PowerDirector 8 Fails to Burn to Disc & Folders

Jim May

Newbie Location: Buffalo, NY Joined: Aug 29, 2009 00:47 Messages: 31 Offline

Solved by

Nov 16, 2009 20:28

SUMMARY:
PD8 poorly supports projectes with multiple chapters and leads to failed burns to disc and/or folders. PD8 does not support creating a disc without motion menu thumbnails, thus it leads to extended burn times and unpredictiable failures. We need the option that has been in all previous version back in the users setting immediatly. I persoanlly like the motion menus, but would like to see an additional option added to the old one that would allow motion only on the main menus (titles) and all sub menus (chapters) disabled. PLEASE ADD A SETTING TO ALLOW DISABLING OF ALL MOTION MENUS AND ANOTHER SETTING TO ONLY ALLOW MAIN MENU MOTION.

PROBLEM DETAILS:
I am unable to burn my projects to the folder or disc options, everything seems to run good, and it even gives me a successful burn messages, but the burnt folder only contains some of the files in the VIDEO_TS and the AUDIO_TS folder is totally missing. Every attempt to burn gives me a different result, sometimes just an empty folder. I have cleaned all the temp files & defragged my hard drive, & have nearly 900Gig of drive empty, and am only running PD8, no other programs. I recently uninstalled the entire suite and reinstalled, same results. The burn takes a long time and occasionally will hang and quit at 1-20%, when it does complete, the folder is invalid and missing files. Small projects work fine, but larger projects take a long time and randomly fail at different points or lock up. I DO have the latest patch installed.

***UPDATE*** The current project that keeps failing has a lot of chapters (maybe 150+), I know the old PD7 version used to tell you what it was doing, and the first 20% was typically creating the motion menu thumbnails. Thus it appears to be failing randomly during the creation of the motion thumbs. I went in to my project and deleted all the chapters, except the main ones for each title section. Thus the burn time dropped from 60+ minutes to under 10 minutes and the burn to a folder was successful with all data written.

Unlike past versions of Power Director, PD8 does not have an option disable the creation of motion menus, thus projects with a lot of chapters take forever to burn and it appears to lead to unpredictable failures. What can be done to speed up and improve burns with a lot of chapters? We need a way to disable the motion thumbnail feature like on past versions or the software needs some work to support many chapters better.

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Nov 17, 2009 01:11

Jim -

Repeating the same issue in a different thread only serves to annoy others. http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/0/8840.page#37613

150+ chapters???

I burnt a disc the other day that had 12, and I thought that was over the top! (I was doing it for someone else - it wasn't my idea). It had no trouble burning (disc & folder) anywayIf I ever get creative enough to generate 150 chapters, I'll see how it goes.

Cheers - Tony
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Jim May

Newbie Location: Buffalo, NY Joined: Aug 29, 2009 00:47 Messages: 31 Offline

Nov 17, 2009 01:50

Football clips, mostly 6-15 seconds, the chapters make it very easy to restart the play several times in a row from the same location. Is there another way?

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Nov 17, 2009 04:40

Jim May,
The inability to turn off the motion thumbnails are a concern for ALL of us. I have made representations on the matter and the R&D liaison is actively investigating to restore the turn off feature as seen in previous builds.

Chapter production. OK, are you willing to make the whole project available to CyberLink R&D to replicate - you'll need to save the project at the disc menu stage?

Let me know - they'll need all your Export > pack project material to work with and to analyse. I'll provide you with the FTP location.

In the mean time perhaps you can provide some data for us editors:

********************************
Have you seen this, please add your spec?
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/8445.page
Please add your camera spec here:
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/8727.page
Thanks
********************************
Dafydd
[Moderator]

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Nov 17. 2009 04:41

Jim May

Newbie Location: Buffalo, NY Joined: Aug 29, 2009 00:47 Messages: 31 Offline

Nov 17, 2009 16:41

I'd make what ever avalible to fix some of their problems. But I don't see why, anyone could just make an example real fast. Just suck in about 80-100 small clips and organize them.

BACKGROUND INFO:
When we record a football game for coach/player reivew, we have about 80-100 clips that are 6-15 seconds long (no sense in recording or watching long leaders to the play, just capture what is needed). I usually group them together by the halfs or quarters of the game (Titles), and each play as a Chapter. Thus we have about 80-100 bookmarks that we can cycle between, the Titles make it easy to loacte the general section of the game, and the Chapters make it easy to narrow it directly to the play needed.

