Reason why you get errors using Spruceup for vcd on dvd

[mazinz]

Hey whats up?
This is related to an older post on here as well as some problems i and a few others have had concerning using Spruceup to author vcd content onto a dvd (i never burn the stuff directly out, i make it an image or title set).
What happens is the menu loads up fine on your homedeck player, but what can and usually does happen is any choice you pick, the picture then zooms in on a corner of the menu screen.
I just tested 1 clip (vcd on dvd content) using sonicdvdit 2.5.
I then used the handy program "ifoedit" (go under tools section on this site) and noticed their are some differecnes between the two ifo info made from sonic and spruce and this may be the reason why the clips get screwed up using Spruceup.
listed below is what i noted just using one clip as a test
Note my clips used was mpeg 1 352x240 (ntsc) 29.97 , bit 1150

1. We are going to look at the info made using spruceup. Using ifoedit
open up the "VIDEO_TS.IFO". Once you do this you will see in the bottom half under description for the info for the dvd project (VMG OVERVIEW)

2. Scroll down until you see "number of title sets line" and look under this. this is where it tells you how many clips (titles) are on the disc, in my case one title (title 1).

3. under title set 1 it shows the specs for the title (video: - mpeg 2, 720x480, NTSc). Under that it shows the audio attributes (mpeg 1 2 channel)

4. if you open up the ifo for "VTS_01_0.ifo (for the video clip 1 or title 1)
and scroll down in vmg overview to title set it gives you the same info

5. THIS is where it may be causing the problem. The clip made with sonic gives the proper info for the mpeg1 clip and that tells the machine(your dvd player) what kind of clip it really is. So in both ifo's and using ifoedit go to that line and double click it and it will allow you to change the info.

6. Sonics info is as follows and worked wonderfully in my player
Video: mpeg 1 352x 480 (NTSC)

7. so change the ifo info for the video_ts.ifo as well as the vts_01_0.ifo as well and it will fix the problem

8. when you double click it will show you some more info so just select the following
(mpeg 1, ntsc (or pal), vari or constant rate (you should know), camera,
do not check anything in 'cc for line 21", aspect ratio 4:3, resolution 352x480, and then do not check anything in 'static field". hit ok and then save your new ifo files. Your clips should work fine now as you just made the proper adjustments for your player to see what the clip truly is. Hope this helps--thanks

[mazinz]

note: I did also try dvdpatcher as well and that did not fix the problem

[mazinz]

just ran into another snag. the ifo edit method worked the first 2 times around, tired it again and it has the same menu bug on homedeck players. I know spruce was still ina beta stage and contained many bugs and im pretty certain the vcd on dvd was one of them--back to the drawing board

[cynewolf]

Hello there
Did you ever find an elegant solution to the menu zoom problem
under Spruce? Or another proggie that will do what Spruce does
WITHOUT touching audio when making this "non-standard" VCD
on DVD?

Thanks in advance!

[mazinz]

hey whats up?
its funny you replied to this, the other day i was thinking about it again. And although i did not try it, i may have a solution.
firstly though you need to convert the audio to 48k otherwise it wll not read right on your dvd deck (also the apps will not load it-it will convert the audio)
next you would need the following apps--spruceup and some version of sonic dvdit,
Ok. the clips made with spruceup (vcd on dvd) do work fine, its the menu part thats the problem. the added benefit in using spruceup is you can still keep the audio as mpeg (but making sure it is 48k) and using this will enable you to get a huge amount of vcd on dvd (i made a disc and just fit 7hrs 12mins!!)
ok now go through and author your vcd on dvd content in spruceup as you normally would with menus, BUT then save the project as "title set"and let spruceup author the whole thing on your hardrive. once it is done you will have the folders containg all the vob files ready to burn
The one nice thing about vob files for dvd is that you can techincally take another file rename it as the same file already in a vob and use that newer one instead. With this swapping in mind heres my new method and how sonicdvdit comes into play.
make dummy clips for sonicdvdit (in other words make a clip/capture ) for vcd rate and make it pretty short (lets say 20 seconds). Now lets say that in spruceup you have 4 vcd clips, so in sonicdvdit, load up 1 dummy clip. Make the menus and buttons exactly as you would in spruceup,etc. once this is done drag the one dummy clip onto all of the buttons in the project (in my example i said 4, so drag clip 1, on each of the 4 buttons in sonicdvdit).
once this is done, author the project by "make dvd folder' sonicdvdit will make a folder with all the files ready to burn.
NOW here is where the swap comes in. the files you want to switch would start with VOB_01_1.vob. and go up from their (ex: VOB_01_2) or if you have going by my example 4 clips-- vob_01_1.vob, vob_02_1.vob, vob_03_1.vob, vob_04_1.vob. these are your movie files, so cut the movie files from the spruceup made folder and paste them in the sonicdvd made folder, by doing this and replacing the clips in the soinc folder, you are keeping the menus/buttons made with sonic, but using the clips from spruceup.
Now open up sonic and choose make disc, then choose where to make it from (dvd volume) find the file (browse) and then burn that disc in sonic. there you go that should work. Again i have not tried it and if you plan to i suggest using a dvd-rw in case it does not work you will not have wasted a disc--

