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Hi Peter,
You can open only one project at a time so what you need to do is produce or render each project and then create a new project and drop those two rendered projects in the timeline.
To contact Dafydd and send him a private message, locate his post (the third post on the thread re this topic) and click on his profile and click pm. You need to be logged in to be able to do this. Or go to his website at www.SoftDeko.co.uk . Actually Dafydd is very good at answering queries posted on the forum so you can also just post a thread on the forum addressed to him and I’m sure you’ll get an answer. He moderates the forum.
Arturo
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Hi Pete,
You should be able to join all 5 films together into one project. Before doing that, make sure you set the project's aspect ratio; you can use both 4x3 and 16x9 videos in the same project, but you need to set the project's aspect ratio initially. Drop all five films into the project timeline, do your editing and then set your chapters.
You can use static images or moving images as thumbnails. Simply select the image you want as thumbnails from your project timeline and click the option to set that as the thumbnail in the chapter creation menu. If you're using moving images, the thing to remember is that menu and chapter thumbnails are only a certain length so if your image is less than the duration of the menu/chapter thumbnails, it will jump to the next image and so on until the time is the duration of the menu/chapter thumbnails. I made this mistake in my first and only project so far since getting PD7 Ultra in June and I could have avoided that by picking the option not to use moving images.
Hope this helps.
Arturo
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Hello from Canada,
Glad to hear you found a workaround to the avi intro problem. There is an article on this site about AVI which may be helpful as apparently there are different types of AVI files: http://www.myvideoproblems.com/Tutorials/dv-aviFiles.htm. And apparently there’s also Windows AVI and DV-AVI which are again two different things. Maybe the differences between the AVI files and also the frame rates has something to do with your problem? Just a guess.
I’d be happy to give anyone any ideas that I have that may be helpful but I should make it clear that I am only an amateur video hobbyist. I do this only to take videos and still pictures to preserve family history. I learn only as much I need to use the software that I have and turn to the Internet to read a little bit about some of the issues that I come across for any ideas that may help. In short, I have no technical video background or specialized video technical knowledge and when things get too technical, I back off. I do not want to offer any comments on anything that I am totally ignorant about. I wanted to point that out because I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression. You have your own video production so I think you will have a lot more knowledge about video than I do.
I have never used Smart sound so I cannot comment on that.
We probably have the same Sony AVCHD camcorder. I also have the Sony AVCHD camcorder with the 100GB hard drive – Model HDR-SR8.
Regarding the distortion in the speech from the final DVD productions, I’m not sure what to say. I have done only one project since switching to PD7 Ultra in June and have mostly background music in it. I didn’t have any audio distortions. By the way, Dolby 5.1 is available on PD7. Your comment about poor audio codec may be valid. There are so many audio codecs and not everything is compatible with every software so that’s an avenue you may want to explore.
Dafydd, who moderates this forum, may have ideas about your problems. Why don’t you drop him a line. I find him to be very helpful and pleasant.
Sorry I cannot be of much help Peter.
Arturo
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Hi Peter,
Based on the content of your post, I think you are addressing it to me and not David so I will take the liberty of responding.
What you need to do is use first play when you create your disc. This is the manual’s description of first play: “First play is the clip that is the initial sequence that plays before the menu page appears as soon as a disc is played. Navigation buttons are not available during the first play and viewers cannot past forward past the first play. In the commercial movies, this consists of the copyright notice or warning.” So that is the perfect tool for you for that special avi video intro.
In my project, I ended up not using a first play as I didn’t need to after all. But before answering your question, I went through the motion and created a sample project with a first play video just to make sure I know what I’m talking about. And here’s how I did it. Create a first play video or still image. In your case, you wanted a special avi video intro. Create your project and do all your edits, PIP, titles, transitions, music, etc. and set your chapters. Do not include your video intro in the project timeline unless you want it as part of a chapter content of the movie you are creating. When you get to the final step or the disc creation mode, underneath the preview screen, you’ll see the options for adding/removing background music for the main menu and chapters menu and for the first play video. Click “Add first play video” and navigate to where you have your avi intro stored. Click the preview button and if everything is just as you’d like it, then proceed to burn your DVD or Blu-ray disc.
Hope this helps.
Arturo
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No problem David. I hope you had a good time on your vacation.
Yes, I was referring to the main menu/chapter thumbnails. I have been experimenting some more and have found answers or workaround to some of my questions and your reply has certainly been very helpful as well.
