Digital Workshop

Please help, I am trying to publish a dvd. I have created it from scartch choosing DVD at the beginning, but everytime I try to publish it, and the video window comes up, it crashes.
I dont know what to do.
I can upload the imp file if it helps.
I have ensured I have an exit action at thend.
I have tried doing it as each "slide" is a seperate page, and I have tried each "slide" as a seperate hidden frame, hiding and showing after a specified amount of time and it still crashes.
THe onnly thing I wondered is if it is my PC but it should have no problems with it.
Thanks
laurie

Hi Lloslim

I have never had the need to publish to DVD yet, so I'm rather inexperienced as far as publishing to DVD goes. However, if I were you what I would do is try to publish to a location where I could test to see if my publication ran properly.

I do not have Presenter on my machine. I did download an evaluation copy some time ago in order to assist someone but the evaluation copy expired and I cannot use Presenter anymore.

So, to assist you, I'm using Opus XE 6 and I'm assuming the functionality is similar to or identical with Presenter.

Open your current publication and then

Go to your Edit pull down menu, located at the top of screen, and activate the drop down menu Select the Publication Properties sub menu. Select the Type Tab and change your publication from Opus DVD to Opus Presenter.

Click Apply and then click OK

Use the Save As command and save your publication with a different name.

Then try publishing your publication to your hard drive and see if you can run your publication after publishing it.

If you can, then there is probably a problem with something and your first port of call should be the Opus Help File. Try reading "Overview of Opus DVD" first. and then by trial and error narrowing down the likely cause of your problem.

If your publication does not run on your hard drive then I suspect there is something wrong with your publication itself.

In either case, please report back to the forum what happens and see if there is someone who can assist you.

The more information you can provide the more likely someone here can identify the problem and assist with the solution.

Cheers

Graham

hi graham,
thank you for the reply, its nice to get some decent support.
However, rather embarrasingly, I realised the problem was the PC i was trying to encode the dvd on <- it was overheating. I tried again this morning when the pc was much cooler and it worked!
The room the computer is in does suffer from extreme heat and the PC often gets very hot so now I know
Thanks again though

AMD has been known to overspeed its processors, which give higher clock speeds, BUT they tend to run much hotter than an Intel processor. I specify Intel when I buy computers for a number of reasons; this being one of them.

Your next problem, if you are going to make DVDs, will be your hard drive. 70GB will not be enough considering you've got other software, the OS, and possibly video files. I'd strongly suggest you get several external HDs with at least 250GB each. DVDs "eat up" hard drives like they were potato chips. My next HD will be 1T (1000 GB).

hi thanks for all that info, I had already thought about that, but the dvd I am making is around 350mb so its not a problem We won't be producing any large capacity dvds, just a small video version of a leaflet basically.

Hi Illoslim

I'm please you have been successful in creating your DVD.

Yes Fred - I bought an AMD 2100 chip in order to support the only decent Intel competitor and it used to run at 80 degrees C and I had to cut a hole in the case and put an external fan on the outside just to keep the darn thing cool along with an extra fan on the inside to keep the air flowing out of the case.

Nevertheless, the computer sounded like a prop aircraft taxiing down a runway. and I regretted purchasing the AMD chip. One day, the darned thing did overheat and that was the end of that desktop.

I now have a notebook and it works like a dream.

Still, I do miss the power of a desktop system and have a notion to buy one again soon. The chip will not be an AMD, that I can promise you, not because AMD now make decent chips but because I believe I was mislead by the AMD website when researching the 2100 chip prior to purchase.

Cheers

Graham

I don't want to turn this thread into an AMD vs Intel rant, but...

The AMD 2100+ processors were hot, and ran hot as Fred and Graham have indicated. I contacted AMD who said not to get worried until CPU tem hit 90C. I live where ambient summer temps regularly hit 40, so with a 2100+ such temps were a reality. I burned many CDs and DVDs and experienced no actual problems with completing burning the discs, however, I had one major issue with a MSI motherboard. This MB would not let me change the safety levels of my thermal suhut downs, and as a consequence my computer shut down when the MB determined. Quite annoying.

I'm now running an dual core AMD 4000+, and now, after having had the PC running for 8+ hours, the temp at the main fan exhaust is actually cooler than the ambient temperature.

