Thanks for the update. On your next project think about this: You can have 3 separate 99 chapter 8 GB DVD-DL projects. That way if you ever decide to create a Blu-ray project it will be easy. Just select a menu, import all 3 projects, author, and burn. There is no need to create a separate project for BD at all like you are doing now. Save time.

99 Chapters? Ouch! That's one heck of a lot of chapters to be putting onto a video! I usually limit myself to about 15 or 20 chapters, depending on the length of the video, if it's going to run for at least an hour, that is. If it's a 30-minute job, probably 5 chapters will do, but if it's really short, like 5 minutes, then it becomes the chapter itself, in among other clips of roughly the same length.

Cheers!

Neil.

Quote: Thanks for the update. On your next project think about this: You can have 3 separate 99 chapter 8 GB DVD-DL projects. That way if you ever decide to create a Blu-ray project it will be easy. Just select a menu, import all 3 projects, author, and burn. There is no need to create a separate project for BD at all like you are doing now. Save time.

THANK YOU! This is a VERY intruiging suggestion. I had no idea this was possible. Thank you. I'm at a point where I could still do this. Time saving is good, but moreover, it might help me accomplish another goal inasmuch as I wish I had maybe 15 or 20 more chapter spots total. For example, in trying to stay within 99 chapters, I combined footage of an airplane crash and a circus, but I left them together because they were in consecutive order and I didn't think a lot of people would want to watch (or rewatch) either one - they get to skip both at the same time. Haha. So 3x99 possible is better than 99, so if you are saying that's possible by this method and would work on a BD player, then that's actually better for alot of reasons (cousins, brothers, aunts, uncles are very likely going to want to skip things and find themselves/their families in a chapter, etc).

My only concern/question would be that I also really need a "Play All" feature on the BD. My mother has Ahlzeimers, lives in Assisted Living, and above anything else, I want someone who works there to be able to just come in, press play, and she can watch all 5 1/2 hours if she wants. She can't navigate a BR menu and won't be attempting to skip chapters. I don't want it to stop between disc 1, disc 2, disc 3, so-to-speak.

No need to go to any effort to try this on your end if you do not know the answer off the top of your head. I can try it myself this evening. Just wanted to share my thought process here.

The underlying video is Super 8 shots from the 1960's and 1970s and 80's. The cartridges they used way back then were ony 4.5 minutes long. Then after developing, they could be spliced into larger rolls. So he would film some event (say, Easter), for maybe a minute or two. That event might have a huge part of the extended family in it. Then the next event he filmed might be a birthday, back at our house, with only immediate family, and again only a minute or two, tops. Then it might skip to an airshow and film 3 rolls (haha). I had to cut quite a bit of that out. Don't get me wrong, some chapters are 10 minutes long, like vacations taken where the subject stays consistent. Suffice it to say, the level of interest is going to change depending on who is watching and what is there - people obviously like to watch themselves. So I know 99 chapters is a ridiculous number of chapters, and the fact that I might even want more is going to make some people question my sanity. I would NEVER do that on stuff I film now, but becuase of the nature of the footage (5.5 hours of lots of short scenes covering 20 years) and its purpose, I like the idea of using a greater-than-usual (perhaps bordering on ridiculous, I know) number of chapter points.

The use of 99 chapters is a title limit. It was discussed in some detail here years ago, http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/8838.page;jsessionid=EAA0B0C76B59588116C3F64AF5FE0F56#37686 Since your custom menu template is only text base is a good thing, the motion thumbnails become too "expensive" size wise and consume too much of the menu size allotment.

Yes, one can have a DVD or BD with more than 99 chapters, you simply need to import each pds project in the "Create Disc" module so they are a "Title". Each "Title", i.e. unique timeline, can only have 99 Chapters.

You can effectively also have a "Play All" on the BD depending how you specify "Title" playback action.

Jeff

I am no longer having the problem with the computer hanging/locking up during the "authoring step." What I did to get there was following the advice of re-doing the chapters carefully and in order, without going back and inserting any new ones. Out of an abundance of precaution, I did not go back and delete any either unless it was the last chapter in the timeline (the one I was currently working with).

Although this may not have been necessary, before starting this, I "produced" the video in my timeline first and worked with the produced in a new project video. I did this because there was a lot going on there with titles, very short interspliced black color boards, transitions, that I thought may be interfering with the chapter points.

So, now that it will go through the "authoring" step correctly, my next step is to get back to the button issue. I will post. I cannot tell tomasc and Jeff "thank you" enough.

Quote: 1st fix found earlier is to author and burn your video using a previous version of PD although you could edit and produce the mpeg-2 file with PD14.

