Menu looping problem, BD-R, DVDA 6.0

Ben Nash wrote on 12/5/2012, 6:43 PM
I'm having a problem with menus that don't loop correctly on BD-Rs I prepare and burn with DVDA 6.0

The Blu-Ray I'm, trying to program has two menus: A "Play All" menu and a chapter selection menu. Both menus link to playlists - the "Play All' menu links to a playlist that plays all chapters in order, and the chapter selection menu points to playlists that start with the selected chapter and play the rest of the subsequent chapters.

The problem is not in playlist selection, but in the menu looping. I have an audio track for both menus that runs about 1 m 30 s. The "End Action" for each menu is set to "Loop"

I have two different Blu-Ray players and depending on which one I use, the behavior is different.

Sony BDP-S550: each menu plays the audio track from start to finish, but then pauses one minute before starting the audio track again. Why would it pause one minute between loops?

I've tried setting the manu "duration" to either "auto calculate" or "specify". "Auto calculate" appears to set the duration to the correct value. When I try "specify" I leave that value alone, changing only the "specify" option.

Either way, when I play the resulting BD-R on the Sony BDP-S550, each menu plays the audio track, pauses a full minute before restarting the audio track. Meanwhile, the menu buttons stay active even during that one minute gap in the audio. I have no idea what to make of this. The time shown in "Auto calculate" or "Specify" mode is the actual length of the audio track. Where does this one minute pause come from?

The other Blu-Ray player is a Samsung BD-D6700. On this player, the "Play All" menu runs the audio track for only about 5 seconds. Then the entire menu restarts, including the video (actually just a graphic; the display goes black for a second between restarts). The audio plays for another 5 seconds, the menu restarts, etc.

The chapter selection menu works fine. The audio track plays from start to end, then restarts after a delay of only a second or two. The video (another graphic) does not go black between restarts.

I don't know what to do about this. I've looked at the settings DVDA over and over again, and both menus appear to be set up the same way in terms of "End Action", background media, and duration.

Here is info that may or may not be important. If I miss anything, please let me know:

Authoring machine:
Dell Dimension 8400 3.2 GHz 4GB RAM HDD space ~1TB free
BD Burner: LG GGW-H20L
BD-R blanks: Verbatim
OS: WIndows 7 Home Premium
DVDA: 6.0 build 237

Source Video (Chapters): AVC, 20MB/s, rendered from AVI by Sony Vegas Pro 11
Source Audio (Chapters): AC3, 5.1 Surround, rendered from AVI stereo audio track using Vegas Pro 11 - Dolby Pro 5.1 profile (not Studio) - VST stereo/5.1 surround plugins

Source Video (Menus): graphic, JPG image
Source Audio (Menus): AC3, 5.1 Surround, rendered from stereo recordings using Vegas Pro 11 - Dolby Pro 5.1 profile (not Studio) - VST stereo/5.1 surround plugins

I know the audio specs are a complicated mess, but I've run into the same problems with much simpler profiles using both PCM and AC3 stereo, also rendered by Sony Vegas.

Has anyone had similar problems with BD-R menu looping in DVDA 6.0? Is there more information I should provide to help solve this problem?

Thanks
Ben

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 12/5/2012, 7:38 PM
It is really difficult to interpet your authoring plan without having the entire project at hand with source media. I think your project appears overly complex IMO and that the issue of the menu audio play is a symptom of more than just audio loop problems by themselves.

It is normal for a burned disc to stutter on the repeat of an audio loop- usually measured as stutter in less than one second at best - although you must realize such a short stutter is very disconcerting to the viewer. A pressed professional authored disc would not have that problem.

Because you recognize that two different players interpet your disc's authoring so widely different - I am more than willing to share with you that your authoring plan has great fault and I would suggest starting over with a different plan. Also please try your discs in at least five or more different disc players for a better test-bed analysis of player behaviors.
Ben Nash wrote on 12/6/2012, 11:07 AM
"Overly Complex"?

How did you reach that conclusion?

