Here's an odd one ~

I burned a successfull DVD and viewed it on the DVD player. It needed a few tweaks, which I did.

Tried to burn another and got an error code - "Not an Mpeg file" (?)

Tried playing it on the DVD player and part of it played fine, but some of the media files were missing, and one stopped halfway through.

"Explored" the disc and found it was 100% full - but it showed the capacity as only 900 MB.

This is a 4.7GB DVD.

I'm guessing I accidently mis-set some setting somewhere?

Anyone know what I've done wrong?

Thanks.

What software are you using to author/burn the DVD?

I used Premiere Pro to encode to MPEG2 and .wav; and authored and burned using Dvdit 5.1.

The actual error message was:
error 20402 = "Does Not Start With GOP. File is not valid MPEG."

I can't imagine what I might have done to alter the MPEG files (?)

Go to http://www2.nohold.net/noHoldCust506/prod_1/KnowledgePortal/KPscripts/framesjtest.asp?ds=nh21.nohold.net for some suggestions from Sonic support on things to try.

A couple suggestions of my own, if Sonic's suggestions don't work, would be to try re-exporting the MPEG-2 from Premiere Pro, possibly with a lower bitrate (what bitrate were you using?), or exporting an avi from Premiere Pro and letting DVDit! handle the transcoding.

It appears that the DVD does get recorded - just not all of it.

The error code mentioned above doesn't appear until the program finishes the burn and ejects the finished DVD.

The DVD plays in the DVD player with all the menus and most of the video clips. but when you click on a link that doesn't have a video, the DVD shuts down.

Thank you Christopher for the sonic site. I'll go there now. :)

QUOTE:

Explored" the disc and found it was 100% full - but it showed the capacity as only 900 MB.


Re garding the explored size of a disc - any finalized disc, whether cd or dvd, will show as 100% full when explored, 0 bytes free - even if it is only half full. Thats because the disc cannot be added to. So thats totally normal. Just an fyi.

couldn't access site: http://www2.nohold.net/noHoldCust50...nh21.nohold.net

Kept saying I had to enable cookies, even after I had allowed all cookies and lowered my security level to zero.

I wrote a "disc image" to my hard drive and got the same error message.
Then I burned a DVD from the Disc Image.

The DVD played partway, but the end of the second video clip, and the all of the last three video clips are missing - same as before.

The DVD file size (according to DVDit) is 1.9 gig before burning the DVD. The DVD only has 944 MB on it.

Would a too high or too low bit rate do that?

Kept saying I had to enable cookies, even after I had allowed all cookies
Same thing here. They've definitely got a problem. I had to go through the question/answer routine on Sonic's "Ask Sonia" virtual support agent to get it again. Here it is:

-Make sure that your file names do not exceed 8 characters in length and they do not contain non-alphanumeric characters.
-This can also be caused by an invalid MPEG file. "Invalid" can mean that file's bit rate is beyond the VCD/DVD parameters, to resolution to audio sampling rate. Find if your files are the proper file parameters for DVDs and VCDs. [See http://cs.sonic.com/scripts/texcel/swise/TxSwDownload/e2f302d0e2f302dce2f302dde2f30050/Preparing_Files_(Eng).pdf]
-While it may be time consuming, take your MPEG files and build a session to your hard drive for each one. Be sure to delete each successful volume build. The session that fails with a certain file is the bad file. At that point re-create the file.
-This can happen if a tape becomes slightly stretched or if there are "dropouts" of video signal on the tape. To troubleshoot, you might try encoding a newer tape with chapters, or one where the integrity of the video signal on the tape is definitely intact. You might also try transferring/dubbing onto another tape.
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The last point is probably only valid if you were using DVDit! to capture the video.

I used Premiere Pro to encode to MPEG2 and .wav

fwiw, .wav is not the best choice for a dvd audio format... use .ac3 if possible.

go to www.womble.com and download the trial for the mpeg video editor... i think that it has a function that'll check your raw mpeg2 file to see if it's dvd-legal, and correct the gop if needed, but it's much better to encode it correctly to begin with... there are also some free mpeg2(dvd) format checking programs, do a search at www.videohelp.com.

Thank you for your great suggestions.

In using Premiere Pro to do the encoding, it creates three files for each clip: (.M2V) (.M2V.mcscs) (.wav)

I imported the .M2V and .wav files into DVDit for authoring, and then during burning, DVDit transcodes the audio to AC3.

To use Premiere to transcode the audio to AC3, I would need a plug-in. Is that better?

imported the .M2V and .wav files into DVDit for authoring, and then during burning, DVDit transcodes the audio to AC3.

To use Premiere to transcode the audio to AC3, I would need a plug-in. Is that better?
No, you're fine the way you are doing it. Even if the wav file wasn't transcoded by DVDit!, 48,000 Hz, 16 bit wav files are part of the official DVD spec, so it wouldn't affect playback compatibility (as long as you don’t go over the DVD bit rate limit). The advantage to an AC3 file is that it is compressed much more than wav files are so you can use more bit rate for your video.

uncompressed pcm .wav files are indeed dvd-legal, but i would not rate it at the top of the list for player compatibility here in the states... .ac3 is what you want for max compatibility.

one issue that you should look into is just exactly what audio you are feeding dvdit for transcoding into .ac3... the transcoded premiere pro .wav(really the mainconcept encoder output?) may not be an uncompressed .wav, if i remember correctly from the premiere 6.5 mainconcept encoder... what you should be feeding dvdit is the raw .wav output from premiere pro, you may have to spit it out as a seperate .wav file... this is a perhaps minor quibble relating to quality of the audio.

wrt the original complaint about gop errors... that sounds like a video encoding problem that needs to be checked out per my previous post, it's probably not related to this audio conversation we are having.

Good point about the audio. No reason to compress it twice. Thanks.

I finally received a response from Sonic:

"error - 20402 "file is not valid MPEG" when building disc
This can be caused by a video file being replaced by another of the same name following a re-encode. This results in the associated session file (.ses) being invalid. The fix is to delete the session file associated with the MPEG in question and reimport."

I deleted the .ses file, but then it wouldn't let me reimport the MPEG file!

So out of frustration, I retrancoded all of the video thru Premiere Pro and just rebuilt the entire DVD from scratch (without all the intricate links) to see if it would work, AND IT DOES! So at least there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Now i just have to rebuild all 40 button links and retype the fonts....

Thanks to all for your input!