ArcSoft ShowBiz hangs part way through DVD burn

[GordonVCD]

ShowBiz (as supplied with my Sony DRU-500A burner) is hanging while trying to burn a simple video DVD. On two attempts, it has got to 9% and 20% through before giving up. I had this problem before and seemed to solve it by adding more RAM. I now have 512K. On the previous occasion when there was a problem, I was burning a 20 minute DVD and this time it is over one hour. On the previous occasion, the problem was not specific to ShowBiz and hanging also occurred with MS Movie Maker 2.

I have used the Sony burner extensively to burn CDs and data DVDs for back-ups and have had no problems. This is just the second video DVD that I have tried to make.

System is ECS K7S5A, WinXP, RAM 512K, drives set to allow DMA, and virtual memory set to allow XP to control allocation. There is almost 6GB available on the disk available for virtual memory.

Any help much appreciated.

Gordon

[chinoman]

I have the same Sony RW drive, and likely the same MyDVD 4.0 and ShowBiz. I didn't know Showbiz could actually burn disc. I only use it to covert the AVI from my Canon G3 to mpeg.

Anyway, have you tried using MyDVD to burn to hard drive for testing purpose? If MyDVD also hangs, there may be something wrong with your files.

FYI Sonic offers free MyDVD 5.0 upgrade for us Sony owner. 5.0 gets rid of Showbiz and has its own editing tools.

[GordonVCD]

Chinoman - Yes, I burned a DVD successfully yesterday using MyDVD, after posting my message. Thank you for the information about the upgrade. I wasn't aware of that. I will check into it.

Thank you
Gordon

[GordonVCD]

Chinoman - I have looked at the Sonic web-site, and have found no sign of a free upgrade for MyDVD. Where did you find this information?

Thank you
Gordon

P.S. I just noticed that you said "free upgrade for us Sony owner". I am not sure whether you meant "us" (as in "we") or US (as in United States)! I live in Canada, so "US" may be a problem.

[chinoman]

By us I meant we. Here is the Sony link just in case you have not updated the firmware (follow the instruction EXACTLY) either. MyDVD offer is in the Download section.

http://sony.storagesupport.com/dvdrw/dru500adwn.htm

[MOVIEGEEK]

@chinoman,
What does this upgrade improve and does it allow MyDVD to output mp2 audio?

@GordonVCD,
You may only need the write engine upgrade:
http://support.sonic.com/Downloads/engine.asp

[chinoman]

First of all, I am just a beginner in DVD authoring/burning. I don't do much mux/demux because my projects are relatively simple. That said, Sonic site will give you much more details on new features and improvement.

I tried the 5.0 for a week and decided to stay with 4.0, though I kept the upgrade file. Although the workaround is tedious, 4.0 lets me author and burn ripped AC3/DTS 5.1 files whereas 5.0 converted my files to AC3 2.0, due to licensing agreement with Dolby or something like that. I do like the new chapter and capture-to-AVI functions, but I don't have much use of them. I don't need chapter much and I use Womble to edit. On AC3 2.0 output, I don't hear much improvement in sound quality when compared to PCM or MPEG audio (is that what you mean by MP2 audio).

Caution on engine update: Unless I am mistaken Sonic site doesn't support OEM version of MyDVD. Their updates apply to retail versions only.

[GordonVCD]

It seems that the problem that I am having with ShowBiz is nothing to do with the burner. Last night, I successfully burned an unedited mpg to DVD which was 24 minutes long, using MyDVD alone.

As a next step, I used ShowBiz to merge some mpgs to produce a movie which is 1 hr 43 min long. Rather than burn directly using ShowBiz, I "Created" to MyDVD. So far as I can see this doesn't involve the burner as this is presumably used once any changes are done using MyDVD. During the process of creation/saving to MyDVD, ShowBiz hung after going through about 15% of the movie. The whole computer wasn't hung, just ShowBiz, which was shown as "Not Responding" in Task Manager. Task Manager is showing ShowBiz as using 330 MB of memory and the CPU is running at 100%. I am wondering whether my 512K of RAM is just not enough for creating this size of movie. Any thoughts on this?

