Comments

ScottW wrote on 2/7/2005, 6:58 AM
You can't set frame accurate chapter points. A chapter point must be on a GOP which will typically contain 15 frames - as a result your chapter point could be as much as 1/2 second off in either direction. I guess if Vegas could tell the mainconcept encoder that it needed to start a new GOP because it encountered a chapter point on the timeline, that would be one solution - but as far as I know, Vegas doesn't have this level of communication with the encoder.

If you set the I frame value on the video options tab to 3 then you can get more accurate, but at the expense of much larger files - the only time I usually lower the I frame value is on menus where I'm setting loop points (when authoring with DVD Lab Pro).

--Scott
johnmeyer wrote on 2/7/2005, 9:20 AM
This is a bug in how Vegas and DVDA interact, as already described by Scott. The solution would be for both Vegas and DVDA to always start a new GOP whenever there is a marker or region boundary. I don't know if Sony plans to do this in the next release. IMHO, this should be high on the list, because it makes your DVD productions look schlocky (technical term).
NibooNine wrote on 2/7/2005, 10:14 AM
Yes it is really annoying and I've wasted alot of time trying to fix it - I even tried offsetting the chapter start point about a second ahead but that didn't work. It's a short film but it would have been nice to have the chapter points just the same. Thanks anyway to both of you for your help.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/7/2005, 10:22 AM
Unfortunately, I haven't found a reliable workaround, nor has Sony posted anything. It is more than a simple annoyance: The resulting DVD is simply not professional.
jeremyk wrote on 2/7/2005, 3:26 PM
I think there is an additional issue here for NTSC DVDs.

DVDA uses non-drop NTSC timecode only, which means that markers and subtitles will be increasingly off as the video progresses if the Vegas project is set for drop-frame timecode.
Chienworks wrote on 2/7/2005, 4:14 PM
I don't see how that would make any difference. When you place a marker, you've placed it at a specific frame in the video. All that different timecode methods will do is change how that timecode is displayed, but it will still always refer to the same frame.
jeremyk wrote on 2/7/2005, 5:20 PM
Ooops. You're quite right -- I just tried it out. I guess I was tricked by the subtitle bug, which I assure you does exist.
Flack wrote on 2/7/2005, 6:22 PM
This is why I use DVDLP because you can set it to frame index and your chapters are always where they should be.


Flack
dsf wrote on 2/7/2005, 9:03 PM
In Adobe Encore, if you set the chapter point before you transcode (i.e., in the AVI file), it will make a new GOP at that point and you get frame accurate chapter markers.
Chienworks wrote on 2/8/2005, 4:02 AM
Maybe once again i'm odd here, but i really haven't seen this as a problem. Generally, wherever i'm going to put a chapter point in, there is a pause in the flow of the video. Often there's a fade to black for a second or so, or the next scene starts with an establishing shot rather than immediate action. I set the chapter start points about a second after the change, before anything has happened that would be missed, and never have any problems.

Actually i got the idea from watching Hollywood DVD releases. It seems like a lot of the big titles do the same thing.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/8/2005, 1:25 PM
I'm producing several DVDs each day. I just did one that had about twenty chapter stops and almost every one of them exhibits this problem. If you fade to black at the end of one scene and then fade up from black at the beginning of the next scene, and place your chapter marker at the event boundary, you will see (hear) the problem almost every time.