Markers causing LG DVD player to skip

LivingTheDream wrote on 3/22/2009, 10:14 AM
Here's a little problem I experienced that appears to be related to the scene markers that is showing up on my LG DVD player but not on my Samsung DVD player. I searched the forum and didn't find anything on this.

But first since I'm new to Vegas and to the forum, let me take a minute to bore you with some background info on myself. I started out life using Pinnacle Studio 9 and then upgraded to Avid Liquid 7 at the time Avid bought Pinnacle. Since Avid has since driven a stake through the heart of Liquid and who knows what the replacement is going to be like or when it will ever be available and I feel that Avid in general has been jerking their Liquid customers around, I decided to download the Vegas Pro 8.0 trial to see what it was like (Also tried contacting the Speed Edit and Magix Video Pro X people this past month but had bad results). I completed a project in Vegas during this past week and found there are many things I really like about it. So I took advantage of the discount being offered and now here I am.

Back to the issue. I found that when I leave the box "Save project markers in media file" checked when rendering out the audio file that goes with the mpeg video file, the burned DVD out of DVD Architect will skip when it comes to a marker when played on my LG DVD player (but not on the Samsung player). It's an LG model V194H. The video actually jumps ahead a couple of frames or so. And when I render the audio file with Save Markers unchecked then it's fine with this player. Doesn't matter if it's an AC3 or a wave file.

Has anyone else experienced this with any set top DVD player? Is this a known bug in Vegas that can affect some players? Or is unchecking Save Project Markers the correct way to render an audio file?

Thanks in advance for any advice on this!

Steve

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 3/22/2009, 6:08 PM
Haven't heard of this -- but the way to export project markers as dvd chapter points is in your mpeg-2 video file -- no need I know of to export them with your AC-3 audio too.

Try unchecking the "export media markers" with the audio. Does it fix the behavior?
blink3times wrote on 3/22/2009, 9:27 PM
Yet another Liquid user bites the dust. I came here from Studio9/10, Liquid7 a long time ago... haven't looked back since. Once you get up to speed with Vegas.... then I'm quite sure you too will be saying the same thing. It takes me 1/2 as much time and energy to do a project in Vegas as it did Liquid. With Liquid it always felt like work. Vegas on the other hand makes it fun and easy.

It just as well you got out of it anyway. If you think this "nexgen" (if it EVER comes out) is going to be ANYTHING like Liquid then you would be sadly mistaken. It'll be little more than a studio on steroids. When the death of liquid was announced..... there was a reason why they were hinting that those heavy into Liquid should start thinking about getting into MC instead.

Can't say I have ever seen this before. I'm running LG.... a BD instead of dvd though. But I also run a Plextor DVD burner.

I will say that it's usually incompatible audio that makes things skip. What template are you using? Any customizing or are you using the ready made templates? I take it you're using DVDa PRO (as opposed to dvda "studio").
LivingTheDream wrote on 3/22/2009, 10:37 PM
musicvid, thanks for your reply. I don't see a setting called "export media markers". Is this the same as Save Project Markers in Media Files found on the Render As screen? If it is, then yes that's the one I mentioned in my post that I had unchecked before rendering the audio file and it did fix the skipping problem on the LG player.
LivingTheDream wrote on 3/22/2009, 11:19 PM
blink - thanks for your post. I am using DVDA Pro, version 5.0a.

I did customize the DVD NTSC Video Stream template by checking the VBR 2 Pass box and setting the bit rate to 7,800K. I used it to create .mpg files. I see there's also a template called DVD Architect NTSC Video Stream but I don't see any difference between this one and the one I used. But is there some type of difference in it that would make it the best choice when working with DVDA Pro? Maybe I should use that one instead?

For rendering the audio I used the Microsoft Wave template and selected 48kHz 16 bit stero PCM from the list. Then I also tried creating an AC3 Pro audio file. On that template I changed the data rate to 448 and selected Save Data in Intel Byte Order. Both of these audio files caused the frame skipping problem on the LG player. So I think there must be some type of marker being saved in the audio file when Save Project Markers in Media File is checked. And then this LG player is adversely affected by having scene markers in both the video and audio files that get muxed.

Shoot, I don't know. I'll just make sure I have Save Project Markers unchecked when rendering the audio file.
blink3times wrote on 3/23/2009, 3:36 AM
Strange.

I don't see anything illegal with your template customizing. But if leaving media markers unchecked solves the problem then that's obviously the way to go. It would be nice to know why that's happening though.
farss wrote on 3/23/2009, 4:02 AM
I've not seen a problem specifcally related to markers but I have seen other problems which might help explain what is going on.

By default Vegas inserts an I frame at every marker. This is a good thing. A Marker will be used in DVDA is create chapter points that the player can be required to jump to or naviate to. If that's not an I frame then the player will not be able to decode the frame and will instead jump to the nearest I frame i.e. you chapter markers will not be accurate. Nothing worse than having your video play a few frame before a cut.

The following is speculation.
An I frame is a full frame of video with only DCT compression i.e. it uses the largest amount of data. The preceeding frames will be only B or P frames and if there's little to no motion in the video they will only use a small amount of data. How small is determined by the minimum bitrate setting if using VBR.

