DVD-Lab problems with chapter menus

[Afterlife]

Ok so I have 1 full movie with 10 chapters, I used the wizard to create the chapter menus, which turned out nicely. Configured everything to my liking, checked the connections and compiled.

Now when checking in Cyberlink it seems only the first 5 chapters actually work, the rest all link to the first chapter, and when I press the next chapter button after the first 5 they dont work.

I dont know if this is just cyberlink acting weird as i have noticed some quirks that dont work in it but work fine in the dvd player, but I dont have a burner which can handle RW discs anymore(the burner only burns R discs its faulty).

So is this a common issue and should I use the DVD-R media and hope it works?

The chapters DO exist as they are on the movie, all the button links also are fine.

Any input would be helpful thanks!

[Afterlife]

ANyone have any idea?

[Skynet107]

Can you try your dvd in another software player? Windows media player will play DVD's, drop the VIDEO_TS.IFO file onto the player window and the DVD should play.

[Afterlife]

Wow had no idea WMP played DVDs lol. Sad thing is I like it better than Cyberlink and WinDVD.

In all 3 programs chapters 6+ seem to be linking to the first chapter and just dont go where they are supposed to.

[guns1inger]

Load it up in DVD Lab and relink to the correct chapters. Obviously something glitched somewhere along the line. The lesson here is to always test with a good software player BEFORE committing to a burn, and never use the mouse when testing menus.

[Afterlife]

OK I have done this about 10 times now. I open DVD Lab and press on the buttons. In the link tab I am looking as to what the button link says. They are ALL correct.

I have 2 chapter menus.

Chapter menu 1 has 6 and they all say that they link to the correct chapter, but only 1-5 work.
Then on the second it has 4 and none work at all.

I dont think its a menu problem, as pressing on the buttons does do something. If I take off the menus and just use the next button during the movie to navigate through the chapters after chapter 5 it doesnt go to chapter 6+, so the menu cant go to them because it cant even find them. I have remade the chapters and everything and i get this error everytime i rebuild and compile it.

In the connections screen it shows 6 red lines from menu 1 and 4 from menu 2 so the connections are working.

I exported the chapters to a txt file and this is what it says:
00:06:13:22
00:17:04:02
00:26:44:00
00:35:33:03
00:42:52:07
00:49:41:09
00:59:31:18
01:08:39:29
01:17:54:06

So they are all there, this is starting to get really annoying. Is there anything else I can do to make sure that its all correct?

[Afterlife]

This is the contents of the report window:
Project Links & Commands
famguy.dal

First Play: Link to Menu "MainMenu1" (VTS1)
Title Button: Link to Menu "MainMenu1" (VTS1)

VMG Menus
-none-

VTS 1 Menus
Menu: "MainMenu1"
Timeout: 255 Default Btn: 1
Button 1: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 1
Button 2: [Auto-Action] Link to Menu "MainMenu2"
End Link: -none-

Menu: "MainMenu2"
Timeout: 255 Default Btn: 2
Button 1: [Auto-Action] Link to Menu "MainMenu1"
Button 2: Link to Menu "Scenes 1 for Movie 1"
End Link: -none-

Menu: "Scenes 1 for Movie 1"
Timeout: 255 Default Btn: 1
Button 1: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 1
Button 2: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 2
Button 3: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 3
Button 4: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 4
Button 5: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 5
Button 6: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 6
Button 7: Link to Menu "Scenes 2 for Movie 1"
Button 8: Link to Menu "MainMenu1"
End Link: -none-

Menu: "Scenes 2 for Movie 1"
Timeout: 255 Default Btn: 0
Button 1: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 7
Button 2: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 8
Button 3: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 9
Button 4: Link to Movie "Movie 1", Chapter 10
Button 5: Link to Menu "MainMenu1"
Button 6: Link to Menu "Scenes 1 for Movie 1"
End Link: -none-

VTS 1 Movies
Movie: "Movie 1" Chapters: 10
End Link: Root Menu

[guns1inger]

That all looks sound. Are you running the latest version of DVD Lab (Pro, I assume) ?