We typically play each play about 3-5 times in slow motion during review, each time we hit the chapter button to restart it right from the beginning. This makes it much easier/faster then hitting the reverse and fast forward buttons to find the exact starting point (like the old film/tape days). Plus you can use the DvD Player's Info Buttons to pull up a play directly, like 3-5 (Title 3, Chapter 5).

When we need to gather all the clips for the end of the year highlights, PowerProducer5 (PP5) makes real easy to use the disk utility features and stick a game disk in and select the checkboxes of all the Title/Chapters we want. It exports them nicely into mpgs for easy importing later into either PP5 or PD8.

Let me knmow if someone really needs an example or data.

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Nov 17, 2009 17:16

Jim,
1. It is YOUR project which is throwing up the error.
2. Replication of the error using the exact same files and then the analysing of those files will assist in localising an issue.
3. Only after that replication and additional file testing with similar/differing files is an error proved.

Your instruction to "Just suck in about 80-100 small clips and organize them." isn't acceptable.

I'm not Technical Support and I think you should contact Online support first with this issue.

http://www.cyberlink.com/prog/support/cs/index.do

Dafydd
[Moderator]

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 17. 2009 17:18

Jim May

Newbie Location: Buffalo, NY Joined: Aug 29, 2009 00:47 Messages: 31 Offline

Nov 17, 2009 19:09

But I have figured out how to work around the problem. The problem seems directly related to multiple chapters. I took the same project file and deleted all the chapters (about 250 down to 10) and it burns fine. I went in and added about 120 chapters in key spots and it was slow, but the burn was sucessful to both disc and folder. I went back in and added all 250, and the program randomly fails during the process at different points.

The burn fails mostly during the first 20%, during which the program is creating the motion thumb files. More chapters means more thumbs (without the disable option avaliable), thus longer burns. Taking the chapter out, the project burnt in less than 10 min, adding the 150 in ran the time up to 30 min, all 250 leads to over an hour+ and always a failure or a bogus sucessful message. The minimal burn was 1.3G, the 150 chapters ran it up to 1.6G, so these motion menus eat up your disc space when you add a lot of chapters.

The quick fix, use minimal chapters, until the motion disable option is added back in.

As for contacting support, I've had an open trouble ticket for several days, no response. I did use the phone system, that led to over and hour and the tech telling me my video drivers were out of date on a 1 month old pc. I abliged him and updated them, to no avail. I wasted several days and discs, but can duplicate it every time now.

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Nov 17, 2009 21:27

There are some physical limits to DVD based menus. I had to dig into the DVD specs many yrs ago and the spec says 99 VTS's (Video Title Set), so 99 titles, and with each title containing 99 chapters with a maximum of 99 titles per disc. So ideally one can have 99*99, 9801 chapters if everything are maxed out. However, there is also a 1GB size limit for VTS. (Unofficial DVD Specifications Guide, a pdf purchased book) This is what usually kills the menu; with video thumbnails one can easily exceed the 1GB limit. One thing that will help is to make the video thumbnail as short of duration as possible, unfortunately 10 seconds is the min in PD8, I think the default is 15 so that will give you 1.5 times more chapters than what you have been successful with if you have it set at 15 seconds.

If one tries to exceed 99 chapters in a single title, PD8 will throw up the error as shown in the attached pic. This is a valid limit as per spec only 99 chapters are permitted in a single title. Just pointing out there is more to the issue than throw clips in the timeline and ad chapters. However, Video editing programmers I’m sure have all the pertinent spec information at their disposal and should throw up meaningful errors if something with multiple chapters and titles violates the spec during burn vs just implying “Burn Successful”.

The video thumbnail issue was pointed out virtually the day PD8 was released to the public; unfortunately the first official patch released by CL some 3 months latter didn't include a fix. Rather disheartening when it was a PD7 feature.

Jeff


Filename	chapters.gif	Download
Description	99 Chapter Limit per Title
Filesize	60 Kbytes
Downloaded:	336 time(s)

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at Nov 17. 2009 21:34

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Nov 17, 2009 21:39

Excellent information Jeff -

Your explanation had me so engrossed that, when I opened the attached image, I almost went to click OK

It's OK - I stopped myself!

