Scene menu doesn't work for movie project using the 2nd half of AVI file

Elvis Dylan wrote on 4/15/2005, 12:26 PM
I captured a two hour home video tape (created .avi file). In DVDA 1.0, I created a menu based movie of the first one hour. The capture worked fine and the scene selection menus operated fine. I then tried to make a movie of the second hour of the avi file. The capture worked fine (the movie was for the second half of the avi file), however every button on the scene selection menu took me to the first scene of that movie capture, not the one it should have. This happened on all three 2-hour home movie transfers I did. In all cases the scene selection menu worked fine for the DVD I made of the first one of the tape but the scene selection menus didn't work for the movie created from the second one hour. WHY DON'T SCENE SELECTION MENUS WORK WORK FOR A MOVIE THAT USES THE SECOND HALF OF THE CAPTURE FILE? I can't find anything in the DVDa manual or on the Sony support pages on this forum or that tell me what I might be doing wrong. I see this problem in the preview mode as well. Could this problem have something to do with the "Thumbnail start time" being greater than the time of the movie. For example, by making a movie of the video that starts at 1:00:00:00 (one hour) and ends at 2:00:00:00 (two hours) into the avi file, the relative location of the first menu clip is at 0:00:00:00:00 into the project but the thumbnail start time is at 1:00:00:00 (which is greater than any relative time in the project).

Comments

Elvis Dylan wrote on 4/29/2005, 12:45 PM
Does anyone know why this isn't working for me?
ro_max wrote on 4/30/2005, 10:35 PM
Sorry, can't help you there. However, you might want to look into DVDA 2.0 or 3.0 as there have been significant changes and improvements over DVDA 1.0. Personally, I have not used DVDA 1.0 in more than a year. Probably most other users of DVDA have moved on too, making it somewhat more difficult to reproduce what you are seeing.

You talk about avi files. Where do you do your rendering? In DVDA or Vegas? Have you tried a single 2-hour video project with scene selection for the second half of that project? Have you tried scene selection without thumbnails (I know that does not look too good, but may be useful to just try and identify the problem)?
Elvis Dylan wrote on 5/1/2005, 10:06 AM
Thanks for the reply ro_max. I can't justify moving onto DVDA 2 or 3 if DVDA 1 can't do something as simple as this. There's no guarantee DVDA 2 or 3 can do it. I'll work around the problem by creating individual 1 hour avi files and creating menu based DVDs of them. But I was trying to use my existing .dar file that took so long to make and didn't want to recreate the menu pages with 25+ chapters.

My son and I both render in DVDA. I know it takes a lot longer but we haven't been able to get as good of quality while rendering in Vegas. Someday I'll try Vegas again.

You asked, "Have you tried a single 2-hour video project with scene selection for the second half of that project?" I originally wanted to make two-hour DVDs, but settled on one-hour DVDs because the quality is better and other people recommend one-hour over two-hour for that reason.

I haven't tried scene selection without thumbs. I was hoping that someone could tell me what I'm doing wrong. Any DVD making software should be able to do this.
ro_max wrote on 5/1/2005, 9:16 PM
Just let me get this straight: You are trying to split a 2-hour video and put it on 2 different DVDs with the same DAR file? I thought you meant that you could not access the the second 1-hour part on the same DVD.

In your case, you may want to try this: Take the DAR file you created for the first part and copy and save it under a different name. Replace the media (the AVI) in the second DAR file with the AVI for the second part and check chapter marks.

I find it somewhat hard to believe that you are getting better render qualtiy (for the video) from DVDA than from Vegas, because (a) both programs use the same Mainconcept codec and (b) Vegas gives your far more possibilities/options for tweaking the render quality. I always try to render as little as possible in DVDA (it also speeds up the prepare process).

DVDA 3 does support dual layer so you can put a good quality 2-hour video on a single disk.
Elvis Dylan wrote on 5/2/2005, 12:37 PM
I'm using separate .dar files for each movie/DVD. The only thing both movie projects share is the source .avi, which is an .avi for the full two hours.

For one DVD I set the start and end points for the first hour, while for the second DVD I set the start and end points for the second hour of the .avi file.

The scene selection menu for each chapter on the second DVD always takes me to the first chapter of the second DVD. If I use two separate .avi file s for each project, the menu works fine. It's as if DVDA doesn't work if the "start time" for a chapter is larger than the duration of the project (for example, chapter 3 might start at 1:10:00 into the .avi but the total movie is 1:00:00 long).

Thanks for the info on rendering in Vegas. I'll definitely try that again. Both my son and I must be doing something wrong (independently based on what we learn from the manual).

I feel that DVDA 1 should support dual layer as a free upgrade. It isn't very customer friendly to force people onto DVDA 3 for something like that. Right now this isn't a big deal because I want one hour movies for this project (home movie conversion). And the price of dual layer disks still isn't attractive for me unless I need to get a two hour disk onto one disk..
ro_max wrote on 5/2/2005, 2:12 PM
DVDA 2 and 3 also provide many other useful features that version 1 lacks. DL capability was not introduced until DVDA 3 and this was one of my main reasons for the entire Vegas 6 upgrade. You are right, of course, about the price of DL media but it has always been a bit more expensive to be "state-of-the-art".
Cheepnis wrote on 6/26/2005, 8:46 AM
I'm having this exact same problem, using DVDA Studio 2.0 (build 22) - anybody have a solution??
Johannes_H wrote on 6/27/2005, 5:29 AM
>>>
The only thing both movie projects share is the source .avi, which is an .avi for the full two hours.
<<<

If you do this, I think it will make no sense.
By setting in and out points as far as I know DVDA will NOT split the movie. So I think your result will be 2 disks with the same movie on both of them but with different in and out points. Which means it is not necessary to have two disks.
Just my 2 cents

Johannes
bStro wrote on 6/27/2005, 6:59 AM
By setting in and out points as far as I know DVDA will NOT split the movie.

It will if he uses an AVI, which he is.

Rob