clips missing from burned DVD

[skicat]

Hi. I just finished burning my project to DVD. Then I made 9 copies to give to my friends. Needless to say, this took quite a while to do all this encoding & burning. Now my problem is that 2 clips are missing in the DVD's. The audio continues, but there is just black on the screen. So I went back to my timeline to see if the clips had been accidentally deleted, but they were there, & they played in the media window.
So what happened to them when I burned the DVD's? I dont want to redo the 9 copies, + encoding all over again to just have it be the same.
I want to avoid a problem in the future.
Please help!! I am having a party on Saturday to show the movie!

[Byron Gale]

Skicat,

If you have not already done so, I recommend that you also post your query to the Adobe Premiere Elements forum. It is dedicated to the program, and gets a LOT more specific traffic - so you will increase your chances of getting some feedback in short order.

Go HERE (http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/?14@924.ljtNgwhztue@.3bb574e6).

HTH,

Byron

[Dee Dee Warren]

We need to get more premiere traffic here!

[ATR]

Hi skicat,

A puzzlement!

First, you say that it plays intact in the "media window". Does that mean that, before you hit Burn in DVD Layout, you hit Preview DVD and it came out OK? If not, glitches could be missed. Good idea to do Preview in DVD Layout before burning to determine if problem is before or after burning.

As for the glitches, the usual run down: did you render in Edit, etc. Where are these missing clips--middle, ends--together, separate--? And, I am assuming that copies are from checking off copies in the Burn DVD dialog. Are all the copies missing the same clips in the same places? I have not used the copy function in the Burn DVD dialog. If all else fails, we could look further into that.

Will watch for your progress.

ATR

[skicat]

ATR, you ask a lot of good questions! Here's the scoop. The clips are there when I view the monitor above the timeline (the screen you view to do editing), as well, as when I click Preview DVD & view it that way. All the copies were made by clicking the Burn DVD button. They are all missing the same clips which are side by side, about 8 min. into the show. They are stills & come after another still & right before a video clip. I have burned DVD's this way before , & this has never happened. I'm stymied!

[ATR]

skicat,

I always thought that the Preview DVD just before Burn should reveal any glitches. So, like you, I am at a loss to explain those missing slides. I need to do more research.

What about this, not a cure, but just maybe a way to get a clue to what happened. Place one of the 9 "defective" DVDs in the DVD drive. Open Premiere Elements 2.0 and use the Media Downloader to get the content (VIDEO_TS) into the Media Panel. (I would advise you to watch the bottom right of the screen and make sure that the "conforming process", if any, is complete before doing anything.) Then drag the media to the Timeline and inspect the trouble area for clues. Compare to what you saw in the Preview DVD.

I am only wild guessing at this point, but I am going to check out authoring problems related to compression, frame rate, transitions, overlap--probably compression first since that is not taking place until after the Preview DVD whereas frame rate, transitions, and overlap would be in place at the time of the Preview DVD.

To be continued, if necessary.

ATR

[skicat]

ATR, I did just what you suggested-to get the content into the Media Panel. On the video that I imported from the DVD, there is a blank, black spot just where it is when I play the show. As you know, this did not show up either on my other timeline, or on Preview DVD. It certainly is a mystery!!

[ATR]

skicat,

One of my major shortcomings is never knowing when to give up. So here goes another suggestion.

Say you have the entire "defective" video on the Timeline (the one that you just got finished inspecting).
Can you clip out the black area (missing slides)
and then
Add Media (the missing slides)
Then Render in Edit, followed by burn?

When you play the edited "defective" video, are those slides blacked out again?

I am still thinking about what happened in the first place?

ATR

[skicat]

ATR, great idea, but there is only one problem. I only imported part of the movie, the video section with the missing slides, then I did not save the project. I am concerned that lots of copies are taking up all my memory. Anyway, my party is tomorrow night & I am resigned to the fact that I have a defective video. Everyone will understand!
I thank you for all your help & ideas, but I dont have time to redo it right now. Next week, I may get to it. I am really curious about why this happened, because I dont want it to happen again the next time I burn a project! Keep thinking about it & I'll let you know my results. If you get any new brainstorms, keep me posted.
Thanks again,
Skicat

[skicat]

ATR: success! I decided to make time to try burning my project once more before the party. It worked! Here's what I did. I went back to my original timeline. I deleted the 2 defective slides & reinserted them. Then I burned one copy. Voila!! It works fine ( I only looked at the defective part, so Im hoping that the rest is ok). My computer has been freezing a lot lately & I wonder if it had some type of "hiccup" during the burn, the encoding, or the rendering. Anyway hopefully the problem is solved. Now I will have to remake the 9 copies, but not today!
Thanks again for your help,
Skicat

[ATR]

Skicat,

I was so happy to hear your news. Continued good luck with the project.

ATR

[araybn]

I am also having the problem of missing clips from my burned DVDs when I am using lots of still clips, over 700. The clips are in the timeline and show up in the DVD preview but are black clips on the DVD, the audio continues to play. I have burned 3 DVDs and some of the same clips are missing but other clips change. The clips are spread out over the entire DVD of 48 minutes. I tried saving to an avi file and that worked fine, no missing clips.

