DVD Architect Not Importing Scene Markers

j-b-l wrote on 4/26/2018, 2:55 PM

DVD Architect version 7 (build 84) does not import scene/chapter markers exported by Vegas Movie Studio Platinum version 14 (build 148).

The project was rendered using the "Render As" dialog, specifying "DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen video stream," with minor changes to the video bitrate in the "Customize Template" dialog.

The option to "Save project markers in rendered media file" was selected.

Even though it is not a text file, I can open the *.mpg.sfl file using Notepad++, and I can see that the marker titles are present there.

This is a Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit system running on an Intel i7 with 16 GB of RAM, in case that matters.

Does anyone know how to make DVD Architect import scene/chapter markers (known as "project markers" in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum)?

Is there a bug database for Magix products?

Thanks for sharing your hard-won experience.

Comments

vkmast wrote on 4/26/2018, 3:31 PM

Could not replicate using your workflow and the same build versions. Win10Pro.

j-b-l wrote on 4/26/2018, 4:02 PM

Thank you, vkmast, for running that test. I'll try some more variations to see if I can crack the code.

[update]

OK, I can't reproduce the problem, so it was probably cockpit error on my part.

One thing that causes project markers to disappear is renaming the output file. Even if the .mpg and .mpg.sfl files are renamed identically, the project markers still do not appear in DVD Architect. For example, if the files "Test.mpg" and "Test.mpg.sfl" are renamed to "Test2.mpg" and "Test2.mpg.sfl", the markers will not appear when Test2.mpg is imported into DVD Architect. This is because name of the .mpg file (still "Test.mpg") appears explicitly within the .sfl file.

⚠️ Warning: the following is an unsafe hack.

Even though the .mpg.sfl file is not a text file, I was able to edit the included file name using the hexadecimal (binary) editor, WinHex. (An alternative is the Notepad++ HexEditor plugin.) I just opened Test2.mpg.sfl in WinHex, replaced the text "Test.mpg" with "Test2.mpg", updated the 4-byte binary character count (number of characters + 1) preceding the string, and saved the file. Then, when I imported Test2.mpg in DVD Architect, the markers did appear.

 

john83318 wrote on 10/26/2018, 10:26 PM

I've been pulling my hair out for several years, wondering why this occurs and in a seemingly random way. It never occurred to me that changing the filename would hose this up. In my case, I just changed it back to the original name and the markers imported just fine. Thanks j-b-l!

OldJack wrote on 12/8/2018, 9:17 AM

my DVDA7 does not load markers but DVDA6 brings them in.  What is wrong with DVDA7?

vkmast wrote on 12/8/2018, 9:44 AM

I still cannot replicate in Win 10 either. As OldJack also has Win7 Pro ( see here), could this be an OS thing?