Support assistance required for PAL user in the UK

[Ogmium]

I dont seem to be getting anywhere with my thread on how to set up chapters in the normal way using my PAL version of Workshop2 and tried to contact support via the web pages but could not get through because when I tried to input my serial number the server rejected it as being registered to another account. Since we run a television channel here I cant find the correct address and am kept out of direct contact with support - perhaps someone has an idea as to how to resolve my problem as we arent making any progress. I assume that Ulead have other PAL users and cant be sure that it isnt a PAL related bug since other users appear to be doing things the logical way. Thread below under OGMIUM explains problem.

Many thanks

[GeorgeW]

Have you applied all the patches for DVD WS from Ulead's support pages?

What are your original videos (before encoding to mpeg)? If they are dv .avi, you could just edit them, and keep them as DV .avi's, then use a large dv .avi in DVD WS, and let DVD WS do the encoding for you.

This will assume your drives are NTFS so that you can have a dv .avi video larger than 4gb.

[Ogmium]

We have used all the patches and are up to date as far as I know. All our files are exported as mpg2 and mastered on Pinnacle Liquid. AVI files are huge. It should not be necessary to transcode from MPg2 to avi and then compile a file of many gigs to create a normal dvd. Using mpgs the dvd space is close to the limit on an hour or so of quality video I cant use AVIs in one file. WS2 works fine with my mpgs but collapses over 500mb and I need to find out why because I cant set chapters in one continuous file. I have been getting round this by putting chapter markes on the last Iframe so that the clip plays through but this is not professional.

Has anyone else got WS2 and is using PAL? So far no takers:) If so I want to know what they are doing that I am not. Could it be a system setting of some kind? I am working with XP pro

regards

Nick

[GeorgeW]

I didn't mean to transcode from mpeg2 to .avi, I was asking what format your original files are. If they happened to be dv .avi, and you were transcoding them to mpeg2 in pinnacle, that's what I meant by not doing the transcode in pinnacle, and letting DVDWS do the transcoding.

What format are your ORIGINAL videos in (before all editing)? How did you capture them to your computer? Are they captured as mpeg2?

[Devil]

Has anyone else got WS2 and is using PAL? So far no takers:) If so I want to know what they are doing that I am not. Could it be a system setting of some kind? I am working with XP pro

I've been using WS2 with PAL for several months before it was even released (I'm a beta tester) and have had few problems even in the early beta stages. It works fine for me. However, as GW states, we haven't a clue what your doing or what you want to do. Please give us full details of your input format, your project settings, what you are doing within WS2 and so on. Then we may start getting an idea of what is going wrong.

A doctor cannot say what is wrong with you if you phone him just to say you have a headache.

[Ogmium]

I am capturing with a Panasonic DVX in some instances and in others from existing MPG2files created as PAL program streams from our library of several hundred films. Those captured by Pinnacle are captured as what they call Native Transfer AVI which are then edited on the timeline. MPG files can also be imported onto the same timeline and post production effected. They are then exported from Pinnacle as mpgs (file size aywhere from 20mb to 3-400mb) These clips have titles/fades and production effects added before being used by DVDW2

The projects that I work on are the creation of simple ten to twelve track music videos such as
www.landscapetv.com/uk/store/

These have a simple menu and a play all button. In that case there is no problem because the titles can be imported into DVWS2 individually and the playall will play the clips one after the other. The problem is how to set the chapters so that you can move from one clip to the next and back using the forward and back of the remote control.

I have got round this by putting chapter flags at the end of each clip. This makes the remote forward skip in ajerky fashion but does not go in the reverse direction and cannot be the intended way it is supposed to be done.

I am now doing a music video of a big band which started life as a live recording (using the DV camera). However this project is 90 minutes long and I want to set the chapter points after post production and I cant do that with my current work around. The clips themselves produce file sizes over the size that I can work with on DVDW2

I hope that explains what I am trying to do. It was reported above that WS2 should be able to import any size file and if that were so I could simply export from Pinnacle the finished production - drop it into DVDWS2 and put the chapter points in place. However as stated when ever the file size exceeds about half a gig my system hangsup. I would be interested to know if the person working in PAL has worked with files over 500mb because for smaller files there is deffinitely no problem but if you want full video resolution and good quality audio the files need to be quite big.

[Devil]

I can't really help you. I've created PAL DVDs from 10 - 26 Gb AVI files in DV Type 1 format with up to 20-odd chapters and various other goodies, such as multi-language sub-titles, without difficulty. I've also used compliant MPEG-2/AC3 files up to about 3.5 - 4.2 Gb, so I know WS2 works fine in both cases.

I can think of no reason why small files in the megabyte range should cause problems (I presume you mean Mb and not mb, which is a millibyte or 1/1000 of a byte ), as long as the files are conforming to the standards for MPEG-1 or MPEG-2. Why not try importing the AVI files before converting to MPEG and let WS2 do the conversion; it is possibly better at that job than the Pinnacle software, anyway!

[Ogmium]

I'll try the avi route - thanks for the confirmation.

Nick