Pinnacle Studio 8 Authored DVD and Menu Problem

[jbullock]

I am having trouble getting the DVD menu to operate correctly from a
standalone player. The DVD plays fine using WinDVD on my computer.

I am using Pinnacle Studio 8.5.21 with surprising success (based on
web board discussions about how faulty this product can be) other than
the menu problems I am experiencing. My DVD burner is the Cendyne
105, capture hardware is Canopus ADVC50, system is Dell Dimension 866
with 256 Mb and 100 Gb. I am making the video at full quality in
Studio to preserve the kid's first steps, etc. at highest quality.

When I burn a "full" disc (about 58 minutes), menu navigation does not
work correctly. If I select the first moving video thumbnail button,
the TV screen flashes and the first page of the menu is redisplayed.
After the menu duration (37 seconds) ends, the second page of the menu
is displayed. After the second page duration ends, the first clip
plays. If I select any of the menu buttons 2-11, the video plays, but
not where the chapter points were set.

I tried burning a video with the same menu and only 45 minutes worth
of clips, and the menu works perfectly on the set top player. If I go
to 55 minutes, the menu is goofed up as with a 58 minute video. I have
been able to reproduce this on multiple brands of DVD-RW and DVD-R.

I also was able to create a DVD with no menu and about 57 minutes of
video, and the entire video played correctly on my standalone player.

Do you have any suggestions for me to try to make a 58 minute video
with 11 chapter points over two pages and have it navigate correctly?

[donpedro]

Hmm.... Interesting issue.... I have no idea what might be wrong, but try my trick for bad menu from here. Maybe it will help.

Pinnacle Studio 8 and DV home video editing

[ktnwin]

I used to have problems with navigating thru menu but after upgrade to the newer version 8.5.21 downloaded from their site, the problem went away.

[jbullock]

Thanks, donpedro and ktnwin, for your suggestions. Unfortunately, I cannot resolve the problem even after using your excellent tips. I am already at 8.5.21 and did try burning with Nero instead of Studio, to no avail.

I'm pretty sure it's an incompatibility of some sort with my DVD player, a Philips DVD-953. My brother-in-law was able to play it on his player without a problem. I did check the compatibility lists at dvdrhelp.com, and it says that it should handle a DVD-R okay. I have been using DVD-RW for testing to avoid "coastering", but did try a -R along the way just to see, and had the same result with goofy menu navigation.

I'm not sure where to go from here - any further suggestions would be most welcome.

[donpedro]

Did you try to add backround music to DVD menu as sugeted in my post ? It might not help but it was good workaround in previouse version.

[jbullock]

Yes, I have been using a background music track all along.

I have seen other suggestions on the Pinnacle web boards:

1) add a short title screen before the menu
2) make each clip into individual avi's, then use those in a new project

I am going to try these over the next couple of days. I will post my results.

A couple of other oddities that I didn't mention earlier - if I use the number keys on the DVD player's remote to select "1", it returns to the menu, as if it were chapter 1. Also, if I try to fast forward, nothing happens. (fast forward works okay if there is no menu on the disc).

Thanks for your continued interest,

John Bullock

[jbullock]

Just to close the loop on this problem - it was my standalone DVD player all the time. I called Philips and described the problem I was seeing, and they sent me a DVD. I put it in the player and it updated the player and now my Studio DVDs work like a charm!

[donpedro]

Who would have thought ?!?!?! Man !!! There are so many variables in this whole DVD cycle.....


Camcorder
PC (chipset, drivers, IRQ)
Capture card
Free resouces (bacround programs, hardware comatibilty)
Codec (version, patch)
Capture Software (version, patch)
Editing soft. (version, patch)
Encoder (version, patch)
Autoring soft. (version, patch)
Burning soft. (version, patch)
Media (type, quality)
Burner (type, or firmware)
Burning speed
Options during burning
And finaly DVD player.......

Funy to identify when something doesn't work. No wonder that people have different results with one of the components than other. There is hardly same combination in another PC than in yours.