Pinnacle DVD menu green screen SOLVED!

[Surg1951]

I have been trying for weeks to solve the problem with Pinnacle where the DVD menu renders as a green screen, with just the outline of the chapter icons visible on the screen. I FOUND THE ANSWER!!!

When you have multiple menus (example, six chapters on page one, six chapters on page two), and you complete the project, you will see a green line on the time line above the menu portion. It takes a while, but a lighter shade of green is seen progressing from left to right. When the menu page finishes rendering, the line turns orange like the rest of the time line. That means that page of the menu is rendered and ready to burn to the disc. If you select "make movie" before the menu page renders completely (before the line turns orange), you get a green screen for the menu on the finished product.

Here's the kicker. I assumed that when the green render bar finished, all of the menu pages were rendered. NOT SO. I discovered by using the DVD Preview function, going to page two of the menu, and then clicking on the orange bar above the menu on the time line, that the second page of the menu began rendering with the green line. I did this with all four pages, and the final product burned perfectly to the DVD. This is why people are having trouble with additional pages on their menus. The first page renders OK, and the subsequent pages don;t render at all (I don't know why Pinnacle is designed like that). You have to MANUALLY access each page of the menu and it will then start rendering.

[Baldrick]

It's great but please stop cross post. One thread/post is enough. I deleted your other thread in the blu-ray authoring section.

[OldUn]

Thanks for the answer. It worked a treat for me in Pinnacle v12.1 - though it took a bit of clicking around. I did some experiments to see exactly what worked and what didn't, and came up with the following. A bit long, but hopefully the detail is useful.

Background
==========

All of the captured clips added to a DVD project are obviously already in playable video format. However, any effect
added using the Pinnacle software, such as a menu or a transition, must be converted or 'rendered' into playable
video form before being written to the DVD. The rendered files are stored as video clips and written to disk.
To find the files, select 'Setup' and then 'Project Preferences' from the menu. Click the Project Preferences tab.
The file location is shown as the 'Folder for Auxiliary Files'. Under Windows XP it will be something like
"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Studio 12\Data\Render". Within this folder you'll find a folder
named something like "MY MOVIE 0BBA00B7", where 'MY MOVIE' is the name you've given to your Pinnacle Project.
Depending on where you are with your project, in this folder you should find one or more files with the m2v extension.
These are the video clips corresponding to each rendered effect. They are usually playable with Media Player, PowerDVD
or indeed with Pinnacle itself. There should be one such file for each rendered effect, and one for each menu page, if
the project is going to be successfully written to a DVD.

For example, my project had 44 clips, each of which I wanted to index separately from the menu. Each menu pages had 6
clips indexed from it, so I needed 8t menu pages - 7 pages with 6 items on each page, plus an 8th page with just 2 items.
If this were rendered correctly, I'd expect to see 8 '.m2v' files in this location - one for each menu page. In fact I
found just one, and when I played it I found it showed just the first menu page.

Later I added a transition between each clip - 43 transitions in all. As expected I found an extra 43 '.m2v'
files in my auxilary files folder. Pinnacle reliably creates these transition clips without problems. Note that if you
have 'Enable background rendering' checked on the 'Video and Audio Preferences' tab (see the Setup menu) then these
files will be created in the background, and you'll need to be patient if you have just added a large number of effects.

Workaround
==========

The workaround is to force Pinnacle to render each page of the DVD menu. You can view your project's Auxiliary Files
folder to check whether your menu pages have rendered correctly. I recommend getting the menus working before adding
any other effects. Though not essential, it avoids confusion between the rendered clips resulting from menus and those
from other effects.

Steps are:

1. Select 'Video and Audio Preferences' from the Setup menu. Make sure that 'Enable background rendering' is checked.

2. Select 'Delete Auxiliary Files' from the File menu. Delete just the files for the current project. You may see
the orange bar in the timeline above the menu go green while the menu is rendered. When it reverts to orange, the
render is complete and you should find the menu clip as a '.m2v' file in your project's auxilary files folder. If
it's there then the chances are that this is the clip for your first menu page. If it's not there just follow the
steps below for each page of your menu, including the first.

3. Click on the Pinnacle 'Edit' tab. Click the 'Start DVD Preview' button at the bottom right of the Player, start the
movie in the Player and navigate to the required menu page by clicking on your menu buttons inside the Player window.

4. Immediately the required menu page is visible in the player window, click the 'Make Movie' tab. Again, click the
'Start DVD Preview' button at the bottom right of the Player and start the movie in the Player. You'll probably
find that your menu page is already visible. If not navigate to it by clicking on your menu buttons inside the
Player window.

5. Immediately the required menu page is visible in the player window, click back on the Edit tab again. At this
point you should find that a new .m2v file containing your rendered menu has appeared in your project's auxiliary
files folder.

6. Repeat the steps 3 to 5 for each page of your menu. You'll know you've finished when you have as many .m2v files
in your project's auxiliary files folder as you have pages in the menu. But this won't necessarily be the case if
you have effects other than menus in your project.

To confirm that your menus will render, you can write your content to disk without burning a DVD. Click the
'Make Movie' tab, the select Setup and Make Disk from the menu. Click the 'Create disk content but don't burn' option
and then click OK. Bacl on the 'Make Movie' tab click the 'Create disc' button. Watch the player window while the movie
is being created. You should see each page of your menu in turn.

If there's any 'green screen' then something's not right. You may have missed one of the menu pages.
If so, you can repeat steps 3 to 5 for that particular page. Otherwise, you'll have to try again from scratch.

If all's well you can cancel as soon the player moves on to your clips. Continue working on your project and add
transitions and other effects.