Follow up:

After making the above post, I stumbled onto a previous thread referencing the same problem with PD 7 Ultra truncating captured video over 3.7 GB into two clips. I followed the advice given to the OP by copying the vob files to a separate folder (For the test, the movie had five video specific vob files. The menu was vob #6 and not copied.). I then imported all five vob files as a media folder, but rather than see a single "shadow file," I still had five individual vob files. When I placed them on the time line, the transition between each clip had prominent video and audio skips which were much worse than the original problem.

The previous thread on PD7 Ultra did not have a positive conclusion. Does PD in general have a limitation with capturing video in files sizes larger than 3.7 GB? Is this size changeable? As asked previously, is there a smooth way to fuse the clips without experiencing the video and audio burps?

Given another individual has experienced this exact same problem with PD7 even though I am using PD6, the matter is either system or software, with the distinct possibility I may be the source due to not unchecking a condition or entering a certain value in an appropriate box. I have searched the software help and preference menus for anything close to this issue, but I have found nothing. Does anyone have an idea or workaround for this automatic clip separation at 3.7 GB from a dvd+RW disc? If the problem is software, is there a patch that I have missed?

I have looked at each individual vob file and the break made when capturing does not coincide with the start or stop of any one. The break is artificial with the capture/conversion process. Again, considering the consistent clip break is made at 3.7 GB, I am inclined to think the matter is a value in a box rather than an issue with the software, but I do not know where this value is or how adjust it. Any help, ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

The file size issue is not unique to PowerDirector. Many video products truncate files at approximately 4GB because that is the largest file size that many versions of windows can support.

It depends on your operating system and how the drives are formatted so, to be safe, software vendors apply the 4GB limit. Dazzle is another product that does this.

Others will have to respond to the synchronization issues. Are you saying the final render has 'skips' and synch problems or just during editing?
Win8 64-bit Pro Retail
Intel i7-4770
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MSI Z87-G45 Motherboard
ASUS GTX 660 Direct CU II OC 2GB GPU
1 TB RAID 1 (mirrored) Drive Array
Several scratch drives for video, TMP, pagefile.

Thank you, OntheWeb, for taking a shot at this. I do appreciate your response. If PD is following the example of other market software by limiting capture size under the guise of trying to accommodate an arbitrary assumed average system's capabilities, then there should also be some means for the end user to adjust these limits to better integrate within the actual capabilities to which his system can perform. This limitation is coercively truncating a captured clip into two pieces that is obvious in the audio and sometimes video tracks upon recombination. Even if this limitation could be justified as a general rule, where is the logical adjustment feature to allow larger clips to be captured without the internally forced break? My operating system is Windows XP, but I have found nothing in the OS help that addresses this, which is why I defaulted back to the issue being with PD or how it is configured on my machine.

Yes, the "skip" is in the final production too (Audio drops and I often get the sharp crackle or snap that sounds like a feedback skip you used to hear with vinyl records.). Apparently, the break is dropping audio and video frames in the process. I can tweak out some of the distortion with changing the volume at each end of the break, but the dropped frames are still dropped. I am not able to stretch the clip as it is seen as terminating at the break, and if I apply a transition, such as Fade, the break is only amplified. I am experimenting with splicing in a vob file copied into the folder, and looking for a better splice point before or after the forced break. I would rather lose frames at a scene change rather than in the middle of someone talking or a musical crescendo. Sometimes I get lucky, and the break occurs at a commercial of a recorded program, but this boon is of no consequence when I am recording a classic movie. It would be much easier if there were some way to adjust the initial capture size.

Hi Jim,
You may be right about allowing larger file sizes to be chosen but there's a few 'industry' problems as well, not just specific to Cyberlink:

"The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4GiB minus 1 byte (232−1 bytes)."

"Using the default cluster size of 4 KiB, the maximum NTFS volume size is 16 TiB minus 4 KiB."

Given a general, but not universal, move to solid state memory particularly SD :

"Like other flash card technologies, most SD cards ship preformatted with the FAT or FAT 32 file system. The ubiquity of this file system allows the card to be accessed on virtually any host device with an SD reader. Also, standard FAT maintenance utilities (e.g. ScanDisk) can be used to repair or retrieve corrupted data. However, because the card appears as a removable hard drive to the host system, the card can be reformatted to any file system supported by the operating system.
SD cards of size 2GB and lower can be formatted to either FAT16 or FAT32 file systems. Cards 4GB and larger cannot be formatted to FAT16."

So, for example my Sanyo VPC HD1010 max capacity 32Gb SDHC has a maximum file size of 4Gb since the Sanyo operates only on FAT32 (I think!) Maybe Cyberlink has stuck to the industry approach for safety/compatability etc etc. rather than just an arbitrary decision.

Doesn't help in handling larger files but...

Cheers
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

Hello, Adrian.

I appreciate your reply, but whether or not Cyberlink was being arbitrary or intuitive, if this is the case, was not my real question. Obviously, I misspoke when I used the word "arbitrary." I have recorded large video files on dvd+rw discs that I would like to transfer to my HD for editing. PD keeps truncating them into two files at the benchmark of 3.7 GB. Surely the claim is not being made that no video files over 4 GB are possible on a NTFS formatted drive, as I have numerous large video files that substantially surpass this mark. Many of them I made with PD. I burned them to a dual layer disc, and I have them archived on an external HD, also formatted as NTFS. Using legal software, I have transferred whole dvd files from original discs to my HD, then burned a second personal copy for when I traveled overseas. All of these operations without limitation and without trouble, and all in one file. I have used other video capture software to capture and convert files larger than 3.7 GB without this truncation, but I choose to use PD as I am more comfortable with the interface, and the time is much less for the rip. I continue to assume the issue is me and not the software, as it seems to me it is market suicide for a video editing software to intentionally generate its own problems then say it cannot fix them.

Is there some adjustment somewhere in PD that I do not know about, and if not, how do I put the truncated clips back into one video file without the skips resulting from the dropped frames?

I was watching some capture videos on the Cyberlink channel on youtube. It appears you can select section of video to capture, vs. the whole beast. This may be a workaround.

Watch this video and see if this might help:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9lv3TR9hYs

Then again, if I re-read the problem and see you are importing from DVD's this probably wont help. Sorry! Win8 64-bit Pro Retail
Intel i7-4770
16GB DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24
MSI Z87-G45 Motherboard
ASUS GTX 660 Direct CU II OC 2GB GPU
1 TB RAID 1 (mirrored) Drive Array
Several scratch drives for video, TMP, pagefile.