SE Disappears with folder of VOBs

[Tony R]

I have built a new computer a few months back to use with SE after the disappearing acts I was getting from SE in the past. I installed SE from the CD just today for the first time. I have a DVD I made from a standalone unit of someone's home videos. I wanted to do some further editing so I copied the vob files to the computer. I got no sound so I searched this forum and someone said to enable Directshow AAC/AC3 support in SE. I did that and now, everytime I go to the file bin to the folder that has the VOBs, SE disappears, just like the old days. I did not install the 1.2 upgrade yet. Was this normal behavior for 1.0? If not, I am not going to bother upgrading and using SE at all. Let me know if anyone has this problem or am I the only one that cannot SE in his house?

Tony

[ScorpioProd]

Well, considering that SE 1.2 is free and just a patch...

I don't see why you wouldn't just install it and find out if the problem is fixed.

I mean, it did fix a ton of bugs, so who really cares if the bug was in SE 1.0 if it's fixed now?

[Tony R]

Since I added a couple of new hard drives and did a complete re-install of XP SP2 a couple of months back, I installed SE from the CD. I never used it until tonight. I am about to build an entirely new system (Quad Core, 4GB DDR2, etc) and I am sure I will need to get another serial number at that point. So, the only way I could use it tonight was to change my date back to June 15.

So as you suggested Eugene, I downloaded and installed 1.2. I enabled DirectShow AC3, AAC Decoding. It didnt do anything, just as I expected it wouldn't. SE disappears.

So I ask again, is it normal that SE 1.2 plays VOB files with NO AUDIO even though DirectShow AC3, AAC Decoding is enabled? Apparantly, doing so solved others' problems but my SE simply disappears.

Tony

[ScorpioProd]

Well, it's important to realize what that preference actually does.

All it does is tell SpeedEDIT to use any DirectShow codecs that your system happens to have to let it decode AC3/AAC.

If your system doesn't actually have any AC3/AAC DirectShow codecs installed from some other program or a codec pack or something, you won't get audio from a VOB that uses AC-3 audio either way.

For instance, I have Ulead's DVD Workshop 2 on my system, and that installs an AC-3 codec, Vegas 7+DVD Architect 4 probably does as well. Actually, I would think any DVD player software would, too.

So again, just to clarify, SpeedEDIT itself doesn't have the codec for AC-3/AAC, the preference just enables it if you have one on your own codecs for it.

The reason there is a preference at all is because the DirectShow decoding slows down SpeedEDIT, so if you don't need the support, you may want to turn it off.

[KiloWatkins]

I have deleted the .info file in a folder and the folder will no longer shut down SE. IOW, I have had SE close down suddenly like you have experienced.

You can find VOB2AVI or maybe VOBEdit that might convert your VOB's. I just play and record DVD's, as most any conversion is 1:1.

GoodLuck

[KiloWatkins]

If you have not tried the 3GB switch or loaded the Codec Pak, these 2 things may help in other aspects of SE performance Tony. NOT PhRo thread! LOL

[Tony R]

I have deleted the .info file in a folder and the folder will no longer shut down SE. IOW, I have had SE close down suddenly like you have experienced.

GoodLuck

I'll need good luck with SE, that's for sure. I deleted the info folder in the directory that has the vobs and it still shut SE down. Had no effect whatsoever.

I also downloaded the Newtek codec pack and I have no idea if it would have solved my problem or not because I cannot even look at a vob file without SE going POOF!

So, my problem is the same as it always was. The SE disappearing act! I guess it doesn't matter if I get no audio when I play a vob in the timeline because, SE will not even let me navigate to the folder with the vob files. To me, this is a bug. How can it NOT be a bug? If a program simply disappears whe none navigates over to a vob file (that plays fine on any dvd player), then it sounds a little unstable to me. I'm not going to fight it. I will not win.

Looks like SE 1.2 update did not solve this problem.

Tony

[donny]

Hello Tony it should not just disappear does it leave a crash log when it closes? Perhaps we can setup a way for you to give us a sample of the vob file and see if we can duplicate it here. Please email me at tech@newtek.com.

[Tony R]

Donny, It does disappear as soon as I navigate to the folder with the vobs. I do not need to even hover the mouse over any one of them. As soon as the folder is opened, goodbye SE. There is no message when it does this. If it left a crash log, where would it be located?

Tony

[Tony R]

Donny, I created a seperate folder for each vob file so that I can isolate the bad one. I opened each folder in SE and it disappeared each and every time without notice. I also navigated to the orginal Video_TS folder with no vobs, but a lot of bup and ifo files and SE did not close.

I can conclude, so far,that any VOB file on my computer will cause SE to disappear.

