Chapters in DVDMAesto

[Garnett]

I am having problems importing chapters into DVD Maestro. It is bringing in about half of them but not the rest. I read a post by someone else concerning the time stamp but cannot understand how to correct the problem. Can someone help?

Thanks,
Garnett.

[Arky]

I don't re-author my DVD-projects, but I suspect that what you are referring to may be a consequence of having re-encoded using Cinemacraft. Cinemacraft defaults with a start timecode of 01:00:00

I have no idea why this is the default - it is rediculous IMHO, but there you go! When you re-encode with Cinemacraft, be sure to alter your start timecode. According to the Cinemacraft manual, the timecode setting "00:00:00" should not be chosen, because it "has special significance to Cinemacraft". I don't know what the hell they mean by "special significance", but I compromise by creating all my encodes with a start timecode of 00:00:01. Up to you what you choose, but obviously Maestro is expecting your .m2v to have a start timecode of 00:00:00, so when you try to import chapter lists, it doesn't know how to allocate them to the movie because the first hours' worth of chapter markers have nowhere to go, according to the timestamp Cinemacraft created, which tells Maestro the first hour of the .m2v does not exist! :( . Many people use this start timecode, despite what the Cinemacraft manual says,and they have no problems whatsoever. Sorry I couldn't give you an absolutely definitive answer. The regular re-authorers on this forum may have alternative solutions to what might be causing your problem - I never have this problem because my projects are from my own DV footage, and so all my chapter markers are created for the first time, by me, rather than ripped from a disk and imported.

Good luck, let me know if you find a solution.


Arky ;o)

[bastioned]

To continue with this matter, as I am having the same problems as Garnett mentions above, and I´d love to know if there´s a way to modify that index in already encoded videos ( I wouldn´t want to loose all those encoding hours to waste ).
Thanx in advance

[Garnett]

I have managed to find the solution from some other posts based on Arky's comments (thanks mate).

The time code in CCE does indeed start at 1:00:00 and thus to make the chapters start in the right place you need to add this one hour to the chapter list so if your first three chapters looked like this

00:00:00, 00:05:17, 00:10:56

you would change it to

00:00:00, 01:05:17, 01:10:56

before importing it into DVDMaestro. Notice I did not change the first chapter but if I did I think it would still work.

Anyway, thanks Arky for at least sending me in the right direction.

[bastioned]

Yep I finally came across the solution yesterday, you´re right Garnett, I did the same. Just editing the chapter file and changing the values increasing the first ones by one and presto! Finally my DVD images are 100% perfect! Man IfoEdit and IfoUpdate are THE tools!

[Arky]

Great stuff. Glad you both found a solution in the end. That's what the forums are all about :)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40468


Arky ;o)

[tyee]

Arky
I think I found the answer to your question about the 01:00:00:00 timecode. I quote from a webpage -

"drop and non-drop have one thing in common - hour 1:00:00:00. (The hour actually doesn't matter as long as it's 00:00:00.) This is why you can take an output (tape assembly) of a non-drop timecode show and insert edit it onto a drop-frame video master at 1:00:00:00 and it will lay across perfectly. It's the same reason you can take a non-drop show, and create a drop-frame online list using 1:00:00:00 as the record in."

Does that explain it good enough?

tyee