The source video is 6 chapters of AVC video.

The menu system is two pages, static background images with 1min 30sec of audio each, END action set to "loop".

The first menu has a "Play All" button that points to a playlist containing all 6 chapters in order (also ordered that way on the disc). There is also a "Chapters" button that links to the second menu page.

The second menu page has 6 playlist links, one for each of the chapters, plus a link back to the main page.

Where's the complexity? How did you decide that this complexity and other behaviors of this disc indicate "great fault?"

The playlists play the chapters in correct order, the individual chapters play OK and the menu buttons work fine. It's only the audio looping in the menu that has problems. Everything else works. How does an authoring project with everything working well except for two 1 minute 30 second menus have "great fault"?

I'm not trying to say there isn't some "great fault" here, far from it. I'm just baffled as to where that might be in a project where so many things work correctly and only a few menus running 1:30 each are screwing up.

As far as the "complexity" you claim this project has, I did ask in my first post what additional information I might need to provide in order to help debug this problem. You seem to have responded to this request by saying "It is really difficult to interpet your authoring plan without having the entire project at hand with source media."

Posting the source media here would be problematic because of its size (23 gb). However I can post the DAR project file with InfoMedia reports for the source video and audio. Would that help?

(the sad fact is that I don't know enough about Vegas and DVDA to create a complex project. "Great fault" I can certainly do, but it's certain to be caused by something simple and idiotic that I did).

Thanks,
Ben Nash

videoITguy wrote on 12/6/2012, 11:49 AM
Because your playback differs between simple set-top players - there has to be either complexity in the author plan that won't read consistently or one of the audio types is not compatible with the player. YOU need to check in 5 diffferent players at your fav electronics...

Successful audio loop on a burned disc depends on careful choice of length versus the actual burned area on the disc. With DVDApro you cannot control this second factor. You do have the ability to order menu and video assets in their placement on the disc and this might be of some help -

Suggest scrubbing playlists setup as it is not necessary.
Ben Nash wrote on 12/6/2012, 4:16 PM
Hi videoITguy,

The audio format of the menus is the same as that of the chapters: ac3, 5.1 surround, bitrate 640 kbps.

However, that may have something to do with the problem - that, or the multiple menu pages.

I resurrected an earlier Blu-Ray of the same project, except that there was only one menu page and the links to all 6 playlists were on that page. In addition, the input background audio was WAV stereo. I had let DVDA do the re-encoding to ac3 5.;1 surround.

That one works fine in both of my tabletop players (Sony BDP-S550 and Samsung BD-D6700), as well as my burner drive (LG GGW-H20L). Unfortunately those are the only BD players I have easy access to at the moment, so they'll have to do for now.

IAC for that earlier project the menu plays the entire audio track and loops back to the beginning as soon as the track ends. The link buttons stay active all the time.

So it seems that the problem for this particular project (no point in generalizing, since I clearly am out of my depth) is related to the multiple menus and/or the format of the input audio media for the menu.

Here's what I'm doing now: I kept the two menus but changed the source media from the ac3 5.1 surround audio that was rendered by Vegas, to the stereo WAV files that were generated when I first recorded the soundtracks for the opening and closing themes for this series. As with the earlier project, I'm letting DVDA do whatever it does to recompress/convert the stereo menu audio to 5.1 surround.

I figured I'd change only one variable at a time in order to isolate the problem. If this doesn't work, I'll try moving the playlist links back to the main menu and turn it back into a one-menu project. I'll leave the stereo input audio as is the first time around.

If the one-menu solution works, THEN I'll try using the Ac3 5.1 surround audio for the background media.

Meanwhile, I'm still rendering the two-menu/stereo menu audio version of the project. This will take some time on this "old" machine, but I'll report my results as soon as I have any.

You've given some good ideas about how to isolate this problem by suggesting a problem with the project's complexity, which in turn reminded me to check an older, simpler version of the project. This in turn gave me the idea to simplify the menu setup in stages in the current project to try to figure out where/when the problem was introduced.

