DVD Workshop is not recognizing the right amount of time

[Fleece]

Does anyone know why DVD Workshop would only recognize 35 minutes of a 45 minute mpeg. I am trying to edit 4 mpeg to one and the total and individual times are messed up. Each video keeps running in the preview but the time stops at 35 minutes. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Craig Tucker]

I have also noticed that the time is not displayed correctly. It does not seem to affect the finished product though, so I have never really worried about it too much.

[Fleece]

Thanks Craig for the reply. Now I have a new problem. It seems the add chapter button is greyed out when I am in edit mode. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Fleece

[Craig Tucker]

Play the video in the preview window, the insert chapter button should then become accesible. You can then just drag the timeline bar to any point in the video where you want a chapter and add one. There is also an icon at the top for show/hide chapter list, if you select this you can see all the chapters you have added.

[Fleece]

The solution you gave me works, but dvd workshop won't let me add chapters to the first of the four mpeg's. I have tried swapping mpeg's to see if the first has a problem but it just wont do it. Is there a setting in the preferences? Does the first play have anything to do with it. Thanks for all the help.

Fleece

[Rico49]

Are your mpegs encoded at 23 fps with a 3:2/2:3 pulldown for 29 fps playback? In my playing around with Ulead DVDWS as well as Movie Factory 2, if your video is encoded at 23 fps with a pulldown for 29 fps playback, DVDWS and Movie Factory 2 will not report the correct length of the movie. DVDWS will allow you to create chapters, however, your selected chapter point and the inserted chapter point will not match. With Movie Factory 2, it will correctly create the chapter points at designated time intervals, but when it's time to create DVD folders or burn, it will display and error message about the number of frames does not matching something or another. If you have no interest in chapters, then you can create DVD folders and/or burn with DVDWS and/or Movie Factory 2 just fine.

These two programs handle NTSC true 29 fps and PAL 25 fps just fine, will display the correct length of the film as well as correctly create chapter points. I don't know why it can't handle anything encoded at 23 fps with a pulldown.

Also somewhat related, reading thru threads about folks trying to merge SVCD mpeg files using TMPEGEnc and audio/video going out of sync. Same theory applies. If the SVCD's were encoded at 23 fps with a pulldown, you can try merging all you want and you won't get the video and audio to sync. But if you reencode these same SVCD's to a true 29 fps and then merge, you'll find that TMPEGEnc will merge them keeping everything in sync. Again, don't know why, but it works.

Hope this helps

Rico

[Fleece]

Rico,

I sort of figured out my problem but your reply was awesome. Thanks for all the valuable info. So you are saying I can now re-encode at 29 even though the mpegs are 23. I'll try it and let you know if it works. I assume I can just use tmgpenc. If I am wrong please let me know.

Thanks again,

Fleece

[digitalmaster]

Has this been fixed in updates for either of these programs?? I would really like to keep the movies at 2:3 pulldown and not have to reencode them before I use Uleads DVD authoring programs.

[sammie]

As far as I can tell, it's not fixed, and I think I'm on a pretty up to date version. If you just delete chapters beyond the timing issue then it will let you author. I've had luck multiplying the length of the movie in minutes by 2 divide by 3 calculation, then delete any chapters beyond that point. At least one other person said they had to delete a couple of ealier chapters to get it to work. I can't comment on the accuracy of the chapter insertion points after this though? I'm usually just intersted in skipping around and don't really care exactly where the points fall.

[digitalmaster]

Yeah thats what I have been doing. Just gets a little annoying having to fast forward through the last 35-45 minutes of a movie, since any chapters after that error out DVD Movie Factory.

[sammie]

Yeah, IMO MF2 just isn't ready for primetime. It has a couple of nice new featrues, but clearly has a number of bugs and not all that different from MF1. I still use MF1 about 60% of the time. The first few releases MF2 crashed all the time, at least now it seems stable.

I'm starting to have a lot of hope for the new program (DVD Lab???) that has a beta release out. Looks great, only major problem I've run into so far is the audio is getting trashed somehow when I add it in.

[digitalmaster]

Yeah DVD Lab looks promising. I have not had the audio problem yet with it though.