Splitting files in Nero to burn to DVD?

[ibzomie]

Please tell me if what I'm trying to do is possible or not.

I have a file that I downloaded and converted for burning to DVD. The movie has seven different scenes. Rather than simply set chapters throughout the movie, I would like to split it into seven separate files. Each file will then show up on the DVD menu as a separate title, each of which will then be divided with chapter stops. Have I been clear enough?

I open the file in NeroVision Express, and go to the editing screen. I can perform the splits, apparently successfully, as I see seven separate files on the storyboard line. But I cannot figure out what to do with them after that. They don't show up as separate files when I go to the content screen; all I see there is the original full length file. How can I get the seven split files to the content screen so I can proceed with creating chapters and menus and the burning process?

Am I missing something? Or is it even possible to do what I've described?

[Safesurfer]

You're just doing "virtual" splits on the file, you need to export the split scenes to separate files. Use the Make Movie option in VisionExpress, do your splits, and then export them to files. After this, start a new DVD project and reimport the files, this should now work as you want.

[ibzomie]

OK. I split a movie into three parts. The three splits could be seen on the storyboard line. I selected (left clicked on it, and it was highlighted with a blue border) one of the parts and attempted to export it. It seemed to be chugging along just fine, but when it was finished, the WHOLE movie had been exported in one chunk, not just the portion that I wanted split.

Am I missing something?

[Safesurfer]

VisionExpress won't let you select individual items on the timeline for export. After you've split the video, you need to click on one of the sections and delete it (again this is all virtual and won't affect the original file), then run the export for the remaining video on the timeline. This means for multiple splits, you'll have to do this several times.

[guns1inger]

Or use a proper editor instead of a toy

[magicka8000]

what is considered a proper editor?

[guns1inger]

For simple splits, even Virtualdub will do. Just mark your in and out points, and do a save as using Direct Stream Copy. No re-encoding is done, and you get your multiple segments.

For more complex work, Vegas Movie Studio or Premiere elements, or even Ulead Video Studio.

If you need more than that, you gave Vegas or Premiere Pro - or even Avid DV Free (although it is an aquired taste).

Even Windows Movie Maker can split a video, but Virtualdub and the Panasonic DV Codec would be quickest and easiest.

The other advantage to virtualdub is that you can frameserve directly to a good encoder to create you video assets ready for authoring, rather than use a substandard mpeg2 encoder like Nero.

[magicka8000]

Just wanting to provide an answer for everybody out there. First of all, Nero is a piece! Do not use Nero! For anything. I found avs video tools to do everything. Go to www.avsmedia.com and they have everything you need. You can edit, split, join, convert, burn and the whole nine yards. This software was able to convert and burn a set of files that no other program would even recognize. Nero kept coming back with some kind of read error or something, only after it went through the damn conversion process. It converted the file and then when I went to go burn, it decided that it was not burnable. Nothing related to copywrite, it was some kind of file consistency error. I don't know.

I say Nero is a piece because it is $80. For $80, it should do it all, but it doesn't. As safesurfer stated, you split the video to put on a storyboard. Then if you just want the first part of the video to burn, then you have to delete all of the other pieces on the storyboard that you don't want. You then have to export the one you want, after deleting the rest, out onto your drive somewhere. You then have to do that for each one or piece. So, if you want the movie in three parts, you have to go through that process three times. Then you can add those exported parts and burn them. With avs tools, you just click a box and indicate how many parts you want the video in and it will do it. You still have to save it somewhere, but piece of cake.

Nero is WAY too much work. And half the time it doesn't even work. Half the time it comes back with some error message about not being able to convert the video or not being to burn the video or whatever. If there was really a problem with the video files themselves, then I would have encountered errors also with other programs. There is also a program out there called file splitter and that worked too. You could split (as I think that one allows you to split it into more pieces) it with that program and burn it with another.

I'm not sure if AVS Video Tools can handle large, complex work, but for most people, it will do what you want it to do. Also, they have other tools on their website, such as audio tools. That's got to be pretty expansive because hell, I was able to extract the audio from a video file using the video tools. I mean this software is the end all be all video and audio editing software in my opinion and it doesn't have an enormous price tag either. Hope people read this thread as this was frustrating to me for a long time.