I hope some of you video gurus out there can assist me with this unusual problem I'm having. I'm pulling my hair out and banging my head against a wall at this point. A little back history. I am no guru, but have created a big show video (over two hours long) every year using PowerDirector, this is the 11th I have done and I have never encountered this problem. It's not a PC issue as I have MORE than enough power, memory etc, for video production, so I'm not even questioning that. I captured all the files, clips, etc, edited them with no issues, produced the finished product with no issues, and created disk with no problems, until playback on DVD players (I tried in more than one).
The video is skipping in certain places. For example, this is a dance performance, and on the first number, it plays great until 2:08 and it freezes briefly and skips to 2:15. At the 2:08 mark, there is no splice, no effect added, zero, nada, nothing. I have burned the disk from the original video with all the spliced chapters. I then went in and broke the video into thirds/segments, and produced an MP4 of each segment (saved to pc hard drive), and then imported those into my project, and created a disk and the same issue happened at the exact same spot(s). I also exported the entire video project as one full MP4 file, saved to pc, and then imported that one MP4 file into my projects timeline, and created a disk from that. Therefore there were no spliced pieces, effects, etc. to cause any issues. The same problem happened. The video is originally created with 42 dance numbers, using two cameras, 1920x1080. In the timeline, each dance has it's own chapter marker and is spliced obviously where the cameras change from full stage to zoomed in. Effects are minimum, with the odd crossfade here and there. The skipping issues are ironically NOT where a splice or effect is used, but where the video is just smoothly playing.
Now this is where the "hair pulling and head banging" comes into play but might also alert the guru's to the problem. The full MP4 file which is exported at 1920x1080 plays back perfectly with no problems, no skipping, etc. on mp pc, NOT played back in PowerDirector but on a third party video player (VLC) It is only the copy that I "create disk" from PowerDirector. I am creating a "DVD-Video", MPEG-2, Smart Fit, onto an 8.5 GB, Double layered DVD (Verbatim AZO). I have used this same format and method every year.
The video is created with a menu, and individual scene selections. The menu works perfect on the finished DVD. The only issue is this skipping problem. It also happens throughout the DVD in a number of places. Approximately 4 or 5 dances later after the first dance, it does it again, the exact same way, freezes and skips about 7 seconds ahead. The dances in between have no issues at all. I have burned (many hours) four seperate copies, thinking maybe it was a bad disk at first but had the same problem, in the exact same place.
PLEASE help. I hope that someone out there has heard of this before and might have a resolution to the issue. Thank you in advance for any help you could offer.
Tazz