Final Cut Express 1 export to iDVD 5 - sudden chapter markers problem!

[johnnyjibbs]

Hi, I've done a search and nobody seems to know anything about chapter markers in the past! But here goes..

I'm just cutting some DVDs together from the 9 hours of video my parents brought back with them from their recent holiday in the US. I was going to do an edited video as well but I'm currently splitting the raw video into 5 DVDs of roughly 1 hr 50 each and adding chapter markers along the way to ease navigation.

OK, so the first DVD has been burnt successfully and I'm currently ready to export the video (approx 1 hr 50 mins) for the 2nd DVD from Final Cut Express. However, when I export it, I'm getting a "General Error" message after the export has been completed (I'm exporting to Final Cut Movie with Chapter markers on and the self-contained movie box unticked like I normally do). Even though the resulting file is fine and plays in Quicktime Player or iDVD, the chapter markers aren't making it into the file. I've tried it with smaller chunks of the video in my project and the same thing happens. Yet my first project exports WITH chapter markers.

The problem is related to Final Cut Express, not iDVD. Yet I've never had any problems exporting chapter markers from here in the past (including last week!)

I've tried quitting and restarting FCE, restarting my Mac, copy and pasting the video into a new sequence and adding markers again... all to no avail. I don't understand what's happening. I just want the bloody markers to export! Anyone know of a remedy? (That doesn't involve iMovie )

 

[xsedrinam]

At first read, I'd be inclined to troubleshoot in the direction of:
(1) Scratch disk and memory....ample?
(2) How you captured...timeline. Has there or was there a time break? Since the file will have to be encoded to mpeg2v and audio files, if there were a time break(s) this could affect the marker setting as well as other things needed for your dvd build.
X

 

[Rod Rod]

I put the blame on QuickTime. One of our software updates must have hosed chapter recognition inside iDVD. I clearly recall sending a FCP 4 project with chapter markers to iDVD 4, with the chapter markers properly recognized. I recently tried to create a DVD in iDVD using a FCP 4.5 project and iDVD 5 didn't recognize the chapter markers. Then I downgraded to iDVD 4, with the same result. Maybe I'll get desperate and import the finished movie into iMovie HD and set the chapter markers there.

 

[Bear]

As I recall, FCE V1 had a patch or two. Do you have those installed?

Also, it might be that it's time to ante up and buy the upgrade to the current version of FCE.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

Thanks for your replies. I do have the latest version of Final Cut Express v.1 (if that makes sense!). I know it's only £69 to upgrade to FCE HD but I don't have the funds for that at the moment (not that I wouldn't like to!).

I don't think it's to do with software upgrades because I haven't upgraded anything since it last worked, if I recall correctly. Unless Quicktime has somehow corrupted itself on my machine, but that seems unlikely as I haven't been messing around recently.

I'm wondering if it has something to do with timecodes. To be honest, I've never fully understood timecodes and the Final Cut Express manual (PDF) is not very helpful. Does this mean I have to reimport the video from the camcorder? I guess I could try that and see if it works, whatever the hassle. I certainly have ample room on my scratch disk.

 

[Rod Rod]

I don't think it's to do with software upgrades because I haven't upgraded anything since it last worked, if I recall correctly. Unless Quicktime has somehow corrupted itself on my machine, but that seems unlikely as I haven't been messing around recently.

Are you sure you haven't updated QuickTime to the latest version? I think the latest iTunes requires it. The chapter marker recognition problem might have started with QT 6.5 (before 6.5.1 and 6.5.2).

I'll probably downgrade to QT 6.3 pretty soon to test the theory. I have some projects that don't deserve DVD Studio Pro treatment (I'm not getting paid enough).

 

[johnnyjibbs]

Update!

I've finally solved my problem now. The solution was, unfortunately, to redo the whole damn thing. I noticed that one of the tapes I had imported suddenly only had one audio track for some reason and I'm not sure if this was part of the problem or not, but I re-imported the tape and set up a new project file and sequence and manually reallocated all 38 chapter markers! This time the export worked correctly.

I assume that it was down to something going corrupt on one of my capture files, which explains why the first DVD sequence was exporting fine. To be honest, I'm not sure what caused my problem, but at least I've got things working again now!