fit to disc.

As an aside I would check your field orders.
The use of Avi and Mpeg clips may cause a quality problem.
Right click each clip and select properties, check the field order.
Hopefully they are the same.

If they are different, one upper and one lower, use the field order of the longest video.
If they are the same there is no problem, use that one.

Ok

Change your project properties to match these settings.
I would use:-

MPEG files
24 bits, 720 x 576, 25 fps
Lower Field First (change to match your files)
(DVD-PAL), 4:3
Video data rate: 4000 kbps
Audio data rate: 256 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio, 48 KHz, 2/0(L,R)

Open each project in turn Share¡XCreate video file¡XSame as project settings.

Start a new project Share Create Disc¡XAdd Video Files¡XUsing the files made above.

Create your menu¡¦s and burn your disc.

If you do not wish to pre-render the projects then VS will render the files in the burner module prior to burning. ( but as said earlier this process sometimes causes problems) It will use the project properties. Click the ¡¥Options Cogwheel¡¦ lower left to view the settings.

[Ken Berry]

Trevor -- I may have misread the OP, but he is not including both Act 1 and Act 2 on one DVD. Instead, as he said in his first post, each Act fits neatly on one single layer DVD (at 53 minutes and 1 hour respectively, this makes sense). So his menu problems relate to separate discs. And he should retain his original HQ settings and not drop down to LQ bitrate of 4000 kbps.

[2Dogs]

If on the other hand Dennis did wish to fit both projects onto a single DVD, and the still images he used formed a significant part of the projects (i.e. took up a significant portion of the project duration) there would be a good advantage to be gained from using variable bitrate video. Depending on the duration of the still images portion, it might be possible to get the video bitrate up to 6000kbps or so, which should result in pretty decent picture quality.

[kfenaughty]

This sounds to be very similar to my experiences outlined at the end of thread http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=31493.

I surmise Dennis is creating a chapter menu for each clip. I do not know how he is setting the chapter points, but I was using the auto-detection method, which picked up where I had put in transitions. I found that changing the thumbnails for these chapter points to a more representative scene became slower and slower for each alteration. Eventually(!) I would complete the process, but the saved project file containing the DVD menu information could sometimes be corrupted as Dennis said: titles that were mangled versions of what I had entered, or looking like "Chapter000", "Chapter001", etc. Obviously this was only apparent when re-opening the project file and going to "Create DVD" again.

Generally after about 4 chapter scene changes the slowness would become apparent.

I have reported the problem to Corel, but received the standard suggestions of:

Can you please try rendering the project file first before viewing?

While using VideoStudio, we strongly recommend that you temporarily disable all internet-resident programs such as firewall, anti-spyware tool, and other internet security applications to prevent disruption issues during the process. While editing, close all unnecessary program running.

Don't forget to update your video card driver to the latest version. And ensure that you have the latest DirectX installed.

My follow-up response to this has not been replied to. In summary I said:

This issue would take one of your testers 5 minutes to verify. I am reporting it to you so that VideoStudio is improved in the long run. If your testers find a simple solution, then great, but I think it more likely to require a patch. And with X2 now released, I guess that won't happen for 11.5

I find it frustrating that valuable feedback on their products is probably being kept away from the back-room developers by a help desk eager to maintain a high rate of "cleared" calls!

In short, Dennis, I have encountered the same problem, have resigned myself to the fact that the project files with DVD menu information can get corrupted if there are lots of chapter menu thumbnail changes, and sincerely hope that X2 didn't inherit this bug.

[sjj1805]

I produced a video of an amateur opera performance. It consisted of two acts; each of which fitted conveniently onto a single layer DVD. I generated a menu for each DVD using miniature scene shots plus titles. After assessing trial burns of each DVD, I went back in to modify the menu titles. On one DVD everything was exactly as I had saved it, but with the other most of the menu titles had changed. Some had reverted back to chapter numbers while others were a corruption of chapter number and my original title. This problem has occurred several times; what could be the cause?

Do you mean you created a DVD complete with chapters and Menus, you previewed it perhaps with a software DVD player such as WinDVD, PowerDVD, Nero Showtime etd. You decided that something needed a slight alteration so you went back into VideoStudio to make those changes. You then found that your DVD Menu pages were not as you have saved them?

If so, you must ignore the misleading message "saving project" when you exit from VideoStudio's Create disc (DVD Authoring) module and you must manually save the project. The next time you re-open that project your Menus etc will be intact.

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Ken

Thanks for that, having read the original post a little more carefully I think you are correct and Dennis does seems to be using two DVD¡¦s.

Dennis -- sorry for any confusion, the option to render the projects prior to creating the DVD¡¦s may still be your best option. Some users do experience problems when rendering in the burner stage. But I have to admit that the later versions of VS seem to be coping with this process.

[Dennis Willis]

Gentlemen, thank you for your interest and help. Since I am using a German version of ULEAD please accept that some of the expressions I am using are direct translations from the German and may not be the precise equivalent of the English version.

Here are some further observations:

1. Yes I was burning 2 separate DVDs, one for each act.
2. I physically burned 2 DVDs, assessed them and then returned to ULEAD. I like to assess the results on an "everyday" DVD player with a large screen TV to simulate how my "customers" will view my work. I went straight back into the burn facility without editing the video again.
3. Since I have had this problem before, I made a point of saving my work (CTRL S) at VERY frequent intervals during the generation of the menus.
4. I manually inserted the chapter points on to the time line before moving on to the burn facility.

I have now had a similar experience under completely different circumstances:
A. I was transcribing an old VHS cassette on to DVD. The cassette contained 3 episodes of a TV series.
B. I played the cassette into ULEAD over the composite input and saved it as a single MPG file.
C. On the time line, I deleted the unnecessary leading and trailing sections of the recording and then divided the clip into the three episodes.
D. I manually inserted a chapter marker at the start of each episode, and went directly into the burn facility.
E. I selected one of the standard visual backgrounds, cancelled movement and music, and selected a text layout.
F. I changed the size but not the type of font and then wrote the chapter titles.
G. Since I could not burn a DVD immediately I saved my work and closed the computer down.
H. The next day I went back to ULEAD to burn the DVD and found everything as I had saved it with the exception of the titles. They were gone and had been replaced with chapter numbers.

[sjj1805]

I would slightly alter your workflow as follows:

1. Create 3 separate video files one for each episode.
2. Convert your captured files to MPEG2 from the [Share] Tab and select "Create Video"
3. Clear the timeline by starting a new project.
4. Save the new (Empty) project with a meaningful name.
5. Go directly to the [Share] tab and select [Create Disc]
6. Import the 3 video files created at step 2.
7. Create your DVD Menus.
8. when you exit from the [Create Disc] (Authoring) module you will se a message to say it is saving your project. IT IS NOT and we have yet to work out what it is actually saving. herefore you must now SAVE the project from the menu bar
File | Save.

[Dennis Willis]

thank you for the suggested different workflow. I'll try it out in the next couple of days. I shall only trouble you again if it doesn't work.

Thank you all again!