Messages posted by jbanderson

Quote:

Many people have reported problems with custom disc menus over the years. I don't have a real understanding of where the problems might be or how to repair them, I just know that sometimes the quickest fix is to switch menus.

Thanks for your help. I'll try burning after modifying an existing menu.

I help build and test large-scale data-crunchers and public front-ends for a US government service (NIH), so I have a lot of experience tracking down bugs. This seems like a very straight-forward case where a developer could quickly pinpoint the problem. We know what fails under what circumstances and it's completely repoducible. Clearly some part of the custom menu that is being passed to the Blu-ray disk package has something in it that the Blu-ray doesn't like, yet the Cyberlink menu doesn't have the bad think. It shouldn't be hard to identify what's going wrong.

How responsive is Cyberlink to bug reports? Users are often very good beta testers and it's a very bad idea to ignore them.

Hi Optodata, Thanks for the suggestion. It bore fruit, but in an unexpected way.

First, why did you think it would work?

I was testing using a single 30 second clip of .MTS:
1920x1080
H.264
21.56 Mbps
29.97 fps
Audio is 48kHz, 256kpbs stereo.

That's the one that failed as I described above (after the full big project failed).

When I followed your suggestion, importing within "create disk", it worked the first time. An iso was successfully produced. However, that was with no menu.

Then I tried adding the custom menu I used for the full project (even though the clip has no chapters). Then it failed again.

Then I tried using the Cyberlink-supplied "World Monopoly" menu, unaltered. It worked. I altered the menu and saved; it worked.

I tried making a new custom menu from scratch, with no images or added buttons, only the default. It failed.

It appears that it's the custom menus. This is very strange, because this is the same custom menu that works fine in making a standard def DVD. It's only Blu-ray that fails with (apparently) any custom menu.

Any suggestions, or response from the CL gurus?

p.s. I'm going away for Christmas, so I won't be responding until after the weekend. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Oops, accidentally hit submit prematurely.

I wanted to add that I have the same problem with different projects, with and without hardware acceleration, and even on both of my two Windows desktop machines.

Not quite the same. I still get the same error when I try to burn a disc image.

The error message is:

Error code: eA0040003
Possible cause(s):

I've been using AD5 for some time and recently noticed a problem when trying to open WAV files. It simply fails to load them.

I record in uncompressed format for my video projects, using either a tascam (WAV) or taking audio feed directly from the "house" sound board (AIFF). This always worked fine before, but I first noticed a failure to load the WAV files a few months ago.

I tried converting the files to other formats with the result that AD5 will work if I convert to mp3, but it refuses to work with any uncompressed format, including WAV and AIFF.

The problem is entirely in AD5, because the same files that won't open in AD5 can be imported into PowerDirector 13 and work fine. Interestingly, when I have such an audio file open in PD13, and choose "edit audio using AD5", the file fails to open in AD5.

Any idea what's wrong with my AD5?

I've been using PD13 successfully for a long time under Windows 7, then upgraded my OS to Windows 10 a few months ago. PD13 works fine and I haven't had any problems editing hig-res and 4K footage. I usually make DVDs and have had no problems burning standard definition disks.

Recently, however, I tried burning some high res Blu Ray disks. The authoring goes along for a long time but then fails near the 90% mark, with a message about "error in data stream". I've tried both H.264 and MP-2 coding. Audio is Dolby. My graphics card is a Nvidia GTX 660, and the driver is up to date.

The same version of PD13 was burning Blu-ray with no problems before the Windows 10 upgrade, so I'm assuming that is where the problem came from.

Has anybody else experienced this problem? Any suggestions about what might be wrong?

I have been having exactly the same behavior that Rex Oates reported above: "And before it goes completely down in flames, it will glitch to where a particular camera runs all the way to the end of all the footage loaded into the app. In other words, if I'm on Cam2, and it glitches...I've got 30 minutes of Cam2 shot on the screen. Now I go back to where I was and pick up the editing, and it becomes a real crapshoot as to whether it will glitch again, on a different camera, or will just crash altogether."

I first saw it on a large project, so I tested it with 4 5-minute HD clips and found that it would record for a few seconds, but then suddenly jump to the end, filling in the remaining time with the current camera. I can move it back and continue. It only crashed a couple of times in of a 2 hour editing session, but the jump-to-the-end happened very frequently (it should have been a 15 minute session).