Thanks for the prod. Looks like I was wrong about the complexity issue as far as the menus are concerned.

Happy Holidays,
Ben
Ben Nash wrote on 12/6/2012, 4:42 PM
Hi videoITguy,

Forgot to mention RE "Suggest scrubbing playlists setup as it is not necessary. "

I've found through experience that using playlists was the only way I could guarantee consistent "End Action" for chapters - whether they were individual titles, or marked chapters within title(s).

Sometimes control would return to the menu at the end of a chapter's play, sometimes not. I couldn't find a consistent pattern.

So I started using playlists. Playlists always give me what I want in terms of "End Action" - whether it's returning to the menu at the end of each chapter's play, or playing the remaining chapters in a series before returning to the menu.

It wasn't a design philosophy or anything to do with sophisticated authoring techniques. It was simply the only thing that worked, discovered through much trial and error.

That method is the one reliable way to get "End Action" the way I want it, whether the project format is DVD or Blu-Ray, single or multi-menu, etc. Trust me, I did a LOT of legwork and went through a LOT of coasters figuring it out. Playlists make the sequencing I want work every time on my small collection of players.

Otherwise, the "End Action" behavior is random, or related to some obscure variables other than the many I've tried just slugging it out.

In this case I'm just the messenger.

Ben
videoITguy wrote on 12/6/2012, 5:57 PM
Indeed, your point about issues with chapter returns (your endpoint?) has been well documented and much discussed at great length about the DVDAPro app. I would not belabor the fact that your playlists skirt that issue. Under the hood, there is a lot more at play than you really may want to delve into.

If you are interested in local discussions that have been delving into this, I can give you several links deep into this forum. Other than that I think you are on the right track to simplify and explore your menu loop success. Good Luck.
Ben Nash wrote on 12/8/2012, 12:54 PM
Thanks videoITguy,

I'm trying various permutations with the menu audio (stereo vs 5.1 surround, no audio, auto-calculated menu lengths, specified lengths, etc). The problem is that it takes FOREVER to render and prepare Blu-Rays on my old system, so it's going to take a while for me to shake out the sheets.

I'm trying to be systematic and deterministic about this, changing one variable at a time, etc. It is starting to look as though my Samsung player is throwing me a curve that has nothing to do with any of this. But, in time we'll see.

Yes, I would like to see those links to the playlist related topics, provided it's not too much trouble for you to collect them. In searching for "playlist" myself using the forum SW, I really couldn't see the forest through the trees for all the hits I got.

You're certainly right about a reluctance on my part to look "under the hood". I'm just trying to make something work at my amateur skill level, through trial and error and with only three players, one of which is my burner. If I can get it working on the Sony and burner but not the Samsung, I'll still count that as a success.

Thanks again,
Ben
videoITguy wrote on 12/8/2012, 2:03 PM
Unless you are living in the forest, I don't get what your reluctance is to set up a test-bed of five or more different set-top players to test your burned BD-RE rehearsal disks for the final setting and burning.

YES, the Samsung (cheapo) is throwing you completely off track.

Get into the city, goto your fav Electronics store - and play your test disk for performance eval.
Ben Nash wrote on 12/10/2012, 8:13 PM
I never said I was "reluctant" to pursue a test-bed of five or more players. The only "reluctance" I mentioned was in acknowledging your suggestion that I didn't want to see "under the hood" details about end actions for chapters in Playlists.

My test-bed notions were based not on reluctance, but on what I thought was lack of availability of multiple players. I only have three BD players in my house. I simply hadn't thought to take the discs to an electronics store and try them in different machines in the store, because I didn't know that was an option.

I think the remarks about "unless you are living in a forest" and "I don't get what your reluctance is...." are unfair. I've been reminding you since the outset that I don't know a lot about what I'm doing and am engaged in a lot of trial-and-error experiments to figure out what's going on. I've been honest and up-front about my limitations, and no, I don't "live in a forest."

That said, your advice is well taken. I'll give that a shot at one of the local media stores, if they let me. Thanks for the suggestion.

