I am using Authoring Works 4.0.2 and I am transferring Video to DVD. I have a Pioneer VCR that does the capture and transfer to my master DVD which I then read into Works to edit and create menus.

Problem is, EVERY time I use Works to Cut a section (e.g. a commercial) in Cut/Edit mode, the final Output/DVD shows distinct pixelation at the point of the Cut. The pixelation generally lasts a couple of seconds before the image clears.

I have tried increasing the quality of the output with no effect.

My gut tells me this is related to key-framing, but you have no control over adding key frames with Works.

Any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

BTW - The exact same thing happens if I use Express 4.0 to

I have done several projects since posting this and have some additional information:

It appears that the pixelation happens at ANY chapter location point. It does not have to be a cut, simply any chapter entry.

Does anyone have a clue or suggestion?

I have the same problem. The only thing I can do to help with this is to use TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.6, but you only can cut at keyframes points :( But, well, sometimes is enough and you forget about pixelation problems.

It's a shame that Pegasys haven't solved that problem from TMPGEnc DVD Author 2 to TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4, you can look here for more information: http://www.videoredo.net/msgBoard/archive/index.php/t-892.html

When I change the default colour sets for the highlights in the menu editor, it does not apply the new colour set to the button even though I have selected to change the individual button's colour set. Is there a way around this is at the moment I am stuck with the default yellow, white and red colours?

Thanks

Did you change the default highlight sets in the Global menu settings? I am able to change the highlight colors just fine.

I set colors in global menu settings (the only place to change colors and opacity of highlight in fact) and got the same problem as kdw, it doesn't work.

I am interested in Authoring Works 4, but I'm curious about the subbing capabilites for BD authoring. What formats can it import? Can it import pictures based subs extracted from DVD and author to BD?

Can it import SSA? Or is it SRT only?

I can import .srt and .subtitle only. It can extract subs from a DVD, but you won't be able to edit them (since they're pictures). You should be able to use them on a BD project, but obviously they won't look as sharp.

Hi all,
maybe I'm blind, but I'm trying to create a concert DVD with a top and a track menu and like to have the Play All button selected as a default when the top menu is displayed.
Whatever I try (ordering, position) the Track Menu button always becomes active first.
Any Idea?

Unfortunately, that's not possible...at least with Authoring Works 4. It might be possible by altering the output file with another program, but I'm not very knowledgeable about such things.

The output process has so far taken 5 hours 33 minutes and shows that it will take another hour and 16 minutes.All this for a movie that has a running time of 90 minutes?What the hell?It's not supposed to take this long is it?

What format are you outputting it to? What are your track settings? What are your computer specs? What format is the source file?

There are a lot of variables that can affect the output time. Full encoding is usually not in realtime or a 1:1 scale. In other words, don't expect to encode a 90 minute movie in 90 minutes.

The only time output will be super fast is when the source files are already compliant with your output format.

The format was originally AVI and 4:3.Before authouring,I used Mediacoder to transcode(is that the correct term?re-encode?)to mpeg2.
I outputted it to NTSC 16:9 onto a single layer DVD.

So you re-encoded it with Mediacoder to MPEG-2, then used Authoring Works 4 to output as 16:9 NTSC?

Changing the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9 will cause Authoring Works to do a full re-encode, which is why it is taking so long. If you output your the track as 4:3 it should output much quicker (assuming it is DVD-compliant).

For the most part, transcoding = re-encoding, but with TMPGEnc authoring software, transcoding means something slightly different. They use it to shrink your content to fit a certain file size (i.e. shrinking a 6GB video to fit on a single layer DVD). It's not exactly re-encoding the video, but instead applies filters to shrink the video somehow. I don't know how it works, but that's what I was told by support.

This raises another question I was wondering.Should I just leave it at 4:3 everytime?I noticed that one of the DVDs I outputted to 16:9 when played back on my 16:9 big screen,does not take up the entire screen.There is just a bit of black around the image(and i don't mean letterboxed).

I've got some HD Video shot by a Sony HDR-HC3. Using DVD Authoring 4 I've been able to make a DVD using 2 pass Video re-encoding that looks great and builds fine. But when making a Blu-Ray disc using the 2 pass video re-encode on the exact same files, the computer will reboot several hours into the re-encode (at different points). If I just make the Blu-Ray disc WITHOUT doing the re-encode step, the authoring completes fine and I can burn the disc.

I have enough disk space, (50 gigs free on the target drive with temp files on another with 200+ gigs free) My computer isn't overheating and I ran memtest on the memory overnight with no faults found.

I've also tried shutting off file cacheing/multi-threading, moving the target drive, etc; But still have the same results. Instant reboot.

I'm running XP and if I have an Blue screen of death issue, the computer shouldn't reboot. The event logs show no errors either.

Is anyone else having similar issues? Anything else I should try?

(Intel Dual Core 8500 - Windows XP-SP2 on an ABit IN9-32X Max mb with 2 gigs ram)

You might want to submit a user support ticket for this. If you are a registered user of this product, TMPGenc support people will respond with suggested fixes or ask for more information to help troubleshoot your problem.