[Afterlife]

1.52 build 050509

[Afterlife]

Going to try upgrading to 1.53 see if that solves it

[Afterlife]

1.53 tells me the video has open GOPS which apparently can make chapters not work.

The source is a xvid which I then used winavi to convert to DVD with ac3 audio.

Is there anyway I can close these GOPS? I dont know anything about gops so some information would be helpful. Thankyou!

[Afterlife]

Can anyone help me on this?

[andkiich]

Re-build the menus anyway. I 've had this happen before an the only thing I could do was build the menus from scratch again. Saving the project seemed to keep the same issue coming back.

[Afterlife]

So rebuild the entire project? Ok ill try it.

Your sure it has nothing to do with the open GOPS?

[Afterlife]

So rebuilt the entire project same issues. So this is really frusterating. Chapters 1-6 work, but anything on the second menu simply wont. Im going to try encoding it to DVD again maybe its a problem with the video file.

If anyone has any suggestions I would like to hear them

[GeorgeW]

check if you have it properly set for Drop-Frame or Non-Drop-Frame (looks like you are setting for Non Drop Frame).

Change to frame-index to get an accurate placement of chapter marks.

[Afterlife]

Frame Indexing is done.

Where do I check for the Non-Drop-Frame?

Thanks!

[Afterlife]

Ok i changed it to drop frame ill let you know how it turns out

[Afterlife]

Ok so FINALLY found the problem, tho I dont know how to correct it.

It still didnt work after numerous attempts. So I tried fast forwarding to see if the chapters existed in the film. The entire movie is 1hr 22 minutes, it has only done 50 minutes and didnt put the rest in.

The input is a 4.2GB mpeg-2 DVD with ac3, but the DVD size after compile is 2.2GB and it cuts out a TON of the movie so the chapters just replay the movie from the start. So I checked the source files int he VIDEO_TS folder and opened them in WMP and confirmed that the movie is indeed missing a bunch of it. So now I need to know why it is not giving errors, or if it is, where I should look.

Thanks!

[AvalonMan]

AfterLife

just saw your post. I also noticed that long movies would be truncated by DVDLab.

I haven't found a fix, but my workaround is to split long movies into shorter segments. I split it at a point where I want a chapter anyway.

I edit in Premier and only frameserve smaller sections to my encoder and then load the resultant 2 or 3 mpeg files into the DVDLab project. Whilst this is a bug, it is no great hassle.

Cheers

[Afterlife]

Ok thanks I did not know that it truncated like that. So how do I make the end of one movie go to the beggining of another without going back to the menu? (i.e make all the movies act as though they are one movie?)

Thanks!

[AvalonMan]

I link them together in the Connections window, ie I draw an arrow from the first part of the movie to the second part of the movie.

This appears to play continuously although I do break the movie at a scene change to be safe!

[guns1inger]

You said the original source was Xvid - was it one or two files ? Some apps, when fed two files to join, encode each file beginning the clock at 0 each time. Even though the end result may be a single video file, the timecodes are screwed and restart in the middle. I suspect that is what has happened in your case. Try using restream to reset the timecode to a zero start point and see how you go.

[sohaibrazzaq]

Yeah, Open GOP's are probably the cause of this error.
I notice that DVDlab Pro truncates long movies, i think greater than 45 minutes if it have open GOP's.
I authored a single 4 Hours long Documentry on DVD-9 (7.8 GB) with closed GOP's a week before using DVDlab Pro v1.53 and it played fine on Cyberlink PowerDVD 6.0 and as well as on my DVD player.

Try to re-encode the file and Close all GOP's.I use MainConcept MPEG Pro so i can tell how you can do that in MainConcept MPEG Pro.
Open Your video file and choose DVD format in MPEG Pro.
Click Details.Than click Advanced.
On the lower left side you will find GOP settings section as "GOP structure (distance between frame types):"
In the lower line you will see 3 tabs
I Frames Auto GOP: Closed GOP Interval:

Closed GOP interval is always set to 0 as a default.Change it to 1.Now this means you have closed GOP.
Re-Author your files in DVDlab Pro and now the chapters must be played correctly.
Cheers.