X2 DVD Creation Time

efredian · Post by **efredian** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:45 pm

I am trying to create a DVD from a project. The system has been running now for 23 hours and it still reports only 50% total progress. Although the system shows Vstudio as running, it seems to be taking forever to do a 'building menu transition..[173/185]" step.

I am burning a DVD-R disk and saving the DVD folder and discimage. The compression on the project is set to 100 - High Quality.

The video is only 35 minutes long and contains a number of segments, overlays and a voice track and music track. It is comprised of a number of MP3 movie clips seperated by a black color with fades.

I am running on a Dell Precision, with two 3.2 Mhz dual Xenon processors with 4 Gb of RAM and plenty of disk and swap space available.

I'm trying to decide to kill the creation and start over, but don't want to waste 24 hours of processing if it is indeed going to finish.

Post by **Ron P.** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:59 pm

Something is definitely wrong. A dual Xenon system should not take anywhere near that long. Is this a HD project, possible containing AVCHD video files? It is the most demanding on PCs, however your system should handle it better than it is.

Please provide more information, such as those specified on the following page: Please Read this before posting

efredian · Post by **efredian** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:05 pm

No, it's a collections of 16mm movie clips captured on a Sony Handycam, regular definition. It has no AVCHD files. The DVD guide shows it requires 4.19 gigs and is 34 min 0 Sec long.

efredian · Post by **efredian** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:10 pm

Vidoman. I just checked and the last file created in the MENU_RESOURCE folder was created last night at 5:39.

Post by **Ron P.** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:11 pm

So we're talking DV (avi) Type-1 video clips as the original source, or MPEG-2 (DVD Compatible=meets DVD Standards, Frame sizes, Frame Rates) ?

If so I would start investigating some of the clips for corruption. The MP3s may also be causing this bottleneck. Try converting them to WAV to use in your project.

With your system it should not matter, but I have a feeling you jumped straight into the burn module (Share>Create Disc) from the editor. You might try creating your video files first (Share>Create Video File) before opening the burn module. Just another alternative to see if you have better luck.

efredian · Post by **efredian** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:23 pm

Thanks, Ron. The clips were imported from the Sony disk and are in MPG format. All of the voice track mp3's were split from the video imports. The music tracks are either mp3's or smartmusic.

I just killed Vstudio and will reboot and try again.

I used autochapter to create chapters and it created a bunch. I made reduce the number of chapters in the next try.

Again, thanks for the prompt replies.

Black Lab · Post by **Black Lab** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 9:42 pm

it seems to be taking forever to do a 'building menu transition..[173/185]" step.

The menu transitions can cause problems. I would turn them off and try burning again to see if that is the problem.[/quote]

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 9:47 pm

From your description, it sounds to me more that you have a problem in the menu creation/burning phase of the burning module. One little thing you might want to look at is in the menu creation stage in the burning module. When you open the burning module (Share > Create Disc), you first insert your video in the burning "timeline". If you want to add Chapters, then click the Add/Edit Chapters button. Then you click next, and the page where you choose a Menu template appears. Once you have selected a template, you click on the Edit tab on the same page to select background music, change the background photo etc.

Down in the bottom left corner of the Edit page, though, is an innovation since VS10, and I have found that it slows down my burning stage enormously, and even brought it to a complete halt. Now I never use it.

There are two icons, one above the other, labeled Menu In and Menu Out. Using them is supposed to animate the transition from the menu to a selected video clip. You will see that the Menu In icon is disabled by default (circle with diagonal line through it). But the Menu Out button is enabled. And this was the culprit. Click on the icon and it brings up a choice of animations. Choose the disabling one identical to the default for Menu In. Then proceed to burn. I think you should notice a considerable improvement in the speed.

The other thing you might want to think about is leaving the quality slider alone at its default setting of 70. Essentially, in my many years of video editing, I just never increase that. Some people swear by it, however. Essentially, the default setting represents an 'ideal' balance between good quality and time taken to encode. Increase the quality setting and you start exponentially increasing the time taken to encode. This could also be part of your problem. In the past, people with your problem find that setting the slider to somewhere below 100 e.g. at 95 or 90, improves the speed considerably. And if your video is derived originally from 16 mm film, then I would also have to add that you should bear in mind the old saying about trying to make silk purses from sows ears. To me, using 100 for such material is vast overkill. The video will at best be only medium quality in digital terms, and you won't be able to improve on that.