What I have seen happen with at least one DVD player and I'm pretty certain it was an LG is large jumps in the bitrate causing the player to stall or stop. This problem was fixed by making the minimum bitrate around 1/3rd the average bitrate. I suspect doing this might cure the issue you are having, the default minimum bitrate set in Vegas is too low from my experience. It works mostly but can lead to problems like this.

As far as I know it makes zero difference if you insert markers into the audio or not. That option is there for use if you want to carry markers over into another project with the audio.

Bob.
LivingTheDream wrote on 3/23/2009, 10:18 AM
Thanks Bob for that info. I'm not that technical on how I frames and P and B frames all work, so thanks for the explanantion.

This is just a weird problem because it only shows up if I leave Save Project Markers checked when rendering the audio file. And only with the LG player. But I think I'll create a test DVD later today using your suggestion of increasing the minimum bit rate and leave Save Project Markers checked for the audio file just to see if that will overcome the issue.
musicvid10 wrote on 3/23/2009, 10:20 AM
We were referring to the same check box in the earlier post.

Why do you want to save the project markers in your audio file?
rs170a wrote on 3/23/2009, 12:23 PM
Why do you want to save the project markers in your audio file?

If you save the video first (with markers) and then go to save your audio, the "add markers" box remains checked.
I've been doing it this way for several years and never had any problems.

Mike
LivingTheDream wrote on 3/23/2009, 3:08 PM
musicvid: Yes, rs170a is exactly right. I was not trying to save scene markers in the audio file. The box was just already checked and I didn't think it would have any effect on an audio file anyway so I just left it checked.
LivingTheDream wrote on 3/23/2009, 3:13 PM
rs170a - A question for you not related to my original topic. When you quoted part of musicvid's post did you use html to put it in Italics? Is html allowed in posts here? I was wondering how you did that because I didn't see a "quote original post" button anywhere.


Steve
kentwolf wrote on 3/23/2009, 3:20 PM
I have definitely seen unusual behavior from player-to-player before.

One thing that I found that helps eliminate most issues: Try encoding CBR at 6 MB/S and see if that helps.

I have seen issues where, yeah, players should support a higher bit rate, but nonetheless, the 6 bit rate has worked very well for me for some years now.

You should try it and see if it helps.
LivingTheDream wrote on 3/24/2009, 9:03 AM
Bob,
I tried rendering a 4 minute section of this 55 minute long project this time using a higher minimum bit rate. I tested it at 1,000K and also at 3,000K. The average was left at 7,800K and the max at the Vegas default setting with 2 pass checked. No other changes to the default DVD NTSC mpeg template. Three scene markers were included.

Still no luck with this LG player. The 3,000K min setting seemed to help reduce the skipping problem but it was still there when I left Save Project Markers checked for the .wav file. I also previously had tried rendering the project at CBR 7,800K but it still skipped. I'll try it at CBR 6,000K that kentwolf suggested and see what happens.

Thanks
Steve
farss wrote on 3/24/2009, 3:12 PM
There's got to be something really wierd going on here.
Those markers in the audio file should be doing nothing as far as I am aware. DVDA should simply not change anything regardless of them being there or not. To say the least I have no logical explaination for this, my previous suggestion was wrongly based on me not reading carefully and I assumed you were talking about markers in the mpeg encode.

I really think this needs to be escalated to SCS and right up to someone who grasps the issue which may take a bit of doing.

The only wild guess I can make is that somehow DVDA is inserting two references to the same point in the stream and the player is having problems with this but that's really groping in the dark. Certainly DVDA has had some truly wierd issues that cause some players to behave badly. These issues need to be reported and dealt with.

Bob.
LivingTheDream wrote on 3/24/2009, 11:03 PM
kentwolf,
It worked! I tried your suggestion and used 6,000K CBR for the mpeg file and left Save Project Markers checked when I rendered the .wav file. No skipping at the markers this time, so it looks like that LG player likes a lower bit rate (or a higher bit rate if Save Project Markers is unchecked for the audio file). When I started this thread I had already tried a CBR 7800K rate but the burned DVD still skipped at the markers when the audio was rendered with Save Project Markers checked. And as I mentioned before, my Samsung player doesn't have a problem with any of the bit rates I tested.

Ultimetly this may have been an excercise in "you get what you pay for". The LG V194H ($80 marked down from $119) is a combo DVD/VCR player-TV tuner that can upconvert to 1080i thru HDMI output. The Samsung (model DVD-VR335) is also a combo player-tv tuner that can upconvert to 1080i but it was $250.

Thanks kentwolf and thanks to everyone else on this thread who chipped in to help.

Steve
LivingTheDream wrote on 3/24/2009, 11:11 PM
From farss: "Certainly DVDA has had some truly wierd issues that cause some players to behave badly. These issues need to be reported and dealt with."

Bob - Even though I now have a work-around for this LG player I think you're right. I'll send something to Sony. It should just work without their customers having t figure out work-arounds.

Steve