Works in Simulator, not in DVD player
by Dave Felder
on
Sep 15, 2009 at 11:35:46 am
Hope that one of you guru's can help me. I have a DVD program that is essentially an 80 question test, and uses scripting to push values into GPRM's to track scores and question numbers. It works perfectly in Simulator. I burned my first DVD yesterday and it won't work on either Apple's DVD Player Software, my old Pioneer DVD player or a Panasonic DVD Recorder/Player (DMRE80) I haven't tried it on my other DVD hardware players, because if it don't work on 3 platforms, there's a problem.
Here's some nitty gritty:
DVD Studio Pro 3.0.2 ( I have Final Cut Studio 4)
OSX 10.3.9 (Running on Dual 2.5 GhZ Power PC G5 w/ 2 GBRAM and tons of available hard disk space)
All my Software is as upgraded as it could be.
Here's a quick breakdown of the program
First Play:
VideoLogo.mov. END JUMP ON TRACK goes to ---
CEO_Intro.mov. END JUMP ON TRACK goes to ---
Program_Intro.mov. (2:34)
END JUMP: Not Set
I have a button that appears over the video at 2:30. It is created by Subtitle 1
When the end of the track is reached, I have S1 is set as "INFINITE" to keep the last frame of the video on-screen.
Button Target is a script, "Quiz1SetDefaultGPRMvalues"
Script contents:
mov GPRM 3,0
mov GPRM 4,0
Jump ECIO_Q1::Chapter 1
note: ECIO_Q1 is Quicktime movie.
When played in Simulator, at this point I would find myself at question 1.
When played in any of my DVD players, the screen goes black and the display on the DVD player says "STOP."
I've made about 15 coasters, each time making minor tweaks like moving a chapter point half a second, erasing the script and re-typing it, erasing the button and re-creating it, etc. The two common denominators: 1) It works in simulator. 2) It doesn't work on a DVD player.
Quick notes about me:
I've been using DVD Studio Pro for close to 5 years, on this system. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty competent.
This is the first project I've attempted using the scripting feature. I learned scripting from some on-line tutorials and the Apple documentation.
What I've done to try to fix the problem:
Trashed the preferences for DVD Studio Pro. (two times)
Erased the PAR folder to force DVD studio Pro to rebuild everything. (many times)
Saved the project as an IMG file, copied that to a PC, and used Roxio to make it into a DVD.
Compiled the project to hard drive and manually copied the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders to a blank disk.
What I haven't done (but am thinking of)
Bring the entire project to an Apple Store and see if it works on one of their PC's. (But I'm not liking leaving 6 months of laboriously created video files on a retail stores' hard drives)
Upgrade DVD Studio Pro (which means I have to upgrade to an older version of OSX then is available today because I bought on of the last PowerPC's before they went to Intel. I'm told that the latest versions fo the OS will not work with Power PC. I'm not thrilled about upgrading the Operating System, and certainly not upgrading it to a 2 year old version of the operating system.)
Buy a new MAC?
Any experts have any thoughts as to why it works perfectly in Simulator and not at all on a DVD player?
Thanks so much for taking the time to read this message and respond. I'm at my wits end and running out of ideas.
Re: Works in Simulator, not in DVD player by Dave Felder on Sep 15, 2009 at 7:40:45 pm
Thanks for the response, Brad.
It doesn't play properly from Apple Video Player. I have tried burning an IMG file in Roxio from a PC.
I took my assets and project file to a friends production studio. He has two MAC's with DVDStudio Pro 4, a G5 with OSX 10.4.x and an Intel with FCP Studio 7. Same problem on builds done on both machines.
That suggests to me the problem is in the project, not the MAC, but I'm at a loss to figure it out. As I said, it works in the simulator perfectly on all 3 machines.
Next step is to take all the assets and re-author the program, making test disks several times a day, until I find the offending asset. If it's not an offending asset, it must be that mysterious "project corruption" we hear about sometimes.
Re: Works in Simulator, not in DVD player by Alexander Kallas on Sep 21, 2009 at 11:56:45 pm
Hi Dave,
Try moving all your assets to another drive. ( in the assets tab crl. click and choose "reveal in finder" to locate each and every asset, and move ie copy them over to the new drive )
Duplicate your project file, re-link the project from that drive and do a "save as".
You may find one of your assets is in the wrong format, the simulator will play those regardless.
Let me know.
Re: Works in Simulator, not in DVD player by Dave Felder on Sep 22, 2009 at 12:47:53 am
Thanks for the suggestions. My post is a week old, and I had to come up with something else.
I think the problem, through trial and error testing, was that when I put my buttons in subtitles, I used a beginning marker but not an end marker for the subtitle. Simulator didn't care but a regular DVD player does. I confirmed this by adding end markers to the last frame of each clip, however, that made the buttons disappear when the clip ended, which wasn't the desired effect.
Re: Works in Simulator, not in DVD player by Dave Felder on Sep 22, 2009 at 1:52:45 am
Can't try it right now, the Mac's in the middle of a large render - going to take 18 hours according to Compressor. Will give it a try tomorrow, or more likely Wednesday.
Re: Works in Simulator, not in DVD player by Dave Felder on Sep 22, 2009 at 11:44:51 am
Eric -
First of all, your response to my other post is what saved my project, so thank you again. By putting all my video clips in menu's, I have better control over what I was trying to do.
I'm not in the office yet, but I'll upload the project this afternoon when I get there. Thanks for offering to take a look.