[thaiwoo]

Hi mazinz

I tried your suggestion. I put two videos into SpruceUp and did the menu and I ended up with VTS_01_1 and VTS_02_1 files. No problem there.

I then made a dummy file (30 secs) and made the same thing in DVDIt PE. Ended up only with VTS_01_1. Figured the dummy files were too small so I used the same files (2 x 800 MB) like with SpruceUp and ended up with VTS_01_1, VTS_01_2, VTS_01_3, .......

I don't think this is working or am I missing or doing something wrong? How do you replace the files?

[mazinz]

hey whats up?
im assuming then you are using sonic dvdit LE instead of a PE edition? the le only allows you to have pcm audio which doubles the amount of disc space used. the PE allows you to choose pcm or ac3, ac3 is roughly 1-2megs bigger then regular mpeg audio. im assuming you used pcm as it made that extra vob file (vob_03_1).
but so far everything else is right, when you copy the clips, right click on the files in the spruceup folder(and choose copy) and then go to wherever the sonic folder is and you will see the clips with the same name, right click again to bring up the paste menu, your PC will ask replace this with that info if it sees a file already with the same name in the folder you choose to use the paste in, doing this will put the spruce files into the sonic.
For my example with something i was trying last night, i used a grand theft auto 3 commercial that i dl'ed from the rockstar site (converted to mpeg 2). it was only roughly 30 seconds. when this was used to test, it did allow me to drag the one clip onto each of the buttons i made (for that test i made 3). and it then did author this as if 3 different clips were used. i did choose the ac3 option as well. this is why if you do have the other sonic LE with no ac3 option i suggested using the 20-30 second dummy clips. Still surprised though it gave you the extra clip. Check it though sometimes the sonic programs are really screwed up and in the past it has doubled files on me before when i did not want it ot do so--still more testing on the way--

[mazinz]

i just re-read your reply it must have been the pcm audio option. When you make a dvd if your file is lets say 3gigs in size, dvd players are not made to see a full 3 gig file, so its broken down into simialr files that you have listed, (ex: for 3 gig you might have vob_01_1.vob-vob_01-3.vob), if you notice the vob files have the vob_01 info this indictates that they are all part of the same movie and the second number at the end (the _1-3.vob) is what part it is. inyour case it seems like it saw it as one whole file which is why you ended up with the vob_01_1-3.vobs.
Still funnythat it saw it as one clip and not 2. i eman you could take the logner road and make 18 (or whatever number)dummy clips
the clips im trying to do are all under 300megs each so no matter what sound sourcei use their still under a gig so for each one, each will have only the vob_xx_1.vob file (in my case of 18 clips it would be vob_01-18_1.vob).
once you get sonic to make the two different vob files 9vob_01-2) to match the files made with spruceup. then you can switch. even if sonic somehow makes 3 vob files for one clip and sonic has made 2 for the same clip you can do the swithc, just delete that extra clip.
to totally fix it after that 9although it should still work) you would then use "ifoedit' to fix the ifo info for the vob files. ifo edit is on this site in the tools section and very easy to use--again i should be able to try some test tommorrow with a dvdrw and will let you know how it goes

[rayjr13]

when you use this method of replacing sonic vob files with spruceUp files (w/mpeg audio) which prog's menus do you end up with and why?

Is it possible to use the menu's from SpruceUp?

Also can you edit how the titles are played? I know in myDVD the title on a menu are played successively but on Spruce authored titleset burned with Nero the, titles play once and return to the menu? Is that possible to change with a prog, ifo editor, anything?

What all information does the ifo file contain for editing?