I started with an HDTV MPEG video in a TS file. I encoded it with TMPGEnc to make it compatible with the DVD format. I have to adjust the audio (with BeSweet) to eliminate lip sync problems. I can play the resulting file with either Windows Media Player or MPC and it looks fine. However when I create a DVD with Authoring Works
4, the audio is out of sync again.

Why not just import it into TAW4? It will accept .TS HD files! It may take longer, the ones I've done take about twice as long as the actual film, but the result is very good....and in synch.

Is there any possibility of TAW 4 outputting in this format(h264 as well to avoid re-encoding)?
Not everyone can afford a BD drive!
I'm sure if a Bulgarian enthusiast can produce a free tool(not sure if I should mention it's name), I'm sure the TMPGEnc team can.

I can't figure out how to create a menu that doesn't include the intro video. I simply want to insert a DVD, auto play a short introduction clip then at it's end display the remaining clips.

Can this be done with a template or at all?

Are there any menues that are animated?

Thanks

In the Source Stage, you'll have to create a Firstplay track. Do this by clicking on the downward arrow next to the "Add a track" button and selecting "Add a firstplay track". Any clips in the firstplay track will play once you put the DVD into the player and will not show up in them menus.

None of the pre-installed menu templates animate, but you can create your own motion menus with any video by going to the Global Settings in the Menu Stage and activating the motion menu options in the Motion menu tab.

Hi

I just got TMPG Authoring Works 4.0.2.14 and am trying to edit a wedding DV clip. Having that chipmunk pitch issue which I beleve is due to framerate. How do I fix this as it is PAL but set to 25 which I thought was NTSC.

I tried droping back to 23.976fps but that didn't seem to work.

ntsc is 29.97 fps and its also 23.97 aswell.

pal is 25 and 24fps

I would say that your recording had gone wrong , becuase the frame rate only adds or takes away frames.

what you are basically saying is that it sounds like your footage has speed up which would cuase the higher voices.

try locate what fps your footage is at.

my footage is at 25fps PAL and plays fine its only when i go to edit in tmpg it chipmunks on me

ok, try creating an image of the disc, ensure that your system is completely defraged and not by shitting windows defrag system.

then load the image onto a virtual drive and do it that way

tmpg reads isos?

i would have to read up again on virual drives. i should explain the sitation more clearly too.i taped the footage on DV camera then saved the avi file on PC possibly using a TMPG product ages ago. this may have been where the probem arose from.

i still have the original DV so will try extracting again. thank for your help.

get me via my mail address, if you need help

(Sorry, posted this question in the DVD Author 3 forum, it was intended for here)

Hello,

Just wondering if it is possible with your DVD Authoring software to use an image's EXIF or IPTC data to automatically add subtitles or text to each picture while generating a slideshow?

Or if you can't use the EXIF data, is there any way to manually add subtitles or text to each image in a slideshow? This would be a pain for what I am trying to do (add image author info for each image to the slideshow, info which is currently stored in the EXIF data), but it would be workable, I suppose.

Thanks,
cc

You can't add subtitles based on EXIF data but you can manually add subtitles to your slideshow.

We've recently moved from Encore (too expensive to upgrade because of 'package' deal) but are completely flummoxed by Menu creating & linking.
We are creating a showreel, so we have about 60 short clips, linking animations, and some compilations (all currently as HD avi's no problems using them).We want to create menus & sub-menus from scratch (with looped movie and sound backgrounds), and put buttons we create where we want them, link them to sub menus or tracks, specify 'end' actions for the plays etc.etc.
Is there any clear source of information on how to do this.
The menu creation wizard/ custom menus stuff just seeme to offer lots of preset pretty patterns all tound with no actual derict control of what actions a button initiates.
We were used to encore's 'timelines' - each of which could contain one or more video clips, and where video clips could be used in more than one timeline. Is there any equivalent structuring?
Like I said, we're baffled, and any help would be appreciated.

There is no timeline display mode in this software.

Menu creation is automated, even for custom menus. In other words, it will create the menu pages automatically depending on your page layout settings, whether or not you have subtitles, multiple audio tracks, etc.
You basically have two levels: top menu (for selecting tracks), and track menus (for selecting chapters). So you can't make another track menu within a track menu.

Buttons are created automatically depending on your content, but with custom menus, you can replace the buttons with your own images or simply use text.
You cannot create a button after the fact and set what it does.
You can however, move the buttons around to where you want them and change how the remote control navigates from one selectable object to the next.

You can specify what happens after a track is finished playing so that it goes back to the track/top menu, continues to the next track, or continues to the next track and loops all tracks indefinitely. This can be set in the Menu Wizard or in the Global Menu Settings.

You can create motion backgrounds with audio by activating the motion menu options in the Global Menu Settings in the Menu Stage. Once activated, you can insert video/audio as your background and set looping settings.

I suggest creating a custom menu using the Menu Wizard and using layouts similar to what you need and then editing the positions, size, graphics, etc. after the Wizard creates it.

Authoring Works 4 is still very much consumer software, hence its simplicity and relatively lower price point. That said, its menu creation is definitely not on the same level as Encore. I think you'll have to unlearn a lot of what you learned with Encore and think on simpler terms with Authoring Works.

If you need specific instructions on how to do something, just post it on this forum and I'll try to help you.