VideoBuilder burn errors and project size

[Ed Overstreet]

I have been experiencing some strange burn problems with Video Builder 5.6. These problems occur using a Dell Inspiron 9200 laptop and an Apacer CP300 Disc Steno running the latter as an external USB DVD drive with Sony DVD+R discs. (I am entirely unable to use the laptop’s NEC 6500A DVD+-RW drive with either DVD-R or DVD+R discs and Video Builder; that drive persists in returning burn.exe errors with all the projects described below.) The system is running Windows XP Home with SP2 on 1 GB RAM and an Intel Centrino 2 Ghz chip.

First I tried to produce an 8-show, 4.02 GB roughly 80-minute DVD project. This returned burn errors no matter what I did with it, and the DVD is unreadable; this happened with both the NEC and the Apacer drive.

I then tried to produce a DVD with just one of the 8 shows, about 6 minutes long, using the same background and menu design (but with only the single show). That works fine on DVD+R with the Apacer drive.

I produced a second DVD with three shows not on the first project; that also works fine on a DVD+R in the Apacer drive (total run time just under 14 minutes).

A third DVD attempt uses the first four shows of the 8-show project; these are somewhat long shows totally 49 minutes, a 2.49 GB project. Video Builder ran through the project, and the Apacer drive lit up. At about 55% completion, Video Builder returned a burn error (not a burn.exe error, just an error box saying there was a burn error). However, and this is most puzzling, the DVD+R (from the Apacer drive) does in fact play back. I can see all four shows, and I can launch each of them and they appear to run OK. (I haven’t played through all four, but they launch and exit normally on the DVD player). These play back fine using Dell Media Experience with my NEC laptop drive; they also play back on my two Toshiba DVD players connected to different TV sets. This four-show project was created by opening the original eight-show project and removing shows 5-8 from the play list, then re-saving the project to a new name. Hence, it is identical to the first part of the eight-show project; as far as I recall I didn’t change anything in the project options or the menu layout when creating the four-show project.

I can continue experimenting with the big 8-show project, cutting back one show at a time until the problem goes away, to try to isolate what the size (or maybe show) problem is, but that would be very time-consuming. I thought I’d try this forum post first.

The eight shows all were created in PTE but some in earlier versions than 5.6. However, following a recommendation I read on another thread, I opened each of the PTE projects in 5.6 (actually 5.6.4) and re-saved the PTE project file in 5.6. It is the re-saved versions that I have been using in all the PTV projects described above. I don’t think the PTE version used to create the show originally is a factor in my problems; the three shows on the three-show project all were originally created in PTE 4.x (not sure which version now, but it was in late 2005 when I did the originals). Three of the four shows on the four-show project were done in 5.6, the other in 5.5. The other four shows on the eight-show project were in 5.6 or 4.x, varying.

I am attaching below the PTV files for the one, three, four, and eight-show versions that I tried. (SORRY INVISION IS TELLING ME IT WON'T ACCEPT PVI FILES SO I CAN'T POST THEM; READ MY SUMMARY OF THE SETTINGS NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THIS PARAGRAPH) It’s the eight-show version that returns the burn.exe error and an unreadable DVD; the other versions work (only when created on the Apacer drive, though) but as mentioned above the four-show version gave a burn error message though the DVD still plays back OK. As I hope you can see in the PTV files, all the projects used a 2x1 layout for the PTE projects in the menu, with a background image (except for the 3-show project which uses one of the templates as a background), the 10-second default for the menu, no music and no animation on the menu, and a single frame selected for the thumbnail on each PTE project. All the PTE projects in all the Video Builder projects were created on the same computer as the PTV projects. All burn attempts involved setting the “Burn DVD” option for 4.7 GB and the slowest speed available on the drop-down menu (4x on the Apacer drive, 1x on the NEC drive).

