Pinnacle Studio 9 plus problem to render

Leazle - check in the settings page in the make movie part of pinnacle. Not all writers can handle DVD+R and DVD-R although most newish ones can. After you put the DVD in the drive, it shows in the settings what it thinks it is. Check that.
Allan

 

Hi Allan - welcome back.

You're a star - I did what you suggested. It is recognising my disc writer device as _NEC DVD+RW ND-1100A 1.80

Do you think it won't accept DVD-R's which is what I'm using?

 

well, after googling the model of your dvd drive, looks like it came with a dell back around '02-'03. This drive looks to only support DVD+R, DVD+R/RW, CD-R, and CD-R/RW. This is a thread that has test speeds on that drive model, and notice no tests were done using dvd-r http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=64155

It looks like there 'may' be a firmware upgrade to handle dual format (+r,-r) but not sure.

I think you will need to purchase dvd+r discs, or purchase a dual format dvd burner (which you can get for less than $40 on newegg).

 

Thanks websokind. I bought my computer 2nd hand from a work colleague. It's a Fujitsu Siemens - don't know if that means anything to you?? I'm more than happy to go and buy some DVD+R's instead and see if that works.

Could you (or someone) give me a little more information on 'firmware' updates please? What are they, what do they update, where can I find the updates etc?


Thanks as always for all assistance

 

I just thought I would send a bit of good news -- I have not been happy with much of my experience with Studio 7;8;9+, but this has been an experience covering about 4 years. I still think Pinnacle should have done something more to minimize the $$$'s lost on previous purchasers of Pinnacle products, but we all know that's not going to happen!
I recently purchased Studio Plus Ver.10. I now "expect" problems so I wasn't ready to give up too soon. It took the Update patch to ver. 10.5 to get past the install problems. The next issue required that I update my display adapter driver (mine was 18mos old). This was accoomplished with the "expert" tech help from HP live chat. Things continued to get better! I still could not see anything in the preview window -- a live chat with a Pinnacle (rare good) tech who indicated that it was VERY IMPORTANT!!! to set the display acceleration about 3 notches down -- I found it maxed. The preview screen worked immediately!
I have made 3 projects now and find that ver.10 seems much quicker in many areas. I must keep reminding myself that we are "massaging" tremendous amounts of data to make a DVD movie. I gave up and bought a HP pavilion laptop to dedicate to making DVD home movies -- this elimiated the constant questioning of hardware suitability by Pinnacle that had been a constant issue in the first couple of years.
After reading reviews on about 10 other programs, I concluded they ALL have issues -- I had too much experience with Pinnacle to start all over with another program. All looks good so far!!

 

Ding dong, good for you Robert66.

So what are you saying? You want me to send all my DV tapes over to you and you'll transfer them all for me?

These forums churn out such nice people!!!!!

I'll get a large envelope.....

 

hi leazle,

i don't think there are any easy answers here - computers are a can of worms: can the pc handle Pinnacle? i first had Pinnacle on a pentium 3 and it folded on me, for example. is your dvd drive okay with the media you are currently using? try different brands and as you said, experiment with the different '+'/'-' formats. i tried disc-to-disc (blank medium: Imation) on a Sony dvd rw dw-u18 the other evening, it failed. i burned exactly the same project on a Philips dvd+rw dvd8631, it worked. i have no idea why one dvd drive worked over the other one - there must be some incredibly subtle virtual chemistry going down here?

nother tip: check out 'CD Freaks' - this is also a good guy forum!

http://club.cdfreaks.com/

bests!

 

Ladies and gentlemen.

First of all, a thank you to everyone who has posted a reply to my frequent pleas for help! I appreciate that at times I sounded pathetic but it was all worth it - I have no shame.

Following an earlier reply, I bought some DVD+R's and hallelujah, the files I imported into Nero (after editing in Pinnacle and capturing on WinDV) burned straight to disc! It was my DVD-R's that were causing me problems!

I was tres excited. But (there's always a but) I appear to only have copied the .AVI files to disc - when I play the DVD, I have my clips but none of my transitions that I painstakingly put in in Pinnacle. Also, I could only do about a third of my clips because size wise, they wouldn't all fit on a DVD in Nero.

Never mind I think to myself, I will now try burning the entire project I made in Pinnacle (captured with WinDV) - it renders, asks for a disc, I insert one and hold my breath ....... and it begins burning!!!

I cannot explain to you how pleased I was (pleased is nowhere near descriptive enough by the way but it will do for now). I let it finish its burn.

'Burn completed successfully' I read - oh thank you, oh thank you - I put the DVD into the drive to play it back but PC tells me Windows Media PLayer cannot play this media - it doesn't see it.
I try opening it with Real Player and the timer ticks away, I can see the length of movie which is just over an hour (so it can see something - an image???) but I cannot see or hear anything.

I am just going to throw myself out of a Window (how ironic) but, should I survive the fall, any response(s) to my new dilemma would be, as always, greatly appreciated upon my return.

 

leazle

try your successfully burned dvd+r on another dvd drive / player - i have the horrible impression each new generation of dvd drives renders earlier drives redundant: my Sony was the 'bees knees' when it came out a couple of years ago, now the Philips is outshining it ... basically because it is just newer i think: talk about built-in obsolescence!

*definitely try out your discs/projects on more than one player*

and take a deep breath - we all know what you're going through!