I've also learned that when using the pre-designed menus, I am not confined to having the first clip (Chapter 1) displayed because I can simply choose and use any part of the project as the image/video playing in those cut out boxes (main menu and chapter thumbnails). And yes, I've found that "Enable video thumbnail" selection before and what I should have done is deselected it so that a static image would have been shown on the main menu/chapter thumbnails and would have prevented unrelated chapters from playing.
I would appreciate it very much if you can chase the other two questions concerning download speeds because it really is excruciatingly slow (and I'm not the only one experiencing it as you can read in the forum threads) and the auto notification. I have it enabled but nothing pops up.
The other big issue is the video/audio sync. Dafydd and I have been communicating on this issue, and again, I'm not the only one experiencing this problem as you'll find in the forum threads. I have sent Dafydd files of a sample project to show the sync issue and he is following this up with the Tech people.
Thanks again.
Arturo
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Mark, I am in Canada so the format is NTSC.
I too have sent a pds file to Dafydd which he forwarded to Cyberlink so they can have a look at it.
I am eagerly awaiting a resolution to this problem as I'm sure you are as well as everyone else who is experiencing the same problem.
Arturo
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Hi Steven, Mark & Dafydd,
Sorry to hear that the audio-video splitting solution did not work and introduced more problems. Unfortunately, I don't have another workaround to suggest. That definitely is not good news because as I mentioned previously, I will eventually be doing edits of my AVCHD video footages, archiving mostly to a hard disk and burning some to Blu ray discs.
Having just recently switched to PD7 Ultra after being a faithful Pinnacle Studio user for so many years, I have done only one project using PD7 for a family gathering next month. I did have a lot of problems with the audio sync issues with that project but managed to finish it with that audio splitting workaround and rendering separate video files and dropping them back into a new project without any further editing. I must say also that those segments that I rendered separately and then re-combined were less than 25 seconds each. Also I used MPEG2 format, not AVCHD as I was working mainly with AVI files. I have digitized all my home movies taken with Video 8, Hi8 and MiniDV video cameras so they're now all in AVI format. I updated last October to the Sony HDR-SR8 which uses the AVCHD format. I wish I waited until the full 1080 models became available but I guess the good thing is although the HDR-SR8 is not a full 1080 camcorder, the picture quality is very high and is close enough to a full 1080.
I have digitized 102 tapes taken with the older video cameras and am slowly editing them taking out accidental, blurry and very shaky shots and combining footages of the same events that are on different tapes into one segment. I am now on Tape #49 and so this project will take sometime to finish. And once I'm done with these digitized tapes, I will continue with the ones taken with the Sony AVCHD camcorder. These videos contain a lot of family history so it is very important that they be preserved. This way too, they can be easily accessed with the use of a computer.
So hearing more problems about PD7 does not give me a warm feeling. I switched to PD7 based on a review I read and thinking it was a solid video editing software and much better than Pinnacle Studio. I do hope that Cyberlink resolve these issues. I can understand your frustration because I went through that to finish my project and also wasted a lot of time.
I like what I have seen so far despite the problems I've encountered but at the same time, I do not want to waste my time and be frustrated when I do my projects. I really hope that I do not have to switch to another software again.
Arturo
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Hello Dafydd,
Thanks Dafydd. I hope Cyberlink will have a solution soon.
Arturo
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Hi Steve,
Oopps, I stand corrected. Yes, you should be selecting AVCMPEG4. AVCMPEG4 also has better compression compared to MPEG2 and the quality is similar.
Arturo
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You're welcome.
Yes, combine several m2ts files to make up a 20-30 minute segment. Make all the edits - e.g. PIP, effects, titles, music, narration, etc. - and produce or render the file (save to your hard drive). Under Produce select Create a File and click Next. Select MPEG2 and under Profile name/Quality, select BD 1440x1080 or BD 1920x1080. Save to a file on your hard drive and select Start rendering.
Once you have all the segments you want, create a new project, drop all the segments into the timeline and then create your disc. It is okay to introduce chapter points and create a menu at this point. Well, you need to anyway unless you want to create a disc without a menu. Creating your chapter points and a menu will not introduce sync problems. I didn't have any problems when I created my Blu-ray and DVD discs after I followed what I just outlined. So to answer your question, I do not consider creating chapter points and the main and chapter menus editing.