Cheers - Tony
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Jim May

Newbie Location: Buffalo, NY Joined: Aug 29, 2009 00:47 Messages: 31 Offline

Nov 17, 2009 22:43

Yes, great to know info (specs). I had a few Titles with 50 some Chapters, but never got any warnings or errors like that, but it appears I was under the number. Good to know they have it setup to check for that.

I did learn thru trial and error to run the default 15 sec thumbs down to 10 sec, but still had unsucessful burns until I ran the Chapters below 150ish. I did note when I went from 10 Chapters to about 150, that the burn image went up from 1.3G to 1.6G, so yes I can confirm the menus do eat up the 1G Menu Max. I also noted the temp/working folder (while burning) was highly active creating the individual vids and .png for each icon and menu item. It appears they have all the warnings programed in, so if the 1G max was reach, I should have pop a warning message. Plus, it appears to use about 0.3G per 150 thumbs, plus what ever the min is, so I would think I'm good there.

What worries me is the randomness of the failures, sometimes it generates partial files, other times none, sometimes a sucessfull message, other times unsecessful. I just eliminated about every other Chatper and went from about 250 donw to 150 and all brunt fine. I went back to burn the 250 one and it still fails unpredictably.

I'm wondering if there is a file limit per folder for windows, cause it was generating a lot of files during the burn.

I like the motion menus, but it does raise the burn time and cause problems on the high end of chapters. I'd like to see an option to only enable the main Title thumbs, and leave the rest off. This would know me down to generating only about 10 thumbs, thus a win-win (quick burns, but a nice appearance on the main titles menu.

Thanks again... Still no answer to my trouble ticket...

Jim May

Newbie Location: Buffalo, NY Joined: Aug 29, 2009 00:47 Messages: 31 Offline

Dec 30, 2009 16:50

Just an update, since the problem was noted, I have updated to Win7 and the same problem exists. The files for 2 examples uploaded to CL FTP, and it has been elevated by the support team to the R&D Team twice, no response yet.

The only workaround is to remove a few chapter markers at a time that you don't care about and try again. Save some DvD's by selecting the burn to a folder option to ensure you get a good burn, I transfer the good files to DvD with the utilities section of PowerProducer7.

KenR

Member Joined: Sep 03, 2010 16:44 Messages: 67 Offline

Oct 03, 2010 17:17

Can you be more specific where you change default 15 sec thumbs down to 10 sec? I can't find any mention of that in help, preference or see on screen. I'm on build 8.00.2330.

P.S. I discovered that you can only have 4 motion chapters per menu for HD output. Something to consider if you are making videos now, hoping to use the same settings when you get blu-ray later. The Menu Designer let me add 14 per menu, before it grayed out the Button.

I'm almost to the point of making a static background that lists the Chapters and tell users to skip to the appropriate chapter using their remote, how sic is that. Actually makes me sick to think I would have to resort to that if you have a lot of chapters. Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
Velocity Micro
Intel Core 2 CPU 6700 @ 2.66GHz
RAM 6GB
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS v258.96
ViewSonic VX2255wm-4 dual extended display
K-Lite 32bit & 64bit
1680x1050
Windows 7 Basic background no Aero
Hitachi 400gb system dr

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Oct 03, 2010 20:19

See
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/9621.page

and look for "How to - select the right playback mode " in there you will see a pic, the "Auto menu timeout" adjusts the thumbnail times.

Jeff

KenR

Member Joined: Sep 03, 2010 16:44 Messages: 67 Offline

Oct 03, 2010 21:54

I came back to add where I found it. You beat me to it.

If I choose to "Start from the first title", is there a way when Previewing to see the Menu, without clicking on the very end of the video. Most editor's I have worked with simulated the Remote's Menu and Chapter buttons.

P.S. If there is one place I am sure to crash it's while Previewing. I always save first. Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
Velocity Micro
Intel Core 2 CPU 6700 @ 2.66GHz
RAM 6GB
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS v258.96
ViewSonic VX2255wm-4 dual extended display
K-Lite 32bit & 64bit
1680x1050
Windows 7 Basic background no Aero
Hitachi 400gb system dr