My laptop and NEC drive have no trouble with PTE shows on their own, either as EXE files or run within the PTE 5.6 interface as a Preview. The NEC drive does have some peculiarities. It’s no longer made, though I do have the most recent driver for it. It will burn EXE and other non-Video-Builder files as data discs to 1-8x DVD-Rs and 1-16x DVD+Rs but not to 1-16x DVD-Rs which it refuses to recognize ... hence my decision to try (successfully) the Apacer drive as an alternative. The Apacer, which I originally bought for burning files from flash cards while traveling, is the only external DVD drive available to me, but fortunately it worked.

With both drives, I set the burn speed to the slowest listed on the drop-down menu in Video Builder.

I did have Video Builder generate ISO and VBO backup files for all projects, but I am unable to get the ISO files for the 8-show project to work with imgburn.exe and my NEC drive, and the VBO process with imgburn destroys the menu structure and is therefore unacceptable to me, though the NEC drive did produce an eight-project DVD-R from that process that my Toshiba players could read (but without the menu, all I seem to get is an automatic launch of the whole program from the beginning of the first show, with no option for selecting a later show to play alone, as far as I could see).

So, given all the above, I have two questions.

First, why am I able to play the third DVD even though I got the burn error message? It seems to run OK.

Second, regarding the full 8-show project – is there a size limit (obviously less than the full size of the DVD) beyond which Video Builder won’t run the project properly? Does this vary by system characteristics? Has anyone else run into this problem? (Sorry, that’s three questions.)

Any ideas on what is going on here would be much appreciated.

Though I’m certainly no newcomer to PTE, these are my first attempts with Video Builder. So maybe I’m overlooking something basic (hence my posting of the pvi files), but I don’t think so, given that two of my attempts worked flawlessly and a third works in spite of an error message.

[Ed Overstreet]

A little slow on the uptake today, but finally it occurred to me to try to post the ptv files inside a zip file, so here goes. If it helps anyone ...

Ed__s_PTV_project_files.zip

[Guest Yachtsman1]

A little slow on the uptake today, but finally it occurred to me to try to post the ptv files inside a zip file, so here goes. If it helps anyone ...

Hi Ed

I've only read the first few lines of your lengthy post. In my experience, you are trying to get too much on one DVD. I've just done a simple show with 328 pictures, no animation just a sound track. The show initially reported it to be 1.4GB. During the loading phase I received an error message to the effect there was insufficient disc capacity, which I ignored & carried to burn a successful disc.

Yachtsman1

[Ken Cox]

ED

some reference for you - keep them in your favourites

see

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....art=#entry42952

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....amp;#entry42914

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4976

ken

[davegee]

Ed,

Have you tried burning an ISO file to your HDD first?

DaveG

[Ed Overstreet]

ED

some reference for you - keep them in your favourites

ken

Thanks very much for these, Ken. I think the solution to the problem has been triggered by the second one. Extrapolating from Igor's reply on that thread, it seems likely that I'd need a bit more than 7 GB of space for the temp files for the big project I was trying (the eight-show one). Guess what, my C drive only has 6 GB of free space on it!

I had occurred to me at some point that I should direct the temp files onto my external F drive which has about 170 GB free space at the moment, and I thought I'd done that, but in re-visiting the PTV file for that project I discover to my dismay and embarassment that I forgot to do what I'd intended, and I was using the C-drive default location for the temp files. I dare say that may likely have something to do with the problem. It had occurred to me at some point that I'd better figure out where in Video Builder I can direct the temp files to a drive that has room for them, but I guess with advancing age I sometimes forget to carry through on things I know I should pay attention to

In the next couple of days I'll try this again, this time directing the temp files to my external hard drive where I have enough room. I"ll get back on this thread and post the results, whatever they are.

Dave, I did have the software save ISO files but I couldn't get imgburn.exe to use them without messing up the menu structure. I'm hoping the simple answer is that Video Builder ran out of room for temp files because I forgot to direct those files to my external drive

Thanks for the quick replies, all.

