Can't stop flash frame before returning to menu

johnmeyer wrote on 8/19/2004, 12:13 PM
I have created a DVD where I let the user choose whether to play all chapters, one after the other, or whether they want to return to the chapter selection menu after each chapter plays. To do the second part of this, I put twenty-four copies of the same MPEG/AC3 file into the project, and then set the chapter start and chapter stop differently for each instance, and set the end action to return to the last menu.

This works fine, but with one bug: On about half of the chapters, just before the DVD returns to the menu, I get a flash of some random frame. I cannot figure out where this frame comes from. I have tried moving the chapter begin and end markers, thinking that this might be some sort of GOP problem, but this doesn't make any difference.

I get the same results if I burn a DVD and play it on my set-top player, or whether I play using WinDVD on my computer.

This appears to be a bug. Is there a workaround?

Comments

JackHughs wrote on 8/20/2004, 8:33 AM
I have no answers, but I can sympathize. I made a similar scene selection menu based on a short video made up of groups of still photos of the family cats. The menu was designed so that the viewer could watch the entire video and see all the cats in sequence or select a given cat by name, view that particular chapter and return to the menu.

I had a similar flash frame problem on both entering the chapter and returning to the menu. However, because my video consisted of a group of stills, it was easy to determine that the flash frames were part of the either the previous or following chapter. That is, the frame itself was not random, the occurrance of the problem was random.

The most frustrating part was that the flash frames would not always show in preview and would not always show up when I would play the rendered files ditrectly from the hard drive. Often, the flash frames would only appear once the DVD was burned.

Rather than putting multiple instances of the mpeg/AC3 file in the project, I copied and pasted the initial menu button and set the in and out points for each menu button. It seems that the problem arises either way.

I am not at all sure that we are suffering from the same bug but the symtoms are certainly similar.

Jan
johnmeyer wrote on 8/20/2004, 9:25 AM
In my case the flash does not occur in the DVDA preview, but it does show up both when I play the prepared files on my computer using WinDVD, and when I burn a DVD-RW and play it on my set-top player. My flashes are only at the end of the chapter. Moving the chapter end point a few frames earlier does not make the problem go away (I originally thought it was some sort of GOP problem).

Definitely a bug. I sent the bug report to Sony but haven't heard from them yet.