Here’s an oddity!
A friend with a digital still camera asked if I could convert some AVI files to a DVD. She wanted nothing extra, just the ability to view the moving clips of a wedding on DVD.
Warning her that not all AVI files are the same, I promised to give it a go.
I downloaded the clips (about 20 minutes) onto my hard drive and opened VMS 8.0d. VMS seemed quite happy with both the video and audio codecs and reported the video was 640480x24 JPEG at 30fps. The audio was 11,024Hz 8bit mono uncompressed.
The render settings were put at 720x576 with 25.00 PAL. My friend was not bothered by the small black border. She wanted no transitions, effects or “any of the clever stuff”. The only special request was to rotate some clips that she had shot in portrait mode.
The job seemed straight forward and I put it all on the timeline. After rotating the 3 or 4 affected clips I left it to render 19min 55sec of clips whilst I watched TV. The only changes I made were to add 4 markers to help my navigation. There were no other modifications to the imported clips whatsoever.
An hour later I returned expecting to kick off DVD Architect and burn the DVD. The screen was full of error messages and when I had OK’d everything Windows XP closed VMS down and was so busy tidying itself up that I had to reboot.
Suspecting a damaged clip, I used a tactic I have developed before with another video editing package. I split the timeline roughly into two and rendered each half separately. Surprisingly, each half rendered OK. So I put them back together.
The render failed again. This time I was more observant and noticed that failure occurred at 95%. This related to the second last clip, which I removed. It worked. So I put it back, it failed again. I then rendered this clip on its own – perfect. Putting it back. I trimmed a few frames from the ends of the clip as well as the adjacent clips. Still failed at 95%.
The DVD would have to do without the offending clip. Having put so much work into it I decided to add a short title clip: “Jack and Jill’s wedding.” Amazingly it failed at 93% this time.
By this time I was suspecting the length of the movie was the problem, and calculated that if the movie was under 18mins and 50 seconds or thereabouts, it might work. So I edited one of the longer clips down (it needed it) to make a movie of 18 mins and 48secs. This renders OK and my friend now has the movie she wants.
I remain intrigued. Has anyone any idea why this length of 18:50 or so is critical? The project was easily edited to this length. What if it needed to be longer? Not being very familiar with DVD Architect could I render two or more pieces and join them in DVD Architect?
Anyone out there with similar experiences and knows of a fix.
SVT
A friend with a digital still camera asked if I could convert some AVI files to a DVD. She wanted nothing extra, just the ability to view the moving clips of a wedding on DVD.
Warning her that not all AVI files are the same, I promised to give it a go.
I downloaded the clips (about 20 minutes) onto my hard drive and opened VMS 8.0d. VMS seemed quite happy with both the video and audio codecs and reported the video was 640480x24 JPEG at 30fps. The audio was 11,024Hz 8bit mono uncompressed.
The render settings were put at 720x576 with 25.00 PAL. My friend was not bothered by the small black border. She wanted no transitions, effects or “any of the clever stuff”. The only special request was to rotate some clips that she had shot in portrait mode.
The job seemed straight forward and I put it all on the timeline. After rotating the 3 or 4 affected clips I left it to render 19min 55sec of clips whilst I watched TV. The only changes I made were to add 4 markers to help my navigation. There were no other modifications to the imported clips whatsoever.
An hour later I returned expecting to kick off DVD Architect and burn the DVD. The screen was full of error messages and when I had OK’d everything Windows XP closed VMS down and was so busy tidying itself up that I had to reboot.
Suspecting a damaged clip, I used a tactic I have developed before with another video editing package. I split the timeline roughly into two and rendered each half separately. Surprisingly, each half rendered OK. So I put them back together.
The render failed again. This time I was more observant and noticed that failure occurred at 95%. This related to the second last clip, which I removed. It worked. So I put it back, it failed again. I then rendered this clip on its own – perfect. Putting it back. I trimmed a few frames from the ends of the clip as well as the adjacent clips. Still failed at 95%.
The DVD would have to do without the offending clip. Having put so much work into it I decided to add a short title clip: “Jack and Jill’s wedding.” Amazingly it failed at 93% this time.
By this time I was suspecting the length of the movie was the problem, and calculated that if the movie was under 18mins and 50 seconds or thereabouts, it might work. So I edited one of the longer clips down (it needed it) to make a movie of 18 mins and 48secs. This renders OK and my friend now has the movie she wants.
I remain intrigued. Has anyone any idea why this length of 18:50 or so is critical? The project was easily edited to this length. What if it needed to be longer? Not being very familiar with DVD Architect could I render two or more pieces and join them in DVD Architect?
Anyone out there with similar experiences and knows of a fix.
SVT