Right I have upgraded the PC to the following specs

asrock pt880-vsta mobo
3.4ghz pentium 4 (Arctic freezer pro 7)
ati sapphire x1650 pro agp8x
2 x 512 mb 200mhz nanya ram

and still it freezes. Now I know that the PC is way beyond the requirements to encode and produce dvds and using fanspeed the cpu is not over heating.
So now I am completely stuck.
I need a dvd for a week today and I cannot publish.
PLEASE HELP ME!!!

i discovered the problem : For some reason it would not publish a presentation if one of the pages had a video embedded. I subsituted the videos for creator slideshows and it works. not ideal but atleast i have something.

llolslim,

glad to hear you have it working. I don't think many here use Opus to create DVDs.

i can see why now
its a shame - maybe it should be looked into these problems.
It's an all in one solution for making presentation dvds. Ignoring the problems I had, its a much better solution than Powerpoint and thirdparty addons. Afterall it was the Powerpoint replacement that made me buy creator. I still kind of feel that Creator is the one weapon in Digtal Workshop's armoury that is more unsupported than any other. I only wish my company could afford the upgrade.

The DVD creation system is the same in all versions of Opus. Creator has no lesser support than any other version of Opus - they are all equal in that regard.

What format is the video that causes problems and how are you attempting to embed it? QuickTime format will not work with DVDs because it does not allow the video stream to be re-encoded.

How come it doesn't have a forum section then?

The file was avi format (which isn't mentioned as incompatible in the help file) - it worked in preview but struggled when encoding.

lloslim

Your first post on Saturday 9 June wanted help on publishing a dvd. I responded on Monday 11 june and your reply said "It's nice to get some decent support", even though most forum members and DW staff are not at work during weekends.

You then stated in the same post that your computer has a heat issue and that your publish process worked in the morning.

Your next post was Tue 19 June about you upgrading your computer and then complaining that it still freezes and you complain about not being able to publish. This contradicts your 11 June post completely.

You then state in response to Leo's conjecture about not many people using Opus's publish to DVD, by stating you 'can see why" even though you seem to be the only person with a publish to DVD problem, not even considering for a moment that perhaps most Opus users don't have a need to publish to DVD.

Duncan Lilly advised that the publish to dvd function is the same across all Opus varieties. He asked you a two part question and you failed to responded to Duncan's second part of his question by omitting to describe how you are attempting to embed it.

I am wondering if you have tried publishing to your hard drive or to a cd to see if your problem replicates itself across media or is confined to one media as suggested in my first post to you.

It seems to me that you are making judgements far to hastily and are not considering that there could be a myriad of other possible causes to your problem.

Most forum members would like to assist you, but I think you need to be upfront about what you are wanting to do and how you are doing it.

Graham

lloslim

I'd like to add some suggestions to what Graham has written, but I'd like to stress from the outset that my comments are intended to be constructive and not critical..

Graham identifies the changes in focus of your post. I'm going to suggest that when your focus for a post/problem changes significantly, you might be more successful if you use separate posts.

My reasons for suggesting this are:

1. A multifaceted post like yours becomes confusing because respondents aren't sure on which facet to focus. Bear in mind that many who will respond are busy, but willingly make time to help, so the clearer your post, the more relevant the replies are likely to be.

2. Many people read your initial post and decided that they had nothing to offer to assist you. Having done that, they are not likely to revisit a post which they have dismissed, but for which they might well have pertinent information about one of your newer facets. Unfortunately, you never find out.

I agree that you come across as making judgements too hastily, and unfortunately, that puts some readers off-side. There might be several reasons for your hasty decisions:

1. Perhaps you researched the topic, which is great, but it would be useful if you mentioned where you looked. That stops us from wasting time by repeating what you have done, and I for one would appreciate that information.

2. Perhaps you didn't know where to look for more information. That happens to all of us. There's no harm in saying: I'm not sure where I should look for this info. Many experienced users need to ask for help. If we can, we'll point you in the right direction.

3. Are you aware that you can search the forum for information? Look at the top of the forum page and click Search. It's surprising what you can find in a search.

Finally, I'd like to stress two points:
(i) The more information you can provide, the more likely we can help you. One of the amazing things about the Opus products is that there often are several effective solutions to a single problems; and
(ii) Don't be afraid to ask for help. Using Opus is an ongoing experience. I've been using Opus for almost 7 years, and there are many who have been using it for much longer. Despite this, we all make posts asking how to solve a problem, or to be reminded of something we've forgotten.

I'm sure someone can help you because there are some users who are real experts in making DVDs.

Best regards