Now there is another thread about issues with menus in DVDA 6.0 build 237. A poster trying to program DVDs is running into menu audio issues that sound a lot like what I've been experiencing. In that thread, musicVid suggested that the symptoms sounded like a bug.

Here is a link to that thread:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=842209

Since I've last posted here, I've tried a number of things that I describe in that other thread. I've now tried a single-menu project, still with playlist links, but they're all on one menu. I've been loading the ISO files generated by DVDA 6.0 in a virtual disc drive using Daemon Tools Lite, and thereafter examining the audio properties of the M2TS file(s) for the menu(s).

I consistently get flatlined menu audio no matter what I try for track media. That includes 5.1 surround, stereo, AC3, WAV, MP3, different bit rates.

Per what I said in that thread, I'm now going to uninstall DVDA 6.0 and re-install the latest build of DVDA 5.2. I really can't think of anything else to try besides hitting the road tomorrow with these discs and trying them in multiple players in whatever shop will allow me to do it.

I may have quantitative results to report later tonight RE DVDA 5.2.

I'm doing my best with the limited tool set I have, both on PCs and in my skull. If that in fact really means that I'm "living in a forest", then that's just a handicap I'll have to work around - with helpful advice, which you've been giving. Thanks.

Ben Nash
videoITguy wrote on 12/10/2012, 9:19 PM
When you create a video project in VegasPro that you are going to export for purposes of making a DVD/Blu-ray with DVDAPro you must do this:
1) From VegasPro , your timeline will be rendered separately in two steps:
a) Render a videostream of the entire timeline to one of the render templates provided for DVDAPro - preferably the NTSC stream Blu-ray for 16:9 widescreen as Mpeg2 file type - note there is no audio in the default stream if you care to check the audio tab of the stream properties.
b) Then render an audio file (which will carry the companion audio sounds) - either as a .wav type or preferably AC3Pro type - note there is no video doing this
c) keep the stem name the same for both renders - place them in one single directory folder for this purpose.
d) In DVDAPro import the video file - it will automatically bring in the companion audio named file that you had just completed. Now you have the video and audio assets properly placed in DVDAPro for creating a link button on the main menu.
Ben Nash wrote on 12/11/2012, 12:08 AM
That's what I've done: separate video and audio streams.

The video streams were rendered as M2V files. The audio streams were rendered as AC3 files. As you've suggested, the "stem" names being equal caused DVDA to import the audio files automatically when I imported the video streams.

For the video stream I used a Sony/AVC profile, 1920 X 1080-29i (based on the source video parameters). For the audio stream, and based on advice I saw in a number of other forum posts, I used a Dolby Pro 5.1 surround profile as opposed to a Dolby Studio 5.1 surround profile. Apparently some forum posters had problems with the Dolby Studio profiles when using Vegas Pro 11 to render audio files for DVDA. In lieu of knowing what else to do, I followed their advice.

Anyway, the end result is a folder full of M2V video streams and AC3 5.1 surround audio streams.

For the menus, I used static graphic images for the background. The menu audio was rendered by Vegas using the same Dolby 5.1 Surround Pro profile as the one I used for the chapters' audio streams - i.e. same bit rate, same sample rate, etc. According to MediaInfo, there weren't any differences in the audio file specs between the menu audio and the chapter audio streams.

Per what I said in my last post, I've uninstalled DVDA 6.0 and am re-preparing the BD in DVDA 5.2 build 135. I have two renders in progress on different machines. One has the menu durations set to "Autocalculate" and one has the durations set to "specify" (though I didn't change the values calculated when the durations were set to Autocalculate. All I did was change the duration mode from Auto to Specify. This was a trick I learned with DVDA 5.2 that resolved other problems with menu durations).

The renders are still in progress. I'll be able to report on some kind of results - menu audio flatlined or not, as with DVDA 6.0) in a few hours.

Or tomorrow morning, since I'm having problems keeping my head off the desk!