Ideally, we shouldn't have to go through all that but until we get a solution from Cyberlink, we'll have to use workarounds. I hope that helps you complete your project.
Arturo
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Actually Steve, I may have a temporary solution for you to finish your project. I used this workaround on the project I worked on.
What I did was produced separate video segments or files of the parts where I had the sync problems and then dropped them all back on the project timeline. Now this is the important part. You can not do anymore editing once you drop these files back onto the project timeline because you'll have the sync problems again if you do anymore editing. So what you have to do is make sure you have done all the editing you need before putting everything back in the project timeline. You can produce 20-30 minutes of each video segments and then put them all together. You might also be able to use the SVRT feature of PD7 so that all the video files that have already been rendered (or produced) will not be rendered again to save time when you output to a Blu-ray disc.
I hope this solution works for you in the meantime while Cyberlink is working on a permanent solution to the sync problems.
CYBERLINK - WE NEED A SOLUTION TO THIS SYNC PROBLEM. Thank you.
Arturo
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Sorry, I have no answer for you but your post is of great interest to me as I will be doing AVCHD edits eventually, outputting some to Blu-ray discs and producing AVCHD (m2ts files) and archiving to an external hard drive.
I have had audio sync issues but managed to correct them by splitting the audio and video. However, I was working mainly with AVI files. I also used a couple of m2ts files and did the audio-video split and it worked fine. I noted though that you mentioned that up to the 30-minute mark, there was no synchronization problem. The project I worked on was less than 20 minutes.
Dafydd, who moderates this forum for Cyberlink, had been in contact with me and I've sent him the pds file of the project I worked on for Cyberlink to look at. I did mention that the audio sync problem happens on longer projects because I tried recreating the problem doing a few seconds of video but the problem did not appear.
Dafydd, any news yet about this issue and a solution?
Arturo
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Hi Robert,
Excellent - both you and your daughter.
I have been a faithful Pinnacle Studio Deluxe user for quite a number of years but decided to switch to PD7 Ultra to do a family project for a birthday celebration for a 90-year old. There were some glitches with video-audio sync which I managed to find a workaround to, but I finished the project using PIPs and other effects and was quite pleased with what PD7 Ultra can do, especially when it came to rendering the project.
Hopefully, this software will keep improving and like you, I am looking forwarding to more useful features and improvements.
Arturo
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Good morning from Canada Robert. I guess it would be evening where you are now.
So I am 4 kb/s faster than what you get. My download speed was 20 kb/s the last time I downloaded from Cyberlink. I couldn't believe it and that really is unacceptable.
Please everyone who share this problem, let Cyberlink know or we'll be stuck with a snail-pace download connection.
So far Cyberlink seems to be ignoring my message. However, I'd like to give them the benefit of a doubt and assume that they are just busy right now but will eventually find the time to get back to me with a solution to this problem.
Arturo
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Well thank you anyway for trying to help.
Hopefully, I'll get an answer and a solution from Cyberlink as it is the only site where I get snail-pace downloads.
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I ran into the same problem. It took me about 6 hours to download the file and this would normally have taken less than half an hour to download as I have high speed Internet connection.
I find that downloading anything from Cyberlink is very, very, very slow. My high speed Internet connection turns into a snail-pace connection. I don't understand why that happens only when I download from Cyberlink.
I tried installing a download accelerator from Speedbit, but the speed was even slower so I ended up uninstalling it. I guess those download accelerator software do not work with Cyberlink sites.
I mentioned this issue in one of my posts and am still awaiting a reply from Cyberlink.
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Hi Dafydd
I was going to send you a sample project with the sync issues because I agree one hundred percent that the problem needs to be resolved by Cyberlink.
Now here's the problem. I can not send you the actual project that I worked on because first of all, the file is huge and secondly, there's privacy issues because other people are in the project and do not want it distributed.
I tried duplicating the issue by creating a generic 30-second 3MB project so I can e-mail that to you, but here's what I found out. The sync issues does not occur with short projects. The original project that I worked on was 20 minutes and it had still pictures, videos, titles, PIP, music, etc. The first part of the project had mostly still pictures with titles and transitions. Towards the middle and up to almost the end of the project, I had videos and still pictures. That is where the sync problems occur. And the only way it got corrected was to split the video and audio. However, if more editing is done, then the sync problem reappears. As I mentioned before, my workaround was to produce each problematic segment as separate video files and dropping them back into the project.
