Messages posted by MikeFromMesa

Jaime, Tony,

Based on your emails I created a small photo/video file using only the PRODUCE section and wrote it to the disk. Nothing else but the one file.

I then tried it in my new Sony Blu-Ray player where it played without a problem.

I then tried it in my previous SAMSUNG Blu-Ray player where it would not play.

I then tried it on one of my even older SONY dvd players (not a Blu-Ray) which would not load it.

So you are absolutely correct. Some players will play it, some will not.

Any day I learn something is a good day. So thanks (again).

First, the good news. As I posted earlier I un-installed and then re-installed PD8. I then re-installed the update and, lo and behold, that seemed to have solved the disk writing problem. I started the CREATE DISK process last night and, when I got up this morning, the disk had been created. So perhaps the system was just corrupt and that was what was causing the problem to begin with.

All of you who responded were very, very helpful and, thanks to you I have leared things about PD8 that I did not know before.

1) An AVCHD disk cannot be played on a normal DVD player. I did not know that until Tony pointed it out to me. I guess I only played the previous AVCHD disk on my Blu-Ray player and did not try to play it on my other player.

2) The folder system created by PD8 is exactly the same as the one written to a disk. That means that it would probably be better for me to write the folder and then create the disk using some other software. Expecially because of (3),

3) It turns out that the size of the actual folder structure (and hence the disk) may differ quite a bit from the projected size. In my case PD8 told me I needed 6.4 gb of disk space and would not write to a standard disk. But the final size of the folder structure and the data disk was about 4.2 gb. Much, much smaller. And, of course, it would have fit on a normal dvd.

4) Tony - you wrote that I could produce a file using the PRODUCE tab. I had not seen this before, but after all of this was done I created a small slide-show as a file. Now I know. But how could I use this file? Can I just write it to a disk and use that disk in a dvd player? Can I just add it to the needed folder structure? Or can it only be used on a computer? It would be great to know.

All of you have been so very helpful that I am truly grateful. Thanks again.

Tony -

1) It's only possible to select the disc size in the Create Disc module... not the Produce module (see attached images).

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Yes. This was my mistake. I was trying a 3rd time to create a disk when I wrote my previous response and, as you note, I was wrong about which tab I was using when I set the disk size to 8.5 gb.

2) If you'd like to create an AVCHD DVD to play in your Blu-ray player, your "normal" DVD player will not be able to decode it. At the Create Disc stage, you have to make a choice.

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I sometimes must be confusing when I try to be clear and that is what happened in this case. Yes. one of my players is a Blu-Ray, and yes, I was trying to create an AVCHD disk to play on it, but I was trying to produce a normal dual-layer DVD which would work on both my Blu-Ray and on my regular DVD player. I was not trying to create a Blu-Ray disk. And I guess that was not clear.

3) I asked because I wasn't sure whether you had produced the project to make a video file on your PC or not. Producing a file creates a video file on your PC. Creating a disc makes a file on a DVD or Blu-ray disc. They are quite different things and the options are different.

When problems have been experienced burning discs from PD, the most typical ways around them is to (a) produce the file first & used the produced file to burn the disc & (b) create a DVD folder and burn using other software.

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OK. Here I have to ask a question or two. I did not see a way to produce a file rather than a folder. I certainly would have tried that considering the speed with which I am going through dual-layer DVDs. I would look right now, but cannnot. PD8 had gotten so unstable (it had begun crashing directly after starting) that I found myself uninstalling and reinstalling it on my machine.

Now that I have re-installed it, and applied the update, I am again in the middle of trying one more time to create a disk. If (perhaps I should say when) that fails I will look for some way in the PRODUCE tab to create a file. That is what you said, isn't it? There is somewhere in the PRODUCE tab to specify a file rather than a folder?

I have also taken a quick look at your link and will spend some time with it after this process is complete.

Thanks a lot for your assistance thus far. I will try to create a file (when this cycle fails) and will touch base with you if I cannot figure out how to do that.

Cheers

Jaime -

First, thanks for the reply. As you may see in my previous post the size of the folder structure is > 8.5 gb (actually > 9 gb), but I did not think that was necessarily a problem because (1) the projected size of the output in the PD8 PRODUCE section was only 6.5 gb and (2) I assumed that the disk output would be compressed onto something that would fit onto a dual-layer disk.

The folder structure that PD8 produces looks nothing like any DVD video format I have seen before. Instead of VOBs it contains BACKUP, PLAYLIST, STREAM and CLIPINF folders. Since I have had no experience using PD8 folder outputs I assumed this was some kind of proprietary format and that I could not just try to write it to a disk and expect that it would play on a DVD player. Perhaps that is a wrong idea.

I will try your suggestion and let you know what success I have.

Again, thanks for the reply.

Tony -

I will try to be as clear as I can. I often run into this problem because when I try to be completely clear my messages tend to be too long to read and when I try to be short my emails are not clear. Here goes, and my apologies for the length of this post:

My wife and I recently went to one of t he local festivals and, using our digital cameras, we took a lot of photos and videos. Both of our cameras take HD type videos although they take different types. My camera takes .MOV video files and my wife's takes MP4 video files. And, of course, we alto took a lot of jpg files.