[davegee]

Ed,

Video Builder has the option to burn an ISO file to the HD.

This info may be completely useless to you but my method of working has always been to burn the ISO file to the HD and then, knowing that a successful ISO file has been created, I double click on the ISO file to open the appropriate module (in ROXIO or whateveter you use) to burn to DVD.

Notwithstanding your temp file problem, I would still use the create ISO file method because, if the ISO file cannot be created, then there is no point in putting a DVD in your drive.

DaveG

[Ed Overstreet]

Ed,

Video Builder has the option to burn an ISO file to the HD.

This info may be completely useless to you but my method of working has always been to burn the ISO file to the HD and then, knowing that a successful ISO file has been created, I double click on the ISO file to open the appropriate module (in ROXIO or whateveter you use) to burn to DVD.

Notwithstanding your temp file problem, I would still use the create ISO file method because, if the ISO file cannot be created, then there is no point in putting a DVD in your drive.

DaveG

Thanks for the tip, Dave. I didn't have much success with the ISO files on my computer's DVD burning software (from Dell, not Roxio), and I don't like intermediate steps if I can avoid them. However it turns out I don't need to go this route; the problem was entirely due to the temp file location and the lack of space on my C drive, I'm pretty sure . .. see my next post below.

[Ed Overstreet]

My apologies for the lengthy initial post, which it turns out raised some red herrings that are irrelevant, at least in my own case. Thanks to Ken’s reference to a post by Igor, I have learned something that may help others, so not all is totally wasted here.

I have confirmed that my aging laptop’s NEC DVD+-R/RW drive can, in fact, work with Video Builder to burn an 80-minute, 8-program, 4.02 GB DVD+R that will play back on my Toshiba DVD players.

The trick was to reset the location for the temporary files (under Project Options>Program) to my F drive, which has ample space for them (unlike my C drive which doesn’t have enough space). In practice, the maximum DVD size is going to be 4.7 GB (and it is unwise to fill a disc completely, one should always leave a few dozen MB empty space for system files etc). As long as the drive to which you are directing the temporary files has at least 10 GB of empty space, there should be no burn errors arising for lack of sufficient file space.

The other factor that may have made a difference, not sure, is that originally I was asking VideoBuilder also to create MPEG2 files, DVD folders, and an ISO image as well as burning a DVD disc. I now realize that was unnecessary, and this last time I disabled all those other check boxes. (To my credit, however, at least on THAT page of the interface I DID in my earlier tests direct all THOSE temporary files to my spacious F drive. I just neglected to do the same with the temp files covered under Project Options.)

So the aging NEC drive does work (at least with Sony DVD+Rs also Sony DVD-RWs which I (this time) tested before trying a DVD+R), and I don’t need to use my external Apacer DVD drive.

The burn speeds used by the NEC were 2x for the RW and 4x for the DVD+R; these were the only speeds showing on the drop-down menu so I didn’t have a choice, but it reinforces the point that it’s probably better to use slower burn speeds than faster, when there is a choice.

Of course the monster project took nearly 3 hours to complete, but now at least I have a master DVD that I can duplicate more quickly with my DVD burning software. The resolution on a TV screen isn’t wonderful, but that’s inevitable given the difference between 720x480 pixels for a video DVD and the 1400x1050 pixels at which the original shows were created and display on a computer monitor or projector.

In closing, my kudos to Igor for the Video Builder 5.6 interface. Once I figured out the temp file issue I found the interface very friendly, easy to use, and much more effective than what I remember of the earlier DVD-video features a couple of years ago when I first tried doing it and ran away screaming in frustration. The codecs or whatever Igor put into VB5.6 work perfectly, and burning directly from VideoBuilder is much more fun and straightforward (at least for me ) than having to go through another burn program with an avi or iso file structure ... I may actually start using Video Builder more now, at least for DVDs intended for friends and family who prefer to watch TV instead of crowd around a computer monitor (and who don't own digital projectors).