jfraze

Thanks, that did the trick. I missed that link! I also changed "Lossless Export" setting to "Off (Re-encode Video)" in case that makes a difference.

I select 15 fps as my frame rate in the Export dialog, but when I check the final file in Quicktime it confirms the resulting video is 30 fps. The original video clip imported into the project was at 30 fps, and it seems Videopad is unable to change that? How do I get it to actually reduce the frame rate and export at 15 fps?

What audio settings would get me the best quality from my old VHS tapes? From most of my old VHS tapes the captured audio is sounding really muffled. It may just be the quality of the tape itself after a couple of decades of degradation. (I'm not sure what it would sound like in direct playback, since have no way of playing the tape: the VCR is hooked up to my computer now, not my TV). I just want to make sure I'm capturing the audio the best available from the source, and not capturing with settings that are reducing sound quality.

Yeah, some of the videos are in better shape than others, but they're all pretty old by now.

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

Mac Mini running Mojave. 16 GB RAM, 2.3 GHz processor. I'm not sure what a GPU is but I'm guessing that's the video card: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB. It's not the most powerful machine in the world, but it handles these files better than my 2-month old Windows machine. And please note it has shown no problems burning DVDs, just exporting to video file.

Thanks for the effort. Just FYI at this point, HandBrake works, but it takes longer to convert the DVD than just to re-record from the tapes, or re-record from the edited DVD. Then it changes a 2.5 GB file into a 16 GB file in the process, so I then need to import it into VP and spend another hour and a half re-exporting from VP to get the file size back down to something reasonable. I'm probably better off just re-capturing. At least if I did a lot of editing I have the DVD to capture from (Maybe there's a way to get a smaller file from HandBrake without losing quality that I don't know about.) Nice video clip, thanks for sharing🙂. My samples were of my wife and I (and others) dancing with Erik Robeson and Sylvia Skylar back in the day. Back in the '90s-'00s they were sort of superstars of the swing revival. And nice people.

I uploaded a folder to Google Drive. I included the processed file just for comparison, so you can see when and where the distortion begins and ends in this particular clip. (Right in the middle of the clip, no transitions or scene changes.) That may be useful information. I have my doubts the process is replicatable. If I re-do it now, just from this clip, it comes out differently. I suspect something is happening on my computer locally. As I'd said, I posted the question in the hopes that others have had similar issues, and maybe they might know what caused it, and know how they fixed it. If you can't replicate it on your system I think I'm out of luck. Thanks again for trying. If it doesn't work, c'est la guerre. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bG-kvp0Yhr_uREF8-Bc5Yj7_6wKJqjVF?usp=sharing

I don't think it would be practical to post the project file and all the original source files. Would it help just to post an effected section of an exported file, and the same section of the original file? I'm pretty sure the distortion happens randomly so I don't expect that if I export the same file via the same process that we'd end up with the same results each time. Like I said, I was hoping it might be a familiar issue with a known solution. I don't know if it will be much use to put you through any further effort on trouble-shooting this. Thanks for the offer. Is it worth posting the samples?

I just purchased it a little earlier this year so I'd assume it is the most recent version. It's v 9.09 (Mac). Source files were mp4 files captured with Debut. Again, the source files have been fine. I play them through (repeatedly) as I edit, add bookmarks, etc. and would absolutely NOT