I spent some time with PowerDirector8 arranging these into a slide show with both the jpgs and videos. When that was done I moved to the PRODUCE section and selected AVCHD. Since the size of the slide show was > 6 GB I also selected 8.5 GB as the disk size and used one of my dual-layer disks. I also selected Widescreen (16:9) and 1920 x 1080 as the resolution size. I had never tried to make a slide show with PD8 before using dual-layers, but since there was an 8.5 gb option I did not assume there would be an issue. I then moved to the CREATE DISK tab, selected write to disk, did not select write to folder and then tried to burn the disk.

The process took in excess of 4 hours, but when writing to the disk, the software gave me an "unsuccessful" message indicating that there was some problem that might have involved writing to a stream.

I then tried again, this time setting write to folder instead of disk, and this worked successfully. I had expected that the program would either create an iso file or a VOB folder structure and that I could then burn that to a disk using some other burn software, but the folder structure it created did not look like anything I had seen before and was larger (> 9 GB) than I could expect to write to a disk without some kind of compression.

I then bought some new (Memorex) dual-layer disks and tried again to create a disk, but this attempt also failed and did so with the same message as before.

Now to try to answer your questions.

1) I want to play the disk on my normal DVD players. One of these is a Blu-Ray player and the other is a normal DVD player, but with an UPSCALE function that presumably creates something like an HD picture. Both TVs attached to the players are HD TVs.

2) I am not sure that I know what you are asking me in this question. If you are referring to the PRODUCE tab in the software the answer was yes and that I used the AVCHD and 8.5 gb settings. And, as I wrote above, selected Widescreen and 1920 x 1080. I thought about using lower settings, but the size of the output did not change my much so I left it where it was.

When I first used the trial version (I have the normal version now) I tried several different settings, but found that AVCHD produced the best photo and video results from our cameras, so that is what I use now.

3) N/A (I think).

4) Before I purchased the software I made several DVDs, using single layer disks, from our pictures and videos. In fact this software was pretty much the only software I could find that understood and successfully processed both of our video files. Most ofters understood one or the other, but not both. So I was able to successfully create several small slide shows using AVCHD, but those were using the trial version and single layer disks. I have never before needed to use dual-layer so I have never successfully created disks on dual-layer disks.

All of this is running on a laptop (dual-processor) with 2 gb of memory, Vista Home Premium (up to date with Microsoft updates) and using the built-in disk burner. I have successfully written dual-layer disks with this machine, but not with PowerDirector. I had played around with the idea of downloading and trying CL's Media Suite Ultra to see if that works, but have not yet done so.

I hope this is enough information and that you were able to get through it all.

I guess I was not clear in my question. I was able to create a folder using PowerDirector8 and asked about burning it, but what I really meant to do was ask how I can burn the folder AS A SLIDE SHOW to disk.

I have several disk-burning programs including Nero and Roxio, and they will certainly burn the folder structure to a DVD, but the folder structure does not have anything that looks like an executable. If I burn the folder structure itself, as it exists, to a DVD, will that disk then play in a DVD burner?

OK. Perhaps that is the problem.

But I had previously created smaller projects using normal DVDs and using the AVCHD setting. Those came out just fine. This is the first time I tried to use a dual-layer disk which was the reason I used the subject line of dual-layer disk.

Both types of videos in this project were created by digital cameras, not camcorders, and both are HD. The smaller projects I created using the videos made very nice slide shows with high quality videos that I could play, and enjoy, on our HD TV, and that is what I tried to do with this.

ADDED:

I loaded PowerDirector8 thinking about using a Blu-Ray burner, but found that there is no setting for Blu-Ray under AVCHD. When I select AVCHD the only choices I am offered are 4.7 gb DVD, 8.5 gv DVD and external disk. If AVCHD is supposed to be for Blu-Ray why is there not a Blu-Ray option in the software?

Also - can you tell me anything about how to use a created Folder to burn a disk? I can get the software to successfully create a folder, but don't know how to use it to burn a disk.

Thanks.

I currently have PowerDirector 8 and have been trying to burn a slide show. The show is about 6 1/2 GB in size, so I have been trying to burn it to a dual-layer disk. There is a selection button for 8.5 GB, but both times I have tried the attempt has ended in an "unsuccessful" message. Can PowerDirector 8 burn to a dual-layer disk? Is there anything special (other than selecting 8.5 gb) I am supposed to do?

I am using the settings for AVCHD and 1920x1080. The slide-show I am trying to create contains jpgs (of course) as well as both MP4 and MOV movies (from 2 digital cameras). My system is running Vista Home Premium (which is up to date with MS updates), I have 2 GB of memory and lots of disk space.

And, on a related question, I also tried to burn the slide-show to a folder. That worked, but I cannot find any information in the help file about how to burn the folder to a disk. All it says is

This folder can then be burned to disc at a later date

and I cannot find anything in the help file that tells me how to burn the folder "at a later date".

Thanks