Maestro authoring question

[dilshan]

I have authored a dvd using dvdmaestro which works perfectly allright when previewed with maestro's simulator but when I burned with Nero
it doesn't work as it should. This is what I did:

* I had 30 video clips from 30 different films. I used a jpg file as a
short introduction to each film (with film name, director, cast etc..).
This jpg file should have a 10-seconds duration and then the
corresponding video clip shall play (although there were only 30
video clips I had 60 movies since I had used each jpg file as a
movie as well. It is one hell of a jobb but I didn't know how
else to proceed). I have previewed with maestro's simulator and it
works. Then after compiling the project I burned the VIDEO_TS
folder with Nero. However, the burned dvd doesn't play as it should.
When I want to play a video clip, first comes the introduction as it
should but doesn't proceed to play the video clip. From my
standalone dvd player's panel I can read "STILL". I can only use
previous or next buttons to navigate in which case it shows previous
or next introduction.

Can somebody tell me what I should do, please. Can this be a fault with Nero burning software (I haven't tried any other burning software as yet) or have I done anything wrong when authoring with maestro?

[Cornucopia]

Well, it could be a lot of things but I'll try...

1st- While it has worked quite well for me, according to many on this board, Nero is notorious for making discs that aren't as universally playable as they should be. Try a diff. burner app.

2nd- Without more info on [Connections], I can't give a complete answer, but it could very well be something either in the authoring or in the encoding, and both of these things might be OK in a hypothetical sense for Maestro, but not OK for the particular model of player that you have.

Have you tried to play the disc in another player?

*Suggestion: Unless you specifically NEED to make each intro JPG a movie, why not save yourself the steps and make it just 30 movies with both the JPG and the video together on the timeline. You could create a chapter mark at the beginning of the video so you could skip the JPG if you liked, and it would play seamlessly alot better. There would be much less stuff to keep track of, and that makes for less possibility for mistakes.

HTH,
Scott

[dilshan]

Thank you for your tips. Actually the problem is that introduction
jpgs don't timeout after 10 seconds to corresponding video clips.
They do when previewed with maestro's simulator but not after
VIDEO_TS folder burned to a disc with Nero.

This is how my connections look like for first two video clips:

Movie 1 (first introduction jpg file):

Next --> Movie 3
End Action --> Movie 2

Movie 2 (first video clip):

Next --> Movie 3
End Action --> Movie 3

Movie 3 (second introduction jpg file):

Previous --> Movie 1
Next --> Movie 5
End Action --> Movie 4

Movie 4 (second video clip):

Previous --> Movie 1
Next --> Movie 5
End Action --> Movie 5

etc.....


I have authored few dvds with maestro so I have a pretty good idea how
connections work. The above pattern works terrific when viewed with
maestro's simulator. If you right click on above jpg movies and select
properties you can clearly see the "length" set to 10 seconds. The
question is if the above "length" which serves as the duration of introduction jpgs before timing out works generally or if it only
works when viewed with maestro's simulator? Any help would be greatly
appreciated. In the meantime I'll try to burn the VIDEO_TS folder with
Instant CD/DVD 6.5 and see if it works. I have a Pioneer DV 454 which
is a pretty good dvd player.

[Cornucopia]

Well, it looks ok and should work, but...

Have you tried just having the jpgs be a menu instead of a movie?
This should still work, although you'll probably have to make a dummy hidden button or a hidden button that selects the menu itself or a hidden button that duplicates the [NEXT] key with the [RIGHT ARROW] key in order to avoid getting error messages during compile.

Even better--The menu would be timed at 10 sec, and you could have 3 HIDDEN buttons: 1 will be the default and already selected but not activated that would go to the movie and 1 each for [PREVIOUS] and [NEXT] that have the [AUTOACTIVATE] property set and are mapped to the [LEFT ARROW] and [RIGHT ARROW] keys respectively. This would be much more structurally efficient, at least in my engineer's mind.

If I come up with anything else, I'll let you know.

Scott

[dilshan]

I have downloaded the trial version of Vob instant cd/dvd to test
my maestro project. Unfortunately Vob instant cd/dvd doesn't recognize
my NEC ND-1300A writer. After some searching I found an article
suggesting there is a german site from which I can download a driver
that should solve the problem. Alas, no luck there either, the bloody
link doesn't exist (http://www.vob.de/de/Downloads.htm). Has any one
else expereienced this problem and solved it? I don't know which other
burning software I can try to burn an authored VIDEO_TS folder. Some
burning software like DvdDecrypter wants an .img file but my problem
is at the moment I don't have more than 5 GB left in my hard disk (out
of 120 GB!).

[dilshan]

I have burned my maestro project with Record Now Max and it is the
same story. Intro movies (jpgs) won't timeout to video clips. I simply
don't understand this. It works great when viewed with maestro's
simulator but not when burned to a disc. Record Now Max compares
burned files with original files in VIDEO_TS folder. I burned twice
and on both occasions I got an error message to the effect that some
burned files differ from original files! Now I have remade the whole
project. This time I let jpgs be menus instead of movies as suggested
by Cornucopia. The drawback of using jpgs as menus instead of movies
is NEXT and PREVIOUS options on your remote are now not available
(I didn't quite follow what Cornucopia suggested in his previous reply
but I couldn't think of any trick to make sure that NEXT and PREVIOUS options are available for jpg menus).
I also wonder why you need to demultiplex movie clips before importing to maestro. This I see as another drawback of maestro and
it is one hell of a jobb if you have a lot of video clips like in my
case (30 video clips). Also this is a source for sync problems. The
video clips I used for instance have no sync problems but when you
demultiplex them you can see quite often .m2v file .ac3 file differ
few milliseconds. And when maestro multiplex these files into one you
can see that difference if you follow lip movement carefully. It hasn't helped me much that maestro have this option "Create Sync Audio track"
since I always get an error message after 95% of new audio track has been created.

[crusty]

Maestro was never intended for the home user hence the price, it is designed to capture broadcast quality footage through very expensive capture cards where it automatically splits the streams I have never had trouble with video/audio synch in Maestro.[/code]