2nd fix is to use a Cyberlink menu such as Cinematic which is the default menu in PD14. It has 6 thumbnails instead of 10 in your custom menu.

3rd fix is to use H.264 instead of mpeg-2 for video encoding. Your 10 item text only menu should display those navigation buttons previously missing and you could also add about another 2 hours of video to that BD to fill it up if you want to.

Thank you tomasc. I think I am down to the 1st or 3rd options because I do not want to give up my custom menus. I have tried the third option several times tonight. Every time I try to encode my newly cleaned up project (no chapter problems now) in mpeg-2 I do not get a lockup/hang, however, everytime I try to encode in H.264 I do get a lockup/hang. This is all happening in the "authoring" step - just saving a disc image as you all suggested during testing.

I have not tried the 1st option and don't think it sounds very pleasant after spending all of this time redoing chapters, etc. Crossing my fingers that someone will send an update that fixes the bug that is preventing the navigation buttons from showing up.

Based on what you have done before try the second option for now. Save the project as a slightly different name each time adding like 1, 2, 3, etc. as suggested by Jeff so that you could always go back. On the Menu Preferences tab choose the 6 thumbnail Cinematics menu and uncheck all 4 checkboxes on the left bottom of your screen.

On the 2D Disc tab choose BD 25GB, MPEG-2, etc.

On the Burn in 2D tab, I see that the Enable Hardware Video decoder is grayed out. Don’t check it. Uncheck Save as disc image. Check Create a Folder. Create a filename at the end of the path to your liking. If you get a message that there is not enough space then change it to BD 50GB. Don’t worry. The folder will fit in a BD 25GB when you get ready to burn it. I believe that there may be a limit of 1 GB for menus but is not sure of this in PD14.

Let us know if the folder is created successfully.

P.S. I do not know why you are not able to create a h.264 encoded disc image but mpeg-2 was okay. I have not contacted Cyberlink support. This may be yet another bug in PD14. I never create disc images because I have to burn them to a disc to find out if there are bugs or typos, and other problems or mistakes wheras I can always check the created folder on my hard drive for problems and play it with a software player such as vlc or powerdvd, etc. before burning it to disc using say imgburn or powerdvd.

On second thought try the h.264 encoding first in Create a folder with Save as disc image unchecked. If this works then you have found yet another bug in PD14.

Changing the graphics card driver may be required for the h.264 hardware encoding to work and may be necessary to get the created folder. For now leave it alone. You have other things to do first.

Good luck.

Quote: Crossing my fingers that someone will send an update that fixes the bug that is preventing the navigation buttons from showing up.

Here you go, http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/4388.page Simply follow the 5 steps outlined there and you should be good, at least it works for me in PD14 with BD, MPEG2, and a custom menu with 99 chapters.

Jeff

Quote:

Quote: Crossing my fingers that someone will send an update that fixes the bug that is preventing the navigation buttons from showing up.

Here you go, http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/4388.page Simply follow the 5 steps outlined there and you should be good, at least it works for me in PD14 with BD, MPEG2, and a custom menu with 99 chapters.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff. I thought I knew what you were referring to until I got to the step that says "adjust sliders to the left..." I could not see any sliders except those which move the entire title page around on the screen (horizontally and vertically) in menu designer. That does not affect the degree of the zoom. I noticed this fix was from PD7 and I am in PD14, so I also had wondered if maybe that explains why I don't see the slider you are talking about. I could also just be confused.



Jerry

Quote: Good luck.

Tomasc, the wealth of information you conveyed in that last post is apprecaited. I am especially hopeful that your "P.S." suggestion means that I can do testing of what the BD will look like without actually having to burn a BD. Even trying to be conservative, I am going through a stack of those things like they grow on trees with all of my testing.

As far as the rest, I will get to work on that this ASAP and report back.

P.S. I have thought of a Plan B if I can't get it to work with your much apprecaited assistance and/or Jeff's much appreciated assistance. You're gonna think it's hokey, but why couldn't I just use photoshop and try to carefully place buttons on the background picture? I think the number and type of buttons differ depending on how deep you are into the menus, so I would have to create several different background photos, and then use those background photos in several very similar but slightly different custom menus. Then I could "apply to this page only" instead of "apply all." Super cheezy way to fix this, but at some point I have to weigh the benefits/time associated with trying to fix it "the right" way. Now, under this way of fixing it, I could not get the navigation buttons to be anything other than just static; the "underlining" that shows up when you are trying to select the buttons with a DVD/BD remote would have to line up perfectly with the background image.

