Authored DVD with GFD, fine on TV, no menus when playing on computer.

[towtruck]

Hello

I authored a DVD using GFD (created *.iso & burned with Imgburn). Plays great on the TV.

Today when I tried to play it on my computer using Cyberlink PowerDVD, the menu did not display. I finally just hit 'Enter' and the first of two titles played fine.

Another title-less DVD authored with DVDAuthorGui started playing fine also.

Finally, a number of DVD's authored & burned with Nero also displayed their main menu just fine.

Is anyone aware of issues with GFD, or the underlying DVDAuthor which might cause the menu non-display problem? Any fixes? Or is there a possibility that PowerDVD has issues??

Thanks for any suggestions.

[stars]

Hi...

I have done a lot of DVD authoring with GFD...
And sometimes I have issues with Power DVD but not with other software...

There is on bug (I dont know if it have been fixed) if you change the order of menu buttons
setting the first created. First in the button list (now I am talking about submenus) you can
get a "user forbbiden function" and PowerDVD stopps..This is solved by editing the DVD with pgcedit.

Another problem is if you use animated menus and stop PowerDVD (eject DVD) in the middle of a
menu PowerDVD will "stall" compleatley... VLC does not have this problem..

I think there is a forum for GFD take a look there... well borax (the authour) is here at videohelp too..

stars....

[towtruck]

Thanks stars!!

VLC played it just fine. I guess GFD is OK and PowerDVD is not all that powerful. I'll uninstall it!

I beleive the one bug you are talking about is (was) with GFD, and has been fixed by now. In any case, I didn't get that error so I won't worry about it.

Thanks again!

[borax]

As mentioned by stars, PowerDVD has some issues. I use MPC and WinDVD mainly without such problems.
Most times the problem was related to the number of frames for still menus. See: http://download.videohelp.com/gfd/Help/GfdFAQ.html (last point). I thought this should be solved now, but maybe there are still other problems with PowerDVD.
To help tracking the error, it would be important for me, which GfD version and which PowerDVD version you are using. In addition, what kind of menus (still/animated/still with sound) you have created.

[towtruck]

Very enlightening, Borax

Now that you mention it, i remember reading that last point.
"Some DVD players do not show the menu if it consists of one single video frame. PowerDVD has problems with 2 to ~ 8 frames. "

I'm not 100% sure what I selected, but since I make my DVD's primarily for TV playback I think I keyed on the first sentence in the quote above and gave my still (no sound) menu 2 frames. So that sinks PowerDVD. I'm really actually not that concerned with computer playback, but was concerned that the same problem might sink some stand-alone players as well. But it would be nice if my DVD's played on soft players too. Maybe I'll just use 15 frames from now on.

I don't remember what GFD version I used. I downloaded it about 3 to 4 weeks ago, and have since installed the latest version. PowerDVD is 5.01.0517P.

Thanks again!

[borax]

I would use 1 frame, as I have patched the newer dvdauthor versions (higher than 0.6.13) to create a 'full' vobunit (0.4 sec.) even for 1 frame. And some users have reported that the problems with SA players are gone now (using 1 frame). But as only very few users report back if a problem is gone, I can't give you any guaranty. In the end it's up to you. I can't check all possibilities with every different hard/soft player, just try to solve problems reported by users.

[towtruck]

Thank You!

It'll be couple more weeks till I've a real project to do, but I might do a quick test and report back!

Nochmal Vielen Dank!