DVD-Lab apparantly incapable of rendering motion menus

[Admiral Falcon]

I wanted to like DVD-Lab. I really did. It's saved my butt before by actually allowing me to customize my DVDs without having to deal with an artificially restricted, straitjacket-esque preschool-level interface, nor forcing me to pay out the wazoo for the privelege of said customization.

But, as with all good things, there is a flaw.

Considering that there is no reason for the following problem, and no documentation on it whatsoever - (again with the undocumented errors - one would think that if a programmer went to the trouble of detecting and catching the error, he'd actually try to, you know, tell people what causes it and what to do about it. But that's just me.)

Okay, I have a 16-second MPEG-2 video-only clip that I want to use for a motion menu in DVD-Lab. Using the cheesy workaround-through-subpictures is not an option, as not everything on the menu is a button (and non-buttons will therefore be invisible). I get everything set up, go to Render the menu, select the video and set the length to 16 seconds as described in the FAQs, and...it extracts the frames from my clip, gets to the end of the extraction, and then craps out with the incredibly verbose error of "Can't write AVI." Wonderfully specific, isn't it?

No mention at all of why it can't write the AVI. There are over four gigabytes left on the drive I'm using to render this motion menu, so it's obviously not space.

It gets better: Googling "Can't write AVI" returns one lonely result, for a page not even remotely related to DVD-Lab. So undocumented this error is, that no mention of it can even be found on the entire freaking Internet.

I'm forced to stop the render process and return to the main GUI. But now my clip doesn't even show up at all; it's not being drawn. If I try to play it, I see nothing. Restarting DVD-Lab fixes this problem, but leaves me no closer to rendering the motion menu.

I can't use most of the other DVD applications (Everybody says to use Scenarist, but I don't have the equivalent of the cost of a new Lexus to throw away just to make a few DVDs), either because of cost or because everything wants to use Not Technological (NT) OS's or that unnatural abomination that is Windows XP.

Has anybody else run into this problem before?

[Admiral Falcon]

I apologize for my attitude, it is late, I'm tired, and fighting against software has not put me in the best of moods.

I'm trying a workaround to this problem by rendering my static text directly into the motion clip itself, and using the subpicture/highlighting trick to create the buttons in DVD-Lab. Hopefully I won't have to render anything.

[proxyx99]

Although this won't help you direcly I'd like to say that I was able to create, render and complete motion menus with great success using DVDLab. I won't give you steps as I have not learnt it by heart, I just do what I need to do when I need to do it. Your issue may have sth to do with your output settings. I'd suggest contacting Mediachance if you consider it a program flaw. I'd rather say it is a setup/user issue. Check your documentation and support resources.

[bugster]

You already have your video in the right format, no need to re-render. Why not just use the clip as the menu background and add the required buttons etc on top of it within DVD-Lab?

[petar]

Bugster, he can't because DVD-Lab doesn't have an mpeg encoder so it can't put together the video and the buttons as a menu background.

Admiral Falcon, the fact that you can't find this error on Google suggests that you may be the only one seeing it. As proxyx99 suggested I'd contact the author for support.

Meantime, why don't you use the subpicture? You say it's not an option because the non-buttons won't be visible. Why do you think that? The subpicture is always visible regardless whether part of it are buttons or not. The only limitation you have is 4 colours so if you use more some won't be visible.

[housepig]

I would suggest you take this to the DVD Lab forum and post it there - there are some serious power users there, iincluding a few that I don't see posting on this forum anymore..

[bugster]

Bugster, he can't because DVD-Lab doesn't have an mpeg encoder so it can't put together the video and the buttons as a menu background.

.

It doesn't need an mpeg encoder, the video is already mpeg. Simply import it and set as motion menu, then 'edit' by adding buttons, text and links to your hearts content. Of course the new content is static but will overlay the motion menu fine. I have done this several times.

[petar]

I don't think that's possible without an encoder Bugster. How will the content be overlayed over the video? There are only two visible layers - background and subpicture. If you put a video as a background the only way to put anything "on the top" is either as a subpicture or to "glue" the background video with the objects. For the latter option, you must produce a new video therefore encoding is needed.
Unless DVD-Lab is clever enough and, if you don't use more than 4 colours in the objects you add to the menu, it makes them into a subpicture, I don't think you can get away without encoding.

[racer-x]

I use Motion Menus with DVD-Lab all the time. I've never let DVD-Lab render my menus, I've always made my own in a good NLE.

1) Make your Motion Menu in a good Video editor, Add text, music or whatever in the video, then output to Mpeg-2.

2) Drag your motion menu into the menu, also drag the audio in there.

3) Set your links and that's it!

This works flawlessly, unles you video isn't compliant. 80% of my menus are motion, I have yet to have a problem.

[DVWannaB]

Maybe I dont understand fully the whole picture of the problem. I use DVD-lab to do what some of you guys say cant be done.

All I do is I double-click on the menu. Drag my mpeg2 video clip and then audio clip from assets to the small black menu display. I then add button (sometimes), some text on the buttons or just text with no buttons. Then drag the main movie/movies into the text portion of the button and ....WALLA..... Video back with audio and buttons and/or text with no buttons.

Like I said, maybe I dont fully understand the challenge

[bugster]

I don't think that's possible without an encoder Bugster. How will the content be overlayed over the video? There are only two visible layers - background and subpicture. If you put a video as a background the only way to put anything "on the top" is either as a subpicture or to "glue" the background video with the objects. For the latter option, you must produce a new video therefore encoding is needed.
Unless DVD-Lab is clever enough and, if you don't use more than 4 colours in the objects you add to the menu, it makes them into a subpicture, I don't think you can get away without encoding.

Well obviously what I am doing then comes under the term 'use of subpictures'. If this is not sufficient for Admiral Falcon, then I suggest he render his menu with some other App as racer-x suggested.