Timeline problem

kristieuk · Post by **kristieuk** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:55 pm

Hi, I am new and desperate!!

I have Video Studio 8. I managed (after significant effort) to capture footage from Mini DVD recorded using a Sony DVD camcorder.

I ended up with an hour of perfectly edited footage, but when I went to burn it to DVD, discovered that the DVD drive on my machine was faulty.

I had someone transfer the Ulead file onto another hide drive as my laptop had to be sent back to the manufacturer. It's all repaired, and I have the ULead file back.

However, for some reason, the images in the timeline have disappeared, although the scene times and transitions remain. I don't know how, but I have got the first scene to appear. However, in the large screen where the file plays, if I click on play project, it plays in it's entirety correctly, so it's obviously all there.

The problem I have is that when I try to burn to DVD, it only burns what is the timeline, not the whole project (although the time remains right ie 58 - just after the first scene plays through, it is black until the end).

Does this make sense? I just don't know where to go from here. I'm very new to editing, and never realised how hard it would be.

Please help!

kristieuk · Post by **kristieuk** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 2:06 pm

Actually, I have just noticed that when I right click on that first scene, and go to properties, the length is 3k+ seconds, so that is the whole project in that first scene. But the timline shows it only to be 7 secs, and the rest of the scenes are a black and white square.

I still don't undertstand why when I try to burn it, the preview of what I am burning lasts only 28 seconds, which is the actual time that the first scene lasts, and then the rest is black and silent.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 4:01 pm

Hi kristeuk,

it sounds to me that Video studio is having trouble locating the parent video clips - that's the usual cause of the blackand white bars in place of the thumbnail and filename - but ordinarily you would get a warning message about "re-linking" the clips.

From your first post, it seems that your captured footage was in one single file. That would make things easier, since you can then search your pc for a very large mpg file, and Video Studio's default name will be uvs*****.mpg, with the *** representing the date of capture followed perhaps by -001.

Assuming that you can find such a file, you then need to make sure that Video Studio can point to it, i.e. know where it is. When you open the project, you should get a relink prompt, and you can then browse to the appropriate folder and point to the file. Or you can move the file to the folder that VS thinks it's in. Have you made any recent changes to your drive - new folders or partitions? I always name my optical drives "Y" and "Z", so that they're unaffected by added hard drives and partitions.

You should read the "sticky" at the top of the forum, though, concerning the "recommended procedure". Video Studio has a bunch of often inappropriate default values, such as temporary file locations, working folders and so on. One fundamental recommendation in that procedure is to always save your whole project to a single MPEG-2 file, and to insert that into another project at the "Share >> Create Disc" step, and NOT to try burning your project directly to DVD. Your post suggests that you may be attempting to burn from a project in your timeline, which of course is exactly what the VS8 manual suggests. Even though I used to do this without many problems, it's far better, and significantly quicker, to follow the recommeded procedure.

Good luck!

kristieuk · Post by **kristieuk** » Sun Dec 04, 2005 7:25 pm

Thank you so much for that detailed reply - and thank you for taking the time to spell it all out so clearly.

I will follow what you advise, and let you know how it goes.

Thank you again.

kristieuk · Post by **kristieuk** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 7:43 am

Yikes! I have tried to relink when the relink prompt came up, and I managed to find 205 MPEG files in Ulead, then 8.0 - the first one is USV041204-001-11, and then the next -12, and then they go -002-1, -2 - 3 etc.

Then there are files USV01229-001.... - I assume these are dates?

When I preview these clips, they seem to be the invidual scenes in the timeline that I did have, but they are not in any order.

When I originally captured, it was directly from a mini DVD, and the whole project was taken from I think 3 mini DVD's in total.

I'm not sure what to do now - do I need to get each of the USV files in the same order as they appear in the complete project? This may be difficult as I think I cut out parts of individual scenes.

Would there be one place where the whole thing was saved together in one file?

Sorry if I sound dumb. I'm just frightened to play around at all in case I end up losing everything!

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 8:14 am

When I used to use VS8, and had a re-link problem, I found that once I had the re-link prompt and found where all the files were, that the first file I clicked on to re-link started a chain reaction, with all the remaining files in the project re-linking automatically. (But of course, they all had to be in that one directory...) Have you actually re-linked one file? In any case, even if it does not happen, once you have re-linked one, the next re-link message will contain the file name it is looking for, and if it is in that directory, it will find it, so click OK consecutively until all files are re-linked. The program will certainly tell you if it can't find a particular file in that directory.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:41 pm

Dear kristieuk,

it also sounds to me that you may have had "Split by Scene" enabled when you originally captured. There's a check box to the left of the preview screen in the capture step.

This will save the captured footage as separate files, based on either changes in the date and time the footage was shot (the default mode when split by scene is enabled) or into separate clips based on the video content.

If you can see lots of clips with the same date - eg USV041204-??? then that's likley what happened. A recent one hour MiniDV tape I captured was split into 328 clips!

You can turn off "split by scene" and capture everything as one big file.

You then have an option when importing the captured avi clip into your library to use a different sort of "split by scene" feature. With this, you click on the "scenes" button which brings up the "Scenes" dialogue box. You'll see a preview window and a box to the right of it with detected scenes, which would ordinarily have one entry. At the right hand end of this entry, there will be no number under the "Joined" heading. If you click on the "Scan" button, you will see all the component clips.

There are two scan options - "DV Recording Time Scan" and "Frame Content". The former mode is significantly quicker.

After scanning, you can view entries by clicking on them. (or at least their first frame in the preview window) If you wish to join consequtive clips, highlighting a clip and then clicking on "join" will join on the clip directly above it. Clicking on "join" again will join on the next clip above it in the list, and so on. (Clicking the "Reset" button will clear the scan information and join all the clips back together)

If you choose to import the scanned and split clips into your library, however, they will all have the name of the parent clip. This can be confusing! The split clips are in effect just pointers to parts of the parent clip.