But like Ron, with your computer set-up, you should normally be able to use 100. That is what makes me think it might be more a question of the menu-out transition I referred to above.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 10:31 pm

Something is badly amiss!

Whilst I fully agree with Ron and Ken's suggestions, I would also add one more.

You have already said that you are generating both DVD folders and an ISO file. I would not also try to burn directly to the DVD disc, but do so later either from the DVD folders or the ISO file.

I realise that your reported snag in the output process is happening before any disc burning, but I would consider having disc burning as a separate step to be a sensible precaution.

On the system you describe, I would expect the project to be rendered in real time or better, unless you've used a ton of video filters, which can reduce even the mightiest system to a crawl. When you try it next, you might run Windows Task Manager in the "Performance" tab to see what kind of cpu activity you're getting during the output process.

If the mp3 files do indeed prove to be the cause, which is possible, since VS is quite picky about the type of mp3's used, the usual advice would be to use a third party program such as the excellent and widely used freeware Audacity to convert them to .wav files before using them in your project. That almost invariably solves the problem.

I would also add that 4.13Gb seems too large for a standard definition DVD only 34 minutes long, unless the menu is huge. There's a limit to the maximum video bitrate for a DVD, which I think would ordinarily lead to a 34 minute project being less than 3Gb.

If Ken's suggestion re the menu animation feature doesn't help, you might look to simplifying the menu. After all, for a 34 minute video, I would have thought you shouldn't need more than a dozen chapter points max.

Since you are using mp3 files as your audio sources, there would be no reason to use anything other than compressed audio in your output, but in view of the short project duration, you could probably even opt for LPCM without exceeding the 4.35Gb disc capacity, even when using the maximum permissible video bitrate.

Also read this sticky by Devil

http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php ... 434849d580

before I incur the wrath of our man in Cyprus!

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 2:50 am

efredian wrote:Thanks, Ron. The clips were imported from the Sony disk and are in MPG format. All of the voice track mp3's were split from the video imports. The music tracks are either mp3's or smartmusic.

I just killed Vstudio and will reboot and try again.

I used autochapter to create chapters and it created a bunch. I made reduce the number of chapters in the next try.

Again, thanks for the prompt replies.

Did you also use the Smart Scene menus - these are the menus that VideoStudio seems to default to when you first get to that page.
If so please view:
Why do Smartscene menus take so long to create?

efredian · Post by **efredian** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 12:56 pm

Thanks to you all for the tips. What I ended up doing was to create an mpg file from the project and use that to create the disc. It took only about 1/2 an hour to render the mpg and about an hour to actually create the DVD.

The only problem this presented was that I had to manually go in to create the chapters. When using the vsp to automatically create the chapters VS was dead on. When using the mpg it missed most chapter starts.

I'll check out the other advice about the 'menu out' selection and the smartmenus.

I'm sure that the problem was occurring during the meunu creation step, not the actual DVD iso creation or burning.

As for the compression issue, the suggestion that the source material is pretty poor is dead on. My intention in using 100 for the quality was to not degrade it any further with compression artifacts. It may be overkill, but on a dual dual-Xenon box, the horsepower should be there to do it.

Again, thanks to everyone for the prompt responses. If I discover anything else, I'll be sure and post it.

Ed F.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 3:18 pm

Happy days!

Regarding the "speed - quality" slider, and the default setting of 70 - my understanding is that this controls the motion research parameter of the encoder, and that setting it to 100 might very slightly increase sharpness at the expense of the smoothness of any motion in the video. I used to always set it to 100 but these days leave it at the default of 70, which gives a good balance between sharpness and motion. To be honest you would be hard pressed to notice any difference unless you used a very low value for the slider setting.

I'm also happy to note that email notifications appear to have been fixed, and I don't get the debug error screen when replying to a post without having first logged on to the forum. Steve, Ken, Ron and all the other wise men must be mightily relieved! Next up - an AVCHD patch!

Post by **Ron P.** » Sun Dec 21, 2008 3:37 pm

2Dogs wrote:Happy days!

I'm also happy to note that email notifications appear to have been fixed, and I don't get the debug error screen when replying to a post without having first logged on to the forum. Steve, Ken, Ron and all the other wise men must be mightily relieved! Next up - an AVCHD patch!

Yep Steve got it fixed early this am. It was an issue with the cookies settings. Once that was corrected, the constant log-in and debug errors went away...