NeroVision Express - Navigation Errors on VCD

[PBear]

Authored a VCD yesterday with NeroVision Express 3 and experienced this strange behaviour for the first time (previous DVDs I've authored with the program have not behaved this way).

Everything went fine during the build, and navigation worked perfectly in the preview window in NVE, but the burned disc will not navigate chapters using the PREV and NEXT buttons on my remote control. After the title starts playing, pressing NEXT returns me to the main menu instead of going to the next chapter (and PREV does the same thing, of course, since I can never get out of Chapter 1).

This may have been the first time I've authored a disc using NVE that used a single title with chapters. Normally, my discs have multiple titles with no chapters and I've had no such problem with those, at least not with DVDs (VCDs I made with older versions of NVE didn't do this, but this is probablay the first VCD I've authored with version 3).

I redid the job from start to finish, looking for any options I may have not noticed the first time (couldn't see any) and tried playing the burned disc on two different-brand standalone players, again with the same result.

The job has two menu pages for one title, showing eight chapters in all. Using the number keys on the remote will jump to the correct chapters as shown in the menus. The title plays through fine, going from beginning to end with no problems at the chapter points. Using the PREV and NEXT buttons on the remote, while in the menus, will jump back and forth between the two menu pages properly. They just won't work anymore after the title starts playing, from any entry point, always returning the player to the first menu page (even though they do work correctly in NVE's navigation preview page, as I said).

I could burn the project using just Nero (Burning ROM), but I would prefer this project, since it is a full-length title instead of just clips, to have a more attractive menu than plain Nero can manage. Started the project with VCDEasy, actually, but the source is one of those MPEG files that VCDEasy stupidly insists needs to be padded with thousands of zero bytes for some reason (it plays fine without them) and then creates a BIN file that's too big to fit on a CD. If worst comes to worst, I could always try one of the Ulead programs I've got, but they drive me crazy crashing all the time.

So I'm wondering if anybody else has come across this problem in NeroVision Express and knows if there's a fix (standalone or by upgrading to, say, Nero 7) that alleviates it?

Thanks.

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Using the number keys on the remote will jump to the correct chapters as shown in the menus... Using the PREV and NEXT buttons on the remote... They just won't work anymore after the title starts playing, from any entry point, always returning the player to the first menu page
Although I personally haven't used Nero Vision Express, it sounds like the "PREVIOUS" and "NEXT" buttons are set to seek TITLES (but you have only one TITLE) and not CHAPTERS. Since the number keys properly address your CHAPTER selection, it would seem that you're present structure is quite usable...

[PBear]

Since the number keys properly address your CHAPTER selection, it would seem that you're present structure is quite usable...While the resulting video may be quite usable, it's still not optimal; rather, it's totally non-standard and far from acceptable.

The whole point of splitting a long video title into chapters is so it can be skipped through easily using the PREV and NEXT buttons on the remote. No one wants to have to go back to a menu, and navigate through it, to skip over a chapter.

I've re-rendered the project using Ulead DVD Workshop. It had no problem automatically encoding the navigation commands so that the PREV and NEXT buttons cycle back and forth sequentially through the chapters. Neither did NeroVision Express, I assume, in earlier builds, nor does any other such program, I'm sure.

It's just another of the many bugs that show up in the Nero suite with each new release - some of which are never corrected. Does anyone know if they ever fixed the broken REW and FF buttons in SVCDs made with Nero Burning ROM? I don't, because I stopped using it to make SVCDs after the bug appeared with the first release of Nero 6 and continued through numerous new builds over the next several months - long after I'd submitted a bug report about it! I finally gave up on them ever fixing it. And I suppose I'll have to do the same thing here.

[jshumate]

Have you considering authoring with VCDeasy? Personally, I think menus are a waste of time, but this seems to be a minority opinion. VCDeasy doesn't support menus, although
it might be possible to make menus with another application that will work with VCDeasy. I'm not sure. However, you can set entry points (the technical VCD term for what you call "chapters") with VCDeasy and pressing the NEXT and PREV buttons should work fine.

I don't know if Nero ever fixed the SVCD problem you mentioned. I stopped making SVCDs about 3 years ago and moved to DVDs. Nero does a lot of things in SVCD that aren't quite right but "close enough", so I can't say I'm surprised about this. I remember in Nero 4 and I think in 5 they had an issue where if FF/REW worked, on many DVD players you couldn't time search. The kludge to fix time search broke FF/REW. A few lucky people had DVD players where Nero authored SVCDs could do FF/REW and time searching, but in most cases, you could only have one or the other. If this is the bug you are talking about, then I would be surprised if it was fixed because it's been broken in Nero for years. You could try VCDeasy for authoring SVCDs as well and with any luck FF/REW and time searching will work on those discs. I can tell you that those options work on VCDs authored by VCDeasy as I do make VCDs with it every now and then. Info on VCDeasy is available at http://www.vcdeasy.org

[PBear]

Have you considering authoring with VCDeasy?Thanks for the reply. I've used VCDEasy for years. In fact, I already authored this project with VCDEasy (see my first post).

Only problem is, VCDEasy has a nasty habit of insisting to pad the video stream out with zeros if it thinks there's some need (although there never has been with any of the source videos I've used to date - they've all played fine when burned "as is"). Once VCDEasy does that, the resulting BIN file is often too big to fit on a single CD (not to mention, it results in a video that's several minutes longer than it should be - and jerky).

That was the case with this project: VCDEasy output was unacceptable. I finally managed to burn the VCD as I wanted, with the menus and all the navigation working as it should, using Ulead DVD Workshop.

Regards.