Problem with DVD Author GUI....

[hgd4th]

I downloaded and installed DVD Author GUI, hoping to author a DVD with some .VOBs I have on my hard drive. I opened the program, clicked the “add title” button, added two .VOB files, and clicked the “author dvd” button. I immediately got a dialogue box saying “Process complete, please review the log for more information.” The log said, “Could Not Find C:\movie\*.mpg” All the program seemed to do was create a folder called “movie”.

Does anyone know what I’m doing wrong or if this is just a bug? I’ve tried using VOB edit and IFO edit to author a DVD, but I’ve had all kinds of problems with that too. Any suggestions for other good, free DVD authoring tools?

-The Newbie

[fritzi93]

Unless I've missed some new development, you must use elementary streams, DVDauthorGUI won't work otherwise. That means m2v for video and mp2 or ac3 for audio. More detail on what you're trying to accomplish might help.

Perhaps this will be of some use to you: DVDshrink can compile titlesets using the reauthor function. I've put together an "Easter Egg" DVD that way.

[thor300]

Demux the VOBs to streams then use dvdauthorgui. You can also use ifoedit. Click the create IFO button, i think.

[liquid217]

do you have ac3machine installed? i have heard of some type of registry key that ac3machine has that causes dvdauthorgui to work erratically. look here. https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=923034#923034

Also, make sure the BIN directory was sucessfully extracted.

[fritzi93]

This isn't something I've had occasion to do, but I was interested enough to do a test. No problems.

You can do a simple demux in TMPGEnc to get the m2v, probably bbMPEG (freeware) can do it too, but I haven't used it for a long while. If the audio is ac3, open the VOB in VirtualDubMod and select Streams>Stream List>Demux. This will strip out the audio for you. I presume if you have the ac3 plugin for TMPGEnc, you can omit this step. Mine doesn't, and when I did a test demux, the audio was screwed, and DVDauthorGUI let me know it. When you add the title in DVDauthorGUI, the window should pop twice, first for the m2v, then the ac3 (or mp2). Set chapter points if desired. Repeat for each titleset. Good luck.

[hgd4th]

Thanks for the advice, I made sure the program was installed correctly, but I haven't had time to try fritzi's method. I'll let you know how it works out later.

[hgd4th]

This is very weird... I used VOBEdit to demux the whole title set of my movie into one ac3 audio stream and one m2v video stream, added them into DVD author GUI, added chapter points, and clicked the "author DVD" button.

Everything seemed to be going well; i came back about a half hour later and saw a dialogue box that told me the process was complete. But when I went to look for my authored DVD on my hard drive, the folder where i thought I had saved it was empty.

I thought maybe I had accidentally saved it somewhere else, but it was nowhere to be found. i looked at the free space remaining on my hard drive, and showed that it was the same amount of space as there was before I started authoring. Does anyone know what went wrong? Did anything like this happen to you, fritzi?

[fritzi93]

Yes, it can happen if dvdauthorGUI doesn't like your audio stream, did the log indicate something like that? That's the only case when I had something similar happen. Which isn't to say there aren't more ways than that to screw it up. :P

Just for fun, why don't you extract the audio using a different method and try again? In my limited experience, AC3 is touchy, Liquid 217 may be onto something there. Perhaps the way to prove whether or not that's the case would be to extract the audio as PCM and use ffmpegGUI to convert to MP2 instead and try that.

Good luck to you, you'll work it out. BTW, it should take considerably less than an hour for the authoring process to complete.