11 replies to this topic

[iamthewalrus]

I've used Roxio for years (Easy Media Creator 7).  I recently purchased a new HP PC.  AMD quad-core, 16Gb ram, Windows 7 64-bit.
I purchased and installed Creator 2012 and had no issue creating MP3 & Audio CD's.
Today, I wanted to copy video files from my hard drive to a DVD.
Running the "Copy and Convert" program, I pointed source to my PC files and output to my DVD drive.  
Program starts and the 1st step is listed as "Compressing DVD" which seemed strange because the source data would all fit on a standard, single layer DVD.
Anyway, it chugs along and as soon as it hits 86%, the program hangs.  It also ruins the DVD in the burner.
This happened twice and then I stopped.  I was able to use another program to make the copy, so it's not a an issue with my burner.
I contacted Tech support and their onluy recommendation was to update the burner firmware.  I checked the HP website and no firmware upate is available.
Any ideas?

[Brendon]

Walrus,

What type of video files are you wanting "to copy video files from my hard drive to a DVD". Are they .AVI, .MPG, .FLV, or what?

What are you wanting to do with them? Just store them on a data DVD, or convert them into a video-compliant DVD which you can play on your DVD player?

It looks like that you're converting them to burn to a Video-DVD.
If that's what you want to do, may I suggest that instead of trying to burn straight to disc, you burn either to a disc image, or a file folder for a start.

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That way you won't waste discs while you're finding out where things are going wrong, and you can experiment without it costing you.
When you get a successful image the way you want it, _then_ you can burn the image to disc.

If the freeze always happens at the same point, try swapping the order of the clips you're converting to see if one particular clip upsets Video Copy + Convert [VCC]


About "compressing DVD" - different types of video files can be squashed by varying amounts [it's quite common to find 90-minute AVIs which only take 700 MB] but to be written to a standard Video-DVD they must be expanded back to unsquashed MPEG format, and this can make them too big to fit on the DVD. At this point the program re-codes them so they'll fit on the disc.  

At best quality you can fit about an hour on an ordinary single-layer DVD, so if you don't want the program to reduce them in size [and quality] it's a good idea to only convert an hour's worth per disc.

Regards,
Brendon

[iamthewalrus]

Thanks for the reply Brendon.

Quote

It looks like that you're converting them to burn to a Video-DVD.

This is correct

Quote

If that's what you want to do, may I suggest that instead of trying to burn straight to disc, you burn either to a disc image, or a file folder for a start.

The data is already in a file folder on my hard drive.  I am copying a movie from my hard disk in a DVD-Video folder.  It has a “VIDEO_TS” folder which contains valid DVD‑Video source content. I now want to copy them into a video-compliant DVD which I can play on a DVD player.

Edited by cdanteek, 14 December 2011 - 06:02 AM.
separate quotes from post

[cdanteek]

Quote

Program starts and the 1st step is listed as "Compressing DVD" which seemed strange because the source data would all fit on a standard, single layer DVD.

How long in play time is the video in the video-ts folder on your hard drive?

Remember what Brendon explained about the program?

Quote

At best quality you can fit about an hour on an ordinary single-layer DVD, so if you don't want the program to reduce them in size [and quality] it's a good idea to only convert an hour's worth per disc.

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[iamthewalrus]

I'm not sure why the total runtime should be the factor here.  I am copying 4.35Gb of video files in a VIDEO_TS sub-directory to a 4.35Gb capacity single-layer DVD. I did the same exact thing when I had Easy Creator 7.  I'm essentially doing a "disc copy", but instead of my source being a DVD, it is an exact image of a DVD stored on my hard drive.

[cdanteek]

You ask for help but refuse to answer questions!

What one are you using?

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[Brendon]

iamthewalrus, on 14 December 2011 - 10:38 AM, said:

I'm not sure why the total runtime should be the factor here.  I am copying 4.35Gb of video files in a VIDEO_TS sub-directory to a 4.35Gb capacity single-layer DVD. I did the same exact thing when I had Easy Creator 7.  I'm essentially doing a "disc copy", but instead of my source being a DVD, it is an exact image of a DVD stored on my hard drive.

Walrus, there were a number of things we needed to find out from you.
-We have now established that you're not wanting to convert video files to DVD, but you're wanting to burn the contents of a DVD video folder VIDEO_TS to DVD.
-We have also found out that your folder has the contents of a single-layer DVD, which shouldn't need further compression before writing to disc.
-We haven't found out whether you're using the Copy DVD or the Convert Video tab.

What you have is -NOT- an exact image of a DVD, it's only the exact contents of the DVD, and some preparation needs to be done to build the disc structure that fits around those contents and make a disc image. A disc image contains both the contents and the required structure and can either be saved or burned immediately.

During this preparation phase, the structure is built and the contents are re-coded if necessary to reduce size. The structure building is very quick, and re-coding usually takes a lot longer but the "Compressing DVD" notice is displayed throughout the entire process. This means that even when there's no re-coding to do you'll still see that message for a short time. I think it could have been done better, but that's the way the programmers chose to do it.

Anyway, that's why you're seeing that message and why the people trying to help you were caused to consider the size issue.

Now, the reason for the suggestion to try 'burning to' an image should have become clearer. Creating and saving an image is one thing, burning it to plastic is another. If you separate the two processes you can see which is causing the problem.

Are you prepared to change your output to an ISO image instead of burning to disc, and see if that completes successfully? If so, please let us know how that goes.

Brendon

[iamthewalrus]

My apologies, I appreciate your help, but I was getting frustrated with the failure I am encountering.  
So, I am using the "Copy DVD" option.  I will try burning first to an ISO image and let you know.

[iamthewalrus]

I just did a "Copy DVD" and instead of burning to disc, I had it create an ISO file.
Guess what?  Same thing happened!
Running "Video Copy & Convert" encoding to MPEG-4, Phase 1 of 1, at 89% complete it hung!
Very interesting...so it's not burning the DVD that is the issue.

[iamthewalrus]

And now, the most interesting thing....I chose a different movie and therefore a different source VIDEO_TS folder.
I once again chose ISO for the output file type and it worked.  So it appears the issue was with my source video.
Any idea why a video source already on the hard drive would cause a failure when burning to DVD or ISO image?

[myguggi]

iamthewalrus, on 15 December 2011 - 07:47 PM, said:

And now, the most interesting thing....I chose a different movie and therefore a different source VIDEO_TS folder.
I once again chose ISO for the output file type and it worked.  So it appears the issue was with my source video.
Any idea why a video source already on the hard drive would cause a failure when burning to DVD or ISO image?

Where did the source Video_TS folder come from? How was it created?

[Brendon]

iamthewalrus, on 15 December 2011 - 07:47 PM, said:

So it appears the issue was with my source video.
Any idea why a video source already on the hard drive would cause a failure when burning to DVD or ISO image?

That was going to be the next step, get you to try different source material if the error persisted.

Some software which puts DVD folders onto your hard drive does it in strange ways, and if it has to do a lot of processing of the data it's always possible that one of your VOBs or IFOs will end up with an error. It's pretty rare, but the result can be startling when it does happen - as you've discovered.

Best regards,
Brendon