Tony

[DrVideo]

Instead decode them to Quicktimes or AVI files with something like Cinematize. http://www.miraizon.com/products/products.html

VOB'S are Mpeg2 Video Files Muxed with Dolby Ac3 Audio.

:hey:

[KiloWatkins]

Tony, I think I found my problem. .m2v burned VOB's. Still testing. Put the CD in again and do a custom install and select the Window Bugg Tools only, but really doubt they will help without a hard error.

To go on for now, I would just play the DVD and record back into the PC if you have that ability. If not use a utility like VOB2AVI or whatever you have that can saveAs the VOB to something else.

The Super Converter can do this and just found there is an update. http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

TakeCare

[ScorpioProd]

Or rename the VOBs to .mpg and drop them in Vegas 7.

[Tony R]

I was doing a low cost vhs to dvd transfer for someone. The problem is that the main menu page of the dvd (showing 6 thumbnails of the 6 videos) that I recorded on my Panasonic standalone recorder looks weird. The dvd plays fine. The problem is that the bottom half of the dvd is black, as if it was cut off. It cuts off the bottom half of the two bottom (videos 5 and 6) thumbnails and descriptions). So, my idea was to bring them into SE, output to m2v and add a menu to each of these two dvds. Of course, that would be too easy.

So, since I made almost no money already, I would hate to have to record the DVDs into SE (4 more hours I will not be making any money on). I renamed these to mpg and SE still disappeared. I do not want to install Vegas on this machine because this is my SE machine (exclusively) and Adobe AE and Encore.

I am just miffed why SE disappears with no warning or error message. I know I can capture the video to the computer but as I said, I am not wasting 4 more hours on something that seems to be an unneccessary step.

I will try one of the programs Kilo mentioned.

Tony

[rbartlett]

Tony,
Is the black bar and corruption of videos 5 and 6 something that has occured on the master and you see that on your Panasonic too or just on the player the customer is using?

Otherwise your task seems to read that you need to re-author it rather than recompress it back out from the VOB. (a process that is going to be lengthy whether you do or don't recapture from the source VHS).

DVDLab Pro lends itself fairly well to carving up your existing disc into a 6 video DVD-Video with a top level menu (perhaps more ideally served with VMG type of menu):
http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/Helppro/vts.htm
DVDArchitect could offer you this type of setup although typically this would be through pre-prepping the VOBs into new MPEG-2s in Vegas. Which is what has broken down for you this time around.


....or the cop out would be to use DVDShrink in non-shrink mode and to simply strip off the menu entirely and make one long multi-chapter single VTS. But as you said, it is a project without an appropriate level of funding to break your back over.

I'm slightly surprised that you'd mix NewTek and Adobe products but not SonyCreativeSoftware products on the same machine. Or at least it hasn't caused me a problem, especially with NewTek SE as the last man in from the installation order point of view. I realize that Sony and MediaChance options are not without their costs too.

[ScorpioProd]

I'm slightly surprised that you'd mix NewTek and Adobe products but not SonyCreativeSoftware products on the same machine. Or at least it hasn't caused me a problem, especially with NewTek SE as the last man in from the installation order point of view. I realize that Sony and MediaChance options are not without their costs too.
Likewise, Adobe products have a history of not working with some Newtek files on the same system. Sony Creative Software has NO such problem.

[Tony R]

The main menu of the dvd recorded from the Panasonic is half blue on top and half black on the bottom. Since there are 6 thumbnails and descriptions, the bottom two are slightly cut off. I realize that this happened in the Panasonic deck. But I made two different DVDs in this deck and both behaved the same way and cut the screen in half. This never happened before. Then again, I never really took 6 twenty minute vhs-c tapes and gae them their own chapter. Usually, I record a 2 hour tape to DVD and that's it. So, it seems that adding these titles are causing the problem.

I am able to access all of the videos, so that isnt an issue. It is just that the main screen looks like a big error, which it is. I wanted to be able to use all of the vobs and simply create a custom menu in Encore.

As for Adobe over Vegas, I always had SE with Vegas and SoundForge plus Encore and Photoshop. Since I built the new machine, I only wanted SE as my editor but I also wanted a great DVD solution like Encore. Since the CS3 versions seem to work with eachother more than ever, I wanted to add After Effects also. I dont want to use Vegas as an editor and SoundForge caused way too many crashes on my VT4 system to ever let me want to pair it with Newtek again.
Vegas, of course, saved my life on my last SE project that caused me major grief because of SE's crummy slo mo. So I used Vegas. I was hoping that After Effects could do some good slo mo too.

Because of the instability issues I have had in the past, I wanted to keep this an SE only machine but have since decided to go with a few Adobe products too (AE, Encore, Photoshop). I'll have to see how they live together.