Thank you
Gordon

[GordonVCD]

Tried a couple more things to avoid ShowBiz hanging .... manually set virtual memory paging file to the maximum and set up the computer as a server, with larger system cache. Neither of these things made any difference and system is still hanging.

Should I increase the amount of RAM? I currently have 512MB and could increase to 1GB (max). Is there an acceptable minimum for authoring/burning complete DVDs?

Thank you
Gordon

[chinoman]

I doubt RAM is your problem. I was using MyDVD 3.5, which came with the 1394 card, on an AMD K6-2 500 Mhz 512MB RAM system without problem. But like I said, I only used ShowBiz to create mpeg files, never to burn.

[GordonVCD]

Chinoman - Thanks for your further thoughts on this. In fact what I am doing in the latest test, so far as I can see, is generating a mpg with ShowBiz for use by MyDVD. There is no burning involved. The system hangs while ShowBiz is doing the rendering/saving, before MyDVD opens. It's almost as if the memory paging isn't working properly, but I can't see how that would be. The last time the system hung, ShowBiz was using 440MB of the available 512MB of RAM.

I have tried a test with my virus checker off, and I seemed ot get further before the hang. Maybe I'll try with Zone Alarm off as well and see what happens.

Your system has no greater resources than mine, so I don't know why I am having all this trouble. I have 512MB RAM and a 1700MHz AMD2100 CPU.

Thank you again.

Gordon

[GordonVCD]

This is becoming really frustrating. Nothing I do seems to allow me to finish saving a MPEG without ShowBiz hanging. Has anyone encountered any similar problems? Maybe I should take a look at some of the other tools that are available. Any recommendations?

[chinoman]

Avoiding the issue, why don't you try out the MyDVD 5.0 upgrade, which has its own editing tools and doesn't uninstall Showbiz. I don't like the upgrade myself, but you may.

[GordonVCD]

Chinoman - Well, it looks as if I have solved the problem. I was concerned about the RAM and ran MemTest, but that showed no problems. I then noticed the update feature within ShowBiz, there was an available update. I think that I was running ver 1.3 and the upgrade took it to ver 1.3.4. Following this, I was able to produce a mpg which was over an hour long and, subsequently, successfully burned a DVD.

I haven't yet updated MyDVD as it seems to need my DRU-500 firmware to be updated. Currently, this is showing as 2.0c and the Sony updater provides 2.0g. I believe that this may allow faster writes. However, I wanted to sort out ShowBiz first, which I now seem to have done. I have also hesitated becasue some of the earlier firmware upgrades seemed to cause people problems.

Thank you for your suggestions along the way!

Gordon

[GordonVCD]

As can be seen from this old thread, I thought that I had solved my problems with ShowBiz. Unfortunately, I had to re-install after a HD crash. As noted in my previous message, I had previously updated to ver 1.3.4 and my problems had disappeared. However, since the re-install, I am running 1.3.2.37 and the UPDATE function reports that there are no applicable updates. I don't know why this is.

My current problem is that I am trying to produce a DVD MPEG (not burning), which is about 1 hour long. I have consistently found that if I have few transitions (maybe up to half a dozen), the MPEG "Produces" correctly. However, if I include a lot of transitions (I must have over 50 in my current movie) ShowBiz hangs part way through the Producing phase ... typically less than 50% complete.

I have contacted Arcsoft about this and have received what appears to be an automated response asking for more information that I have already provided. A follow-up query to Arcsoft produced no response at all.

In general, I am having little success in editing/authoring movies. I have tried, probably, half-a-dozen trialware packages, and most of them result in crashes at some point. Either that or they are too slow to be useful. I have seen references, on the Windows Movie Maker support site, to conflicting codec problems and I am wondering whether this is something that I need to pursue with ShowBiz as well.

At the moment, I am using a K7S5A MB with a 1.7GHz Athlon, 512MB of RAM (should I add more?), and have about 15GB of free space left on the HD that I use for movie making.

Any assistance would be appreciated .... has anyone actually managed to get ShowBiz to "produce" with a significant number of transitions?

Thank you
Gordon