Thanks

[mazinz]

i think though thats were the problem lies with spruceup and vcd on dvd content. Their is something that gets screwed up with the menus when buring that kind of disc (spruceup was still in it's early build stages when the program was dropped). This is why i purposed the switch method.
the menus with vcd on dvd content works fine with sonic dvd. Again if i knew why spruce causes errors (and was a programmer) i might have been able to fix it. It works fine if you play it on your PC only, but most homedecks tried it zooms in on the menu.
by doing this method you have the menus from sonic with the clips from spruceup.
i know their is a way to change the clip from instead of going back to the menu, and then onto the next tile set instead. the program dvdwise allows you to make a "dummy" menu so that similar to a vcd all the clips are 'connected" and play in succession
you can do a lot of things in ifoedit from fixing a vob to making the title set info, you can mess with the pciture options, sound, the ifo contains all of the info as to whats on the vob. it lets you see all this info and you can pretty much do what you want, again the tool is on here in the tools section this brings you to the site it is on and you can see all the nice things you can fdo with it there. Will test 2 clips within a few minutes and then verify this method works--

[rayjr13]

thanks for the tidbits. I've never had that problem with SpruceUp I do a title set and then burn it with nero. works on my Pioneer avm-p7300dvd so i didnt realize how big the problem was for you. thanks tho

[mazinz]

no problem, and my whole theory is scrapped as sonivdvdit creates an odd vob, it does not create 2 for the two different clips so that throws out my whole switching method. Yuo know what though i think i used to burn all my stuff made with spruceup using sonic (just make a disc image with spruce and when its done rename the .img to .image and you can actually use sonicdvdit to burn the disc made with spruceup for more compatibility) although that was for older versions of nero. I will try nero once again and see how that goes

[thaiwoo]

He am I glad you found the same thing about DVDIt making just one VOB file. I tried many times and I always got the same result.

I guess it's back to the drawing board.

[SephirothEX]

Um I know about all this zooming into the menu stuff, but is a menu neccesary? Cant you just put all the files on the disk without the menu and watch them in succesion or skip from file to file using your dvd remote?

[SephirothEX]

I have been having a Devil of a time trying to put some VCD files onto DVD, I have encoded them using the low resolution DVD template in TMPEG, and using SpruceUp I get the "error reading video input" window, and with DVDIt it stops authoring midway and says unknown error. I am trying to put 10-12 21 minute episodes on one disk, not working tho. Suggestions?

[thaiwoo]

Not sure if low resolution DVD is the correct setting. See here how to put VCD's onto DVD's. http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcddvdr.htm

Worked for me except the menu issue with SpruceUp

[SephirothEX]

Truuust me, I have read and reread that guide, the thing is, I followed it once, and I got 3 files onto the DVD, no problem, but then I am trying now and UI have 10 episodes and I cant get them to work no matter wat. Low resolution DVD is VCD DVD specifications, the only difference is the audio setting, it sets it to 48hz I have no idea wat is wrong, I even demultiplexed put sequence headers on the files, Spruce Up isnt adding the audio to the video so any suggestions there?

[thaiwoo]

Ok wasn't sure what exactly Low res DVD was.

I have a couple of questions so I can try to see what your problem is. How do you setup several files with SpruceUp. Do you make the menu or did it work for you like you wrote earlier to just put the movies on there and then they play one after another? Could not figure out how to do that.

[dpark666]

Hi im new here just tried to do a low res dvd with spruce up using mpeg1 clips and I had the same menu zoom error. My question is can we use the create if option in ifoedit? Also on my standalone dvd player when i pushed play it would play the video but it would have a greay cloudy cover unless i pushed stop then play again.

Here is something that can be tried as well.

make your dvd-vcd in spruce up export as a title set
open the directory and delete all the *.bup and *.ifo files
then open ifoedit and create new *.ifo files. it will automatically create the *.bup files.

second thing to try

encode 1 video jusing tmpg in mpg1 at 720X48
encode the same video but renamed into standard vcd format
demultiplex both files
convert audio to 4800khz

then use spruce up to make a dvd-vcd
put the high resolution file in first
then put the low resolution file in.
export to titleset then burn with nero.

this will see if the first video with the correct settings in the ifo file works and the second doesnt.

I will try this next week when I get some more dvd-rws.

[tsnake]

when using SpruceUp to create my VCD-DVD I get the error reading input video. I even went so far as to re-encode the video. Nothing seems to solve the problem. I'm not even positive how to tell which file it is.
I was compiling 8 videos. I sytematically removed various ones to see if it persisted. It originally seemed to be the last file I added... but I'm not sure even of that.
I'm not even sure how to figure out what to look for, as the error doesn't mention WHICH file is the problem...

While testing it all out, I originally did it with just two files. It created the VIDEO_TS folder with the right files. I burned the DVD. It played just fine with the software player, but in my standalone, not only did I get the zooming problem, but when I paused ot FFWD it a bit it woukld pick the right video.. but the sound would knock out after a few seconds.
Any advice ???
Thanks,
t-snake