Tony

[rbartlett]

Thanks for explaining, I can see how you got where you got now.

As for editing the fully working menu that the Panasonic has created, I wonder if there is mileage for you to try another package to move the 6 movie assets around.

The following application cannot create a menu, but you can import dummy authored DVD menus and overlay those on an existing DVD-Video that you open in it. Can't say much about it other than it looks like a development from the rather inane tools I mentioned above (by that I mean that I like DVDLab but I do find it rather broad without user intuitive depth).

How about trying, but not on your edit station, DVDRemake?

http://www.dimadsoft.com/dvdremakepro/ht_customize_menu_background.php

The above tutorial shows how you could take the panasonic background, export the menu as a bitmap. Then you could move and resize the movie-buttons and flood fill the blue/black as required. Then import the bitmap back into DVDRemake and position the menu item's hotspots/button-borders. Possibly also modifying the in (maybe also out) points for the movies.

There maybe other tools like this. But this is a whole different approach to opening VOBs and re-authoring in whatever other app you might choose. I guess Encore, for all it's advancement over the years, it cannot help?

The trouble is that playing with authored materials is somehow not seen as a legitimate feature in content creation circles. Unfortunately, as implied by the above tutorial, people assume that you are modifying copyright works for personal profit. Yet it might just be that you have kids that won't hear anything if they choose 5.1 with the home theater amp turned off or that you can't abide not being able to fast forward or skip the FBI warning. All these restrictions are more acceptable if you were born into the DVD era but if you came into this world from any time before that, it seems rather silly for media to tell you how it can be accessed.

Tony, I'd suggest you try fudging the menu in a way something like this, or skipping the menu (that can be achieved quite intuitively with DVDShrink - for which there is a version available without the deCSS code in it - so that may be OK to download in the western world - where DMCA is in force).
http://www.dvdshrink.info/chetwood/downloads.php

None of these tools are must-have but given the limitations of SE, Encore and the Panasonic recorder, it might be your next best step without incurring too much more valuable time.

[rbartlett]

DVD Remake Pro seems to work well. I just ran through a session on one of my previous discs. Given that the Panasonic won't have made a motion menu background (the movie button's active areas might have motion but that only adds to the complexity of the solution rather than being a showstopper).

Adjusting the menu and moving the active areas for the buttons (and removing the blue/black partition) seems quite viable.

My UK£50 DVDRecorder STB has a totem pole of video clips that when you navigate past the bottom, it moves on to a new frame with your cursor at the top. That works OK but of course has the brand name of the player splashed all over it.

I'd imagine that there will be more of these types of DVD editors coming along. Especially now that DVD-Video is becoming old hat to a certain extent. Of course not for VHS to DVD-Video transfer work.

DVD Remake Pro likes to work off hard disk files rather than your burned disc - no surprise. One nice feature being the ability to save the files that have changed rather than being forced to recompile the authored session. Although you can do a recompile too.

It isn't very friendly for moving the command buttons (hotspots/movie-menu-objects) into other places, but if you keep track of the co-ordinates you enter then it can in fact be tidier to manipulate objects this way than with a pointer.

Reading the guides and trying the software out is fairly quick to do. I'm not entirely convinced I'll make any use of it, but now I've tried the demo (on a machine that I do no editing on, so if I need to try the demo more seriously I will be able to start again).

It is nevertheless an idea for you Tony.

[Tony R]

Thanks for the long, informative posts Rob. You gave me an idea. I do have DVD Shrink. Right now, I am Re-authoring without the menus and I will see what I can do. I'll let you know my progress later. Thanks again.

[Tony R]

I used DVD Shrink to re-rip the DVD. I didnt know where to go from there, so I installed VOB2MPG, and it converted to mpeg2 files. For some reason, SE disappears when I point to the new folder with the newly converted mpeg 2 files. Something is definitely weird here, or is SE unable to open these files either?

Tony

[rbartlett]

The Panasonic recorder is probably doing something with the structure of the MPEG-2 or audio data that is unexpected. Temporal compression has so many variables that I feel that NewTek have concentrated on camcorder MPEG-2 format support specifically rather than general support. Compressed audio is partly dependent on what system codecs you have installed (and whether the AC3 directshow option is ticked at the bottom of preferences).

DVD Shrink requires you to import your existing structure and then to create a new session and drag just the movie content over. It handles what plays first and assuming that the Panasonic has recorded a single title-set of chapters, the fact that the end-action now goes back to a menu that is missing ought to be corrected so that all chapters play through to the end. But it might not work like that in this case, so DVD Remake Pro might be better, but it'll be between an hour and two hours work I'd imagine but then would involve no recompression phase. (1-2 hrs - if you work at my slow pace anyway!)