The things pictured in my custom menus are photos of my Dad's Super 8 camera, a photo of the stack of film canisters he labeled with an old label maker, and a photo of one of the reels of film, etc (all the actual stuff, not stock/internet photos). With so many chapters, I want a list only and 10 chapters per page. I didn't want anyone to think I was totally crazy in thinking I need the custom menu so bad. The default menus are fine for testing, I get that, but the final product has to have the custom menu or it's no bueno.

somemildviolins - Excellent Idea you have. It can be simpler than you think. Change your preview quality to full HD. Maybe temporarily add a white background to the menu. Take a screenshot of the preview of the second scenes menu. Save the screenshot and your 4 buttons will be permantly there on the scenes menu after processing with photoshop and saving as a png with a a transparent background with only the 4 button showing. In menu designer that would be your scenes page background.

Quote: Thanks Jeff. I thought I knew what you were referring to until I got to the step that says "adjust sliders to the left..." I could not see any sliders except those which move the entire title page around on the screen (horizontally and vertically) in menu designer. That does not affect the degree of the zoom. I noticed this fix was from PD7 and I am in PD14, so I also had wondered if maybe that explains why I don't see the slider you are talking about. I could also just be confused.

Maybe the following two pics will help with the repeat of the steps. PD7 and PD14 are the same for the steps described.

1) Go to Menu Designer (not shown in a pic, I assume you've got that covered)
2) In the lower right corner, left most icon "Select Video effect" (shown in pic BD_MPEG_step2.png)
3) Go to the "zoom in" feature and select. (shown in pic BD_MPEG_step3_4.png)
4) Adjust sliders all the way to the left so you really don't zoom in (shown in pic BD_MPEG_step3_4.png)
5) Do the above to all critical pages of menu system, the "Root Menu", "Titles/Chapters menu" and the "Subtitles Menu" pages of your template
6) save template and burn project to BD again with MPEG-2 format

By doing these steps you bring the page control icons of the menu when burned to BD to the visible plane as I showed earlier with the TV screen pic.

Jeff

Success! Thank you Jeff for clarifying. I was looking at the wrong thing for Step 2 (I was clicking on the box immediately to the left of that, anyway, my bad). I successfully burned my first Blu-Ray which has all navigation buttons are appearing as they should. I have no idea how you knew that would be a "fix," so of course I'm impressed like the others were when you posted the same solution to this problem on a post about PD7.

I'm leaving this experience feeling disappointed with PD14. It seems an issue with PD7 would have not been repeated or perpetuated in PD14. But I'm also leaving this experience thinking there are some really, REALLY good, helpful people out there that contribute to these forums. Thank you tomasc and Jeff for sticking with me on this. It's no small thing that you both do.

Glad that the problem is taken care of for somemildviolins. I tried out some of what Jeff outlined for PD7. Applied the fx Zoom Out only for the chapters page of the user created menu since it is this page that has those navigation buttons and the problem is fixed for the mpeg-2 encoded project.

Added subtitles to my test project to check the entire menu. Found that my PowerDVD opens in the subtitle page instead of the root menu page after the BD disc is created, ejected, and placed back in the BD drive. I had expected a message to allow start at the beginning or resume.

Applied a DVD Menu 965 from the DirectorZone which I knew uses a different fx in it’s menu pages and again the navigation button issue is fixed.

It looks like that in PD14 there is the navigation buttons missing issue when a user created menu is used with mpeg-2 encoding. Applying a fx to the chapters page fix the issue.

Hope that someone has reported this bug to Cyberlink support.

Thank You Jeff for supplying the fix for the PD7 menus which also works for the PD14 menus.

Reported this issue as a bug to Cyberlink India based Technical support on 1/15/2016 and supplied them with the Dxdiag.txt, screenshots, and other pertinent information using the sample files and glow-new Cyberlink menu from the DZ.

They tell me to update the video driver when I already have the latest shown in the Dxdiag supplied. They repeatedly told me to enable hardware encoding in which each time I did that and the navigation buttons still don’t show. I was then told to try to enable hardware encoding. Last week they asked for a disc image using Kite Surfing.wmv sample file to show the problem. I modified the pds file to put the video at the beginning, checked Burn to disc, Created a folder, and now Save as disc image. I did everything they asked as always.

Have been unable to create a mpeg-2 BD in which the navigation buttons do not show issue this last time. Tried 4:3 480/60i, 16:9 1080/60i, 24p, 60p in which all had the issue before. Tried newly created user menus, previous menus, HE, without HE, different combinations of checks in the Final output window to no avail in recreating the issue.

Believe that Save as disc image one time only might have fixed the problem, or a windows update might have fixed it. The scenes menu m2ts video files do not play properly in my win 7 wmp when I had the problem.

Hopefully somemildviolins or Jeff reported this issue to Cyberlink support as I can’t repeat the issue this whole week in my spare time.