I have a new computer (CPU AMD 64 X2, 2gig memory, 500 gig hard drive, Win XP Pro).

[ATR]

araybn,

If you still want the DVD-Video (MPEG2) instead of avi, why not try this.

You could start all over and do the following, but let us try this to avoid that.

Try to edit your slideshow back to what you intended (see previous post here), and, with the latter on the Timeline, proceed to burn to folder instead of burn to disc. (Hopefully this will help you to find out where the problem is taking place..encoding versus burning in the authoring process.)

Essentially, you will take just the VIDEO_TS in the folder (NOT Open DVD folder) that is generated and that you save and burn it with all its contents to DVD using the burn software that came with your DVD/CD drive. Make sure that you use the Burn Image, NOT the create data disc, to do this.

See what the results are from the above. You should try the burn to disc again, but do check out your computer and DVD/CD writer performances and the distribution of resources. If you do try the burn to disc again, maybe have the system "lean", shutdown other programs running in the background, defragment, etc. Has your computer been freezing or displaying errors lately??

ATR

[araybn]

ATR

I saved my original slideshow and did burn it to a DVD file on my hard drive. I played the file and it has the same blanks, maybe not on the exact pictures. I also burned it to a DVD disc and it did not change, tho I did burn it as a data disk but it played as a DVD okay. I took the avi file and put it in a new slideshow and created a DVD on my hard drive and that did not have any black clips.

My computer has not been freezing or having any problems. I am rarely online since I have dial-up. I am thinking that I am overloading the encoding phase with so many still pictures. I keep my camera set to 3 mpixels and do not want to down size all 800+ pictures before making a DVD slide show. I would rather not convert the file to avi before making a DVD either but at least it worked. Does the avi conversion degrade the quality? I did turn off the screensaver and it did not help but I will try shutting down all non-essential programs. I did not realize (until reading these forums) that PE 2 was such a system resource hog. I have only made rather short simple slideshows previously.

Thanks for your suggestions.

araybn

[ATR]

araybn,

Just some miscellaneous comments:

(1) Premiere Elements 2 supports the two DVD types (a) 2 hr video/4.7 GB Data and (b) 4 hr video/8.5 GB. You will notice that can use either of these in the Burn to Folder settings route. If you think that you are pushing the limits of the DVD, check out your times again to verify. The general rule is the more compression that needs to be done to fit the material on the DVD, the lesser the quality.

(2) If you burn to folder in Premiere Elements 2, the output should be a folder (saved wherever you selected). This folder is encoded for DVD-Video (MPEG2). It contains two folders, "Open DVD" and "VIDEO_TS folder". You burn only the VIDEO_TS folder with its contents to an appropriate DVD disc using Burn Image of the software that came with your DVD/CD drive. You cannot burn the VIDEO-TS using create data disc and get a functioning DVD-VIDEO. Therefore it puzzled me when you seemed to say that you had.

(3) I do not know much about AVI, since the DVD-VIDEO(MPEG2) appears to be the output format in these types of programs. I thought you might be interested in the site below for more on avi:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVI

ATR

[ATR]

araybn,

Came across this info and thought that you might be interested.

http://www.videohelp.com/comparison.htm

ATR

[araybn]

ATR,

Thanks for the links to the info on the video file comparisions. Very helpful.

I had Premiere Elements use the 4.7 GB size but my video only took 2.7 GB so it did not need to be compressed. I was unsure if the data disc choice would result in a playable DVD but it did using the Roxio Creator Suite 8 progam. I could not find any other choice in Roxio. I burned both folders to the disc since the PE 2 DVDs also had those folders. I have burned 2 DVDs this way and they both play as a movie both on the computer and my TV DVD player. No software came with my DVD burner.

We bought the Roxio progam to use for video editing but the PE 2 came free with my graphics card and I decided I liked it better. All I have read about PE 2's capabilities is encouraging but I am still frustrated with this missing clips problem. The quality of the DVD burned directly from PE 2 (with the missing clips) appears to be the same as the DVD burned via the avi file. Both my computer monitor and my TV may not be big enough to tell. Our HDTV is currently under the weather and awaiting a trip to the repair shop.

Since I get no error messages from PE 2, I do not know if the video has missing clips until I view it from the DVD file after it is completed. Although my slideshow has over 800 still images in it, some video and music, I don't consider it a huge production. I hope to make longer ones using family photos and slides that span 50 years.

I will still try shutting down all non-essential programs and try again but I don't have high hopes. I probably won't get back to it for a day or so.

Thanks for your help and I would appreciate any further suggestions.

araybn

[ATR]

I do not know if time would permit, but....

What happens if you create and burn to disc a slideshow with same components, but use Roxio Creative Suite 8 for the entire job instead of Premiere Elements 2? No/Yes black slides????

ATR

[araybn]

ATR,

I can try the slideshow in Roxio but it will take a lot of time, especially with the learning curve. I also want to try to downsize all the still images and then recreate my slideshow in PE 2 with the smaller images. This will also be a large task. My time is running short this week because I am a 4-H leader and our country fair is next week. I am busy getting things ready and will be at the fair all next week. I will try to make the slideshows and post again when I have any results. Thanks again!

araybn