DVD2AVI is a tool that ought to get around the crashing issues, but you'll definitely be recompressing the end result and causing more softening or macroblocking. Probably not that important given the circumstances.

If DVD2AVI has a problem - At least one VT dealer I know of includes this suite with their systems:
http://www.dvdtox.com/

As you'll see perhaps more when you go through this. The task in hand is very much one of a re-authoring process. Getting it into SpeedEDIT is rather a linear perspective on the problem, but whatever works really.

http://www.dvdafteredit.com/node/29 <- may be more intuitive than DVD Remake Pro but it's asking price is more than 10 times larger $349 and is Mac OSX only.

Whereas if you do re-author in DVD Shrink and find that only the first video plays through (then stops progressing through), it may be possible to import and link the separate title-sets (assuming that each video is a new title) using this utility:
tool
http://download.videohelp.com/GFD/
help-to-use it:
http://download.videohelp.com/GFD/Help/DefaultProjectSettings.html
(where you'd set the first video (titleset) as first-play (play-movie) and then use the next-title option to move on through the list. Essentially eradicating the original DVD's menu structure and 'by-video' order containment.

I'm glad to help as from time to time I have someone come around with their latest family footage put to DVD in a budget authoring tool they are not entirely familiar with and I'm asked how they can correct one thing or another. So, even though I've got no pressing reason at the moment, it is interesting to decide exactly what options are in front of me (other than importing with Vegas, which again implies recompression).

Was the DVD Remake Pro (and DVDLab) option not taken any further purely because they are cost options? I'd understand if so, but that will help direct me if there is any more to say on this thread.

Good luck Tony,

Richard

[Tony R]

Rich (sorry I called your Rob in an earlier post)

Thanks again for your knowledgable response. As for not wanting to spend money for this problem, I gladly pay for something that I think I will need over and over again. I never had to re-author a dvd before but maybe it will be something I will have to do as time goes by. So, buying something is an option but there seem to be so many free solutions that they may be all I need. If my Panasonic DVD Recorder didnt mess up my menus, this wouldnt be happening at all right now. I didnt set out to re-author a dvd. The bad menu forced me to.

I used VOB2MPG and it seems to keep the file size close to the original. For instance, one vob was 202,584 KB and the mpg is 201,202 KB. I can live with that. I imported them into Encore and they seem to work fine. I am creating a good menu and all should be ok.

Your suggestions gave me some ideas that got me to where I am today. As much as I know about authoring dvds, I realized I did not know too much about re-authoring and what is involved. I'll post again when all is finished. Thanks again.

It still doesnt make me feel any better that SE behaved the way it did when looking at a folder of vobs. Also, SE disappears when it opens a folder with the new mpgs. So, I guess it doesnt fool SE about what files they are. Odd.

Tony

[rbartlett]

The VOB->MPG into Encore workflow looks like it'll have this wrapped up and it'll be repeatable as a path to call on again in future. Just clarifying on the budget really.

Perhaps set some time aside to capture on the Panasonic 30 seconds or so, and repeat the VOB into SpeedEDIt and VOB->MPG into SpeedEDIT. If it throws a wobbly again, then submit it. By the next time you need to do this, you may have had NewTek fix whatever it is that puts out the fire in it's belly.

[Tony R]

Encore is able to fully work with these converted VOB files. i just finished the DVD and now the problem is that Encore has to encode them. I thought these mpgs were already mpeg2 files and did not need to be re-encoded but according to Encore, it the Dont Transcode option is not there, it must be. The first mpg file has been transcoding for an hour and it is not even half way finished. This will take at least 8-10 hours. That part does not bother me so much because I can go about my day and return later to finish it up. But, I have a second DVD that I have to do the same thing with, so, it is turning into a three day project. Plus, it ties up my computer up so I cannot do anything else.

As for the Panasonic DVD recorder, I think it bit the dust. I just recorded a home movie to it for a customer and usually it says "Writing Information" after I hit the stop button, but now it does nothing. I press play and I see the minutes and seconds moving but there is nothing onscreen. garbage time for this machine.

Tony

[rbartlett]

The fact that the MPEG-2 is deemed as being something other than compliant DVD-Video by Encore suggests that it is probably along the lines of why SpeedEDIT fell over with it.

It could also be that it is having a problem with the type/model/batch-number of the discs you are burning to. So many issues are possible in this consumer age.

It would certainly seem that VT[4] and TMPGEnc (or AVI-wrapper) + Encore would have been quicker and certainly more predictable to get to the end result. Confounded digital nonsense!

All the best with what you are doing and have yet to do there Tony. :)