[jimbabka]

I just moved up from Roxio 6 (with DVD Builder) to EMC 8. While the program is in general more reliable, I'm having the following problems with it:

1. I imported via DV from my camcorder, which created one big video file, although if I click on the lower right corner I see a bunch of individual scenes. Now, I want to import only certain scenes to the DVD I'm creating. When I tell MyDVD to add a movie, I can only add the entire file. If I expand the file into the individual scenes and select the ones I want, then for every scene I specified, I get a copy of the entire file. The first time I did this, I selected 20 scenes, and I ended up with 20 complete copies of the whole file. How can I avoid this?

2. I ended up with a single movie that had all my scenes in it. I wanted to move some scenes to new movies. However, the only way to create a new movie with MyDVD seems to be to add a file, which creates a new menu item but also puts that file in it. I then have to delete the bogus file that I used just to add the movie/menu item, go back to the overall DVD, go down to the movie that has the scenes I want, cut then to the clipboard, go back up to the main menu, select the new movie, and then paste the scenes I really want. In DVD Builder I could just drag and drop from one menu item to another. Is there any simpler way to do this?

3. In the old DVD Builder, I could go through a file and split it into multiple pieces, two at a time, manually via a "Split" button. I could then rearrange the pieces, delete pieces I no longer needed, etc. I can't figure out how to do that in MyDVD. When I say, "Edit the movie," there is no option to split a movie in two. I can only trim the start and end of the movie. Splitting was the main way to edit with DVD Buider - how do I do this common operation with EMC 8?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Jim Babka.

[ggrussell]

If you look hard enough, MyDVD 8 works almost identical to the previous Roxio DVD Builder 7. Only the interface has been changed. Just like the previous version, you really should be using Videowave for your editing purposes. MyDVD is really designed for DVD authoring.

1) I'm not sure how you are adding 'scenes', but you should be doing it from Media Selector. As far as I know, selecting a scene does not copy the entire file. Technically, it is only 'pointing' to the file and then each scene is only 'pointing' to a section of that file. How did you determine that you were getting 20 full copies of the file?

2) I have no clue what you are trying to do.

3) You can still do this in MyDVD 8. Click on Edit Movie will take you to a limited version fo Videowave. Splitting and rearranging clips is identical. If you don't have the manual, there is a link on the General forum. Also go through the tutorials. They can be helpful in learning what all the icons mean.

After thinking about #1, I think you're problem is trying to use MyDVD to piece together a bunch of clips into a single button on a menu. Technically, you can do this on the screen shot below.

Run MyDVD
Add your first clip that creates the 'button'.
Click Edit Movie
At this point, you can then ADD PHOTO/VIDEO
This adds the photo or video under the same button.

Although you can do this, it makes more sense to do ALL of your editing in Videowave BEFORE adding the Videowave project to MyDVD project. Keep your editing and DVD authoring separate and you'll find things much easier and less confusing.

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This post has been edited by ggrussell: 06 August 2006 - 07:31 PM

[REDWAGON]

When you say that you see a bunch of individual scenes, that's probably caused when you made the video you more than likely hit the record button, then turned it off, then on again and then off and so on. each time you capture that kind of video you will see a bunch of scenes for each time that happened. That's the way most camcorders work. For any one of those scenes you don't want, enter all the scenes into Videowave and for the scenes you don't want just delete them by splitting them out.

Frank....

[jimbabka]

Thanks for getting back to me. Here are some clarifications:

First, I hever had Roxio 7, so the interface is completely new to me. I will try to live with having to separate editing and DVD authoring, but DVD Builder in Roxio 6 did not force me to do that.

Regarding item 1: I go into MyDVD, and then choose "Import/Capture". That brings up the Import app, where I tell it to capture video from my camera. As it captures, it creates multiple scenes, but when it is done, there's only one file. In the lower right corner of the picture for the file, there's a little hook arrow that points down - I click on that and all the scenes are visible. Then I go to MyDVD and click "New Movie". In the dialog that pops up, I choose "Recently imported", then when the one file shows, I click on that hook arrow to see all the scenes again. I select the scenes I want, then click the "Done" button (or whatever it is that appears in the lower right corner of the window). Then, for every scene that I selected, there is now an item in the movie that has the very first picture of the entire file (not from the scene I wanted), and the size estimate for the DVD is huge (when I selecvted 20 scenes, I got 20 complete copies of the file, and the size of the DVD project was suddenly around 800 Gb).