[thumbs up!]

ric

 

Ric

1 deep breath duly taken - will try out disc in alternative player.

Watch this space

Cheers as always

 

Ladies and gentlemen.

Following my deep breath yesterday, I am delighted to inform you that, after many months of trial, error (mostly error), gnashing of teeth and many, many late nights, I have been successful in transferring 1 hour of Mini DV tape onto DVD!!!

I can't unfortunately watch it on anything but I did try it on my Dads DVD player and PC today and it played just fine - it's all there, my transitions, edits, audio, everything. I guess I now need to buy a new DVD player!

Thanks for ALL your help and suggestions, in particular to Allan, Ric, Robert66 to name a few.

I am still genuinely amazed at the time people put in to answering plonkers like me who keep coming back for more solutions to their problems!!

Genuine thanks - I can't tell you all how thrilled I was today at seeing my months (yes I was struggling l-o-n-g before I found your forum) of hard work bear fruit as the images of my newborn son appeared on my Dads monitor!

Thank you. Thank you all.

A lot.

 

I am new to afterdawn and all of the great help available. It's great, but came too late to help Pinnacle problems. I suffered the hours and hours of trying to get a tape to disc. Tried ULead and others with even less success. What a waste of time and money. This is how I solved the problem. I bought an inexpensive stand-alone dvd recorder with firewire port. Now I make a copy from my recorder direct to DVD. Then I use TMPGnc 1.5 to edit. No special effects other than very easy chapters and menues but it is flawless, fast and easy. Thanks for letting me but in here!

 

Ladies, gentlemen, ...... friends!

You thought you'd heard the last of me - or rather, hoped - but alas no.

Quick problem that I think someone may be able to help me with. After the glory of burning one project to disc I've had a few hiccups - nothing major, just a few freezes on certain frames that I remedied by taking out.

Anyway, after a couple of hung renders, I tried creating image but not burning directly to disc. This worked first time (anyone explain why btw?) but now, I can't seem to find WHERE the image is and how I now burn it to disc.

Thanks as always in advance

leazle

 

Ok - sorry.

It now says 'the current media does not have enough space on it for this project'.

It's the same as the last project I burned!!!

Grrr... and to think all my problems were over.

I may nip off for a self pity moment!

 

leazle,

check out <Pinnacle_Studio-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>

ric

 

I have the same problem and I checked the website and did everything they told me after defrag disable background and reinstall the software it works OK but you have to go back to square 1 to do it again. Please recomend a better software someone!!

 

The problem is the dropped frames and it’s effect on the primary audio track. I had the problem after capturing video from an analog source where there were “breaks” in the recording. I theorize this had some adverse effect on the time code when it was captured as an AVI file. The audio kept dropping out when I played it along the Pinnacle timeline. I believe all the other suggestions are incidental to this issue. Try capturing smaller bits and take not where you lose frames.

 

Hi,

This is in response to sta98's message of 26 Oct, 2005...
I've had the same issue with the "Your project is too big to fit on the disk". After getting some crap back from Pinnacle Tech Support, I wrote them detailed nasty-gram, and actually got a response that got me a step closer. They told me to remove my (single button)menu (which also removed my chapters), and viola! The "too big" message was gone. Actually, if I just remove the single button from my menu (yes, leaving it useless! and disappearing my chapters), no more "too big". Now I'm trying to figure out how to properly construct my menu/button/chapters! I could probably burn it with no menu and no chapters, but that would suck!

 

I had the same problem too. My fix was to reduce the length of the movie to around 57 minutes. Their little diskmeter doesn't work right. Using the automatic setting doesn't work at all. I've been able to construct DVD's with full menus, still photos and music backgrounds with no problems as long as the length is under 57 minutes. I stumbled across that little tidbit of info buried in Pinnacle's help forums. PL

 

Ive remained silent a long time on this thread;

I have used Studio 8 and liked it so much I bought 9. I almost never have a problem. I have 2 high end PCs and consider myself pretty tech savvy.

For those that have problems, that is unfortunate. Just because I have a Chevy car and it works good does not mean that your Chevy will run good as well.

However, when it comes to software, either it works or it doesnt. Usually its because of poor components (hardware), not having a DV camcorder (duh), or other user end issue.

I have made probably 75 DVDs of home movies, wedding DVDs, even a collection of vintage 1960s 8mm recordings (playing the 8mm onto a wall and live recording it on my DV camcorder, and adding Beach Boy music to the beach and drag racing scenes). I have made maybe 5 coasters at the most. I have made movies that are 40 minutes and I have made movies that are 100 minutes.

USE THE PINNACLE FORUM SITE! While some continue to have problems, there are many very knowledgable people there trying to help out. It is frustrating for those of us that get it to work to hear about your problems, but there are solutions. I realize that it shouldnt be all that difficult, but in reality it is a very complex and fragile process.

One example I have heard others have regarding the project being too big, is because the user had not selected DVD, they had selected VCD (video on a CD) instead! Simple solutions folks......

While I personally dont have the time to help each person out, there are solutions, one must try to look it up. I believe one person on this thread (back in the begining) trashed me because I suggested using a second drive. funny, most people that use a second drive and have a good PC (not a $300 all in one) have few if any probs.

Good luck, and I will try to keep reading this thread when I get a chance!

I usually dont burn the disc right away, I render and save it overnight, then in the morning make the disc.