The only thing I can suggest is maybe try creating a project and see if you run into the same problems. The sync problem is there and I am not the only person who has ran into this problem.
Sorry I can not be of more help by sending the actual project.
Arturo
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I just switched from Pinnacle Studio to PD7 Ultra and just finished a project for a family gathering. I ran into this problem and wasted so much time because I had to redo the project over and over again.
By trial and error, I found that splitting the video and audio corrected the sync problem.... unless after splitting the audio you do more editing. In that case, the video and audio will get out of sync again. I got around that by producing each segment of the problematic video-audio sync areas as separate video files (mpg in my case) and dropping them back into the project timeline.
I noted that another member, Mark, has found this same solution.
Try it because it works.
Hope this helps.
Arturo
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Hi David,
I do want the very beginning content viewed when the movie is played. I think I may have asked the wrong question.
What prompted my question about setting Chapter 1 to other than the first clip is when I used the pre-designed menus, the cut-out boxes automatically plays the first clip or Chapter 1. I could not find any way to change the image to another clip other that what is in Chapter 1. And that should have been the question I asked.
I was doing a project for a family member who is turning 90 and we will have a big family gathering for that occasion. I wanted a little bit of humour so my very first clip is the film classification just as what we would see if we were watching a commercial movie. And the clip says it is a restricted movie, etc. I naturally did not want this very first clip appearing on the cut-out boxes of the menus. What I wanted was a video/static image clip of the person.
What I ended up doing is designing a menu without any cut out boxes for the main menu using the Menu Designer so that very first clip in my project is not showing up in the main menu.
On the other hand, in the scenario that I described, I would really rather not have that film classification clip show up as a chapter, although I still want it played at the very beginning, so it still would be useful to be able to not include that very first clip as a chapter and have the next clip be the first chapter instead. I know PD7 has a "First Play" option but I understand from reading the manual that this is the very first clip that plays before the menu is displayed. In my scenario, I wanted the clip to be played at the very beginning of the movie and not before the menu.
While I'm at it, I'd like to bring up the following issues:
I find downloading from Cyberlink takes a very, very long time. I have high speed Internet connection and it is only when I download from Cyberlink that it is more like snail pace. Last night I downloaded the latest build for PD7 Ultra. I had to do it three times because I could not connect to the server at first, and then just before the download ended, my connection to the server was lost. Finally the third time I was able to download and it took more than 2 hours. The whole process took me about 6 hours to complete. Granted the file is 620MB but normally that download would not even take half an hour.
Another issue I found using the software concerns video/audio sync. When a new video is added, the audio plays quite ahead of the video. I ultimately found out through trial and error that the way to correct this is to split the audio from the video. But then again the sync problems show up again when other clips are added or edited so it's back to square one. I made sure the duration of the video and audio clips were exactly the same but the sync problem did not go away. I had a heck of a time with this sync problem and wasted a lot of time as I had to do the project over and over again. The only way I got around to it is by producing separate mpg files of those problematic video clips and dropping them back into the project.
Also re the pre-designed menu/chapters, is there a way to include a static image on the boxes on the menu page and on the chapter page/s on the boxes below the chapter numbers rather than a moving video. In my project, I noted that the video displayed in the boxes on the menu page and below the chapter numbers on the chapter page/s started from the point where I set my thumbnail image for the chapter. The problem I've come across is the menu/chapter pages plays for say 15 secs. and sometimes, my chapter is shorter than 15 secs so the video jumps to the next clip and the video displayed does not necessarily relate to the chapter.
Finally, is there no auto notification about updates if there is a new build when PD7 is opened? I only found out about the latest build from the forum. Even the support site does not show the latest build and then you have to e-mail Customer Service to get the build. Why would the latest build not be posted and why would registered users have to send an e-mail to get the latest update?
Whew, I think that will more than do it for now. Before ending, I'd like to say that I also have something positive to say about the software. As I mentioned I recently switched to PD7 after being a faithful Pinnacle Studio user over the years and so far, despite all the frustration and a lot of wasted time, I think as it stands right now, PD7 has more to offer than Studio. The most important improvement over Studio as far as I am concerned is the shortened rendering time. I hope PD will keep improving especially in the rendering time area.
Thanks.
Arturo
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Thanks for the reply and suggestions.
I am hoping Cyberlink addresses this issue as I am sure other people who use the software would want the flexibility to start their chapter on another clip other that the very first clip.
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