Ben
Cristian Torrent wrote on 12/28/2012, 5:31 AM
I also uninstalled version 6.0 as it is USELESS with the menus not working with sound. I have sent a support ticket so am settling back to 3 weeks before I get a useless reply.
Ben Nash wrote on 1/1/2013, 1:21 AM
Hi videoITguy,

The workaround solution turned out to have nothing to do with separate audio and video stream rendering.

After many, many permutations of audio and video bitrates, sample rates (for the audio stream), different rendered file formats, and other suggestions recommended by users struggling with both DVDA 5.2 and 6.0, I stumbled across a method that works with my small sample set of Blu-Ray players, as well as a number of other players I tried at the local vendor shops.

This is what I did: instead of defining the menu in DVDA 6.0 or 5.2 as having a static graphic background and audio track, I used Sony Vegas Pro 11 to create a slideshow video of the menu graphic. The menu graphic was the only "slide" and its duration was set to the duration of the original audio track. I used the same Sony AVC rendering template used to encode the video titles in the project.

When the rendering was done, I used the resulting AVC file as the menu's background media. I did this for both menus in the project.

Everything works now. Regardless of what player I use for testing, the two menus in the project run for the correct durations and loop quickly back to the beginning to restart. Menu buttons stay active all the time, as far as I've been able to tell. If I click on a button just as a loop is ending, the action is completed as soon as the menu audio starts playing again.

I don't know if this signifies a bug in DVDA 6.0 or 5.2. All I know is that in order to get menus to behave the way I want them to, I have to use video and audio streams for the background media in the menus - not static graphics streams with a audio streams.

The fix was easy enough once I tripped over it.

Since then, I've ordered an i7 system, Windows 7 64 bit, and a Vegas 12 Pro upgrade (64 bit from now on). From what I've seen in these forums, both Vegas Pro 12 and DVDA 6.0 64 bit have their own share of idiosyncratic issues that must be worked around. I don't have much of a choice except to deal with those issues as I encounter them.

One thing is certaint I have to go to a multi-core cpu, 64 bit OS in order to render HD files. My current machine is a P4 running Windows 7 32 bit. It just takes too long to render the media files regardless of how I do it.

If I wind up having to revert to Sony Vegas Pro 11/DVDA 5.2 (with upgrades to 64 bit) as opposed to Vegas 12/DVDA 6.0, well, at least I'll have the faster rendering times.

Hope you're having a great holiday season!
musicvid10 wrote on 1/1/2013, 3:25 AM
"I've found through experience that using playlists was the only way I could guarantee consistent "End Action" for chapters - whether they were individual titles, or marked chapters within title(s). "

I'd bet dollars to donuts that is the root of your problem. Titles are not chapters, and they cannot be used interchangeably. Chapters are markers within a file, and titles are separate files; they are handled completely differently, and there is generally no consistency to how titles are handled by different players once a given end action is reached. Titles should only be accessed from the main menu when authoring burned discs imo. Jumps between titles and titles to menus often take forever, or don't happen at all, depending on the player.

I suggest rendering all your "chapters" as one file with markers, and use that in a one-title project, which is the best, most predictable model. Then see if it works the way you want.
Ben Nash wrote on 5/19/2013, 6:21 PM
MusicVid,
Sorry for the delay in this response. It's taken some time to iron out the kinks in my new XPS system.

What you've suggested has turned out to be the problem with "end actions" in title and chapter playback. When you first posted your response, I had a few things working against me that made it difficult to render large one-title projects - one of which was that old Dimension system that took forever to render such files. The other thing, as usual with me, is the large variety of video clips and titles I'm using in projects.

Now with the XPS system, I have the option of rendering large single-title projects without having to wait a week to render an AVC file that DVD Architect won't have to recompress. Sure enough - end actions worked correctly in the final result without having to resort to using playlists to force the sequencing.

At any rate, that was the problem as far as chapter end action goes.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Ben Nash
musicvid10 wrote on 5/19/2013, 9:20 PM
Glad you got it sorted.