Regarding item 2: I want to create another menu item on the main menu and move some scenes from and existing menu item into the new one (so that I can have separate movies for separate things). I could do this easily in the DVD Builder that came with Roxio 6 (just drag and drop). However, it seems that there's this incredibly cumbersome process for creating new menu items and moving scenes between them. I can't create a new menu item without also selecting an entire video file (as above, I can't just select a scene) to put into it initially.

Regarding item 3: From your picture, it appears that splitting scenes is only possible in the Timeline view. In the Storyline view, all I can do is trim scenes. I'll try that when I get home tonight.

One final point - Separating the editing and DVD Authoring ignores the fact that the size of the DVD affects the editing I want to do. If I'm close to the max size on a DVD but really want to squeeze one more scene in, I'll edit it more closely, and I'll probably edit the previous scene as well. If I do all my editing in VideoWave, then I might have to go back if everything doesn't fit (and I get a warning saying not to run both at the same time due to performance concerns).

Jim Babka

REDWAGON, on Aug 6 2006, 07:37 PM, said:

When you say that you see a bunch of individual scenes, that's probably caused when you made the video you more than likely hit the record button, then turned it off, then on again and then off and so on. each time you capture that kind of video you will see a bunch of scenes for each time that happened. That's the way most camcorders work. For any one of those scenes you don't want, enter all the scenes into Videowave and for the scenes you don't want just delete them by splitting them out.

Frank....

Frank, Thanks for getting back to me, but as you can see from my previous post, that's not what I'm doing. Importing from my video camera creates multiple scenes, but they are just hidden and can be seen by clicking on that hook arrow.

I'm going to try the Timeline view on VideoWave tonight and see what that does for me.

Jim Babka.

[ggrussell]

jimbabka, on Aug 7 2006, 12:15 PM, said:

Then, for every scene that I selected, there is now an item in the movie that has the very first picture of the entire file (not from the scene I wanted), and the size estimate for the DVD is huge (when I selecvted 20 scenes, I got 20 complete copies of the file, and the size of the DVD project was suddenly around 800 Gb).

800GB or 800MB? I think MyDVD would crash before adding 800GB of video. LOL

2) Moving scenes from button to button is poor planning. It can still be done by dragging items in the 'tree' on the left. However, we have gotten some complaints that things get messed up doing that like button order.


Your last point - MyDVD 8 now offers 'fit to disc' option. It's fairly simple. One hour or less of VIDEO at best quality. If you edit in Videowave and end up with 1hour 2min, MyDVD should have no trouble making it fit.


I never had Version 6. I skipped it and went from V5 to V7 so I'm not familiar with V6 features.

This post has been edited by ggrussell: 07 August 2006 - 01:23 PM

[jimbabka]

ggrussell, on Aug 7 2006, 01:15 PM, said:

800GB or 800MB? I think MyDVD would crash before adding 800GB of video. LOL

Actually, that was not a typo. It was huge - the "space available" was actually some huge negative number. MyDVD did not crash, but it would clearly have had a problem if I tried to actually burn it.

ggrussell, on Aug 7 2006, 01:15 PM, said:

2) Moving scenes from button to button is poor planning. It can still be done by dragging items in the 'tree' on the left. However, we have gotten some complaints that things get messed up doing that like button order.
Your last point - MyDVD 8 now offers 'fit to disc' option. It's fairly simple. One hour or less of VIDEO at best quality. If you edit in Videowave and end up with 1hour 2min, MyDVD should have no trouble making it fit.

I really, really, really want to stay away from "fit to disc". In the past I've seen a huge drop off in quality between "best quality" and the next notch down. I would rather leave things off than go over by a minute and drop to lower quality.

[ggrussell]

Personally, I have never seen MyDVD do what you say in #1. I have used scenes from many different files with no problems. It has never added entire files like that. Maybe it's because I always use Videowave for my editing.

As for quality, I haven't seen any difference even with +5min. Now if we were talking 1 hour 30min, I would say there is a visual difference. Several users have posted problems with quality, but I just haven't been able to duplicate on my machines.