I installed the new 2907.1 patch, but the problem is still there.

Thanks optodata! That's probably it. I did set the preview to high def to show my wife something. I didn't realize the multicam uses the same settings. I can't test it right now, because it's producing a long HD video, but I will as soon as it's done.

No need to roll back. Thanks again.

I'm have the problem that after update to build 2604, the multicam editor won't play the videos. It runs as if in slow motion.

I've tried it with the same footage that worked fine before the update, so I suspect that's the problem, since nothing else was changed.

Anybody else have this problem?

I'd like to roll back to the previous build. Is it sufficient to run the updater for that build, or will I have to reinstall the program from scratch?

Surprised at the lack of response, but I'll share anyway.

I uninstalled the program and reinstalled from my original disk. Now THE FILES THAT WEREN'T WORKING BEFORE play just fine in Windows Media Player.

That's right, the PowerDirector update somehow corrupted some system resource that caused the other program to have a problem. The reinstall set things back to normal.

I think it was a one-time glitch, and the new build is fine.

I updated to the latest build and now the .m2ts ACVHD H.264 files I produce won't play in Windows Media Player or any other program I have except PowerDirector. I've used this setting on video from the same camera with perfect success countless times before, but this is a new problem, which I only noticed after I upgraded.

The machine is running Windows 8 and has an nvidia graphics card, and all software is up to date. I've tried the files on another machine and they don't work there either.

The file I'm looking at right now is 1920x1080/60i, 16 Mbps. I also tried 60p, 24p and lower resolutions, all with the same results, i.e., it loads and starts, then the program crashes.

I produced the very same project as MP4 and it works fine.

Is there a known problem with the new build or am I doing something wrong?

Hi PIX!

I was hoping that you were going to help me! We were talking about you on the ride home and I was thrilled to see that you had responded. Thank you!
We are going to try out your suggestions! As a first try we just merged the audio and adjusted the volume contributions to each and it is already much better. I had no idea that this kind of merging would have each audio compensating for the weakness of the other, but I'm happy.
My hubby is now playing with your reverb suggestion. Thanks for the samples. We'll report back once we have a better grip on what works and doesn't work for our audio.

Thanks again!!
Rox

Hi ShadowsOfKnight,

I've managed to get control of most of the "modify menu" functions and have tired this with both the standard templates and ones I've made myself. My chapter buttons work fine.

The thing I was asking about originally was the "Home, up, forward, back" buttons that are used to go between pages. There just doesn't seem to be any control over those. You pick a style and that's all you can do.

BTW, I tried my DVD on a portable DVD Player (Sony) and it worked perfectly, so the problem was with my old BlueRay player. I can live with that, even though it makes me a little uneasy about people playing it on various machines.

I haven't played with importing highlights. What format should those be? Can I make images (gif or jpg)? How do you control color and so forth?

Just bumping this back up.

Is it possible to modify the disk menu navigation buttons beyond choosing a one of the built-in styles?

Hi, I'm new to PwerDirector and still trying to learn.

I'm doing a fairly large project producing a DVD of a choral performance. I want to have the 17 or so songs be chapters, so users of the DVD can choose to jump to a particular song. I've learned how to insert chapters and how to make a menu in the "Create Disk" section. What I have at the moment is a menu with 4 chapters per page in the scene selection pages. Everything looks and works fine in preview.

However, when I burn it to DVD, my stand-alone DVD player's remote control doesn't work right with the navigation buttons. My chapter buttons work fine. I'm talking about the "Home, up, forward, back" buttons that are used to go between pages. They don't highlight when selected, so it looks like the arrow keys on the remote aren't working. However, I found by experimentation that it is stepping through the buttons and I can blind select them, but I can't see any indication of what is selected. I can run the disk on my PC and the highlights work. It's only on my DVD player I have a problem. It's an older Samsung Blue-Ray player (1st gen) but has always worked fine with commercial DVDs.

I've looked for information about how to control the behavior of these buttons, beyond the button style, but it looks like there is only the default and they can't be altered. Is that right? Am I missing something?

Is anyone else have this problem? Is it something in PowerDirector or could it just be my DVD player? This disk will eventually distributed to many people, so it will be run in lots of different machines. I'd like to know it's going to work right in all of them.

Sorry this is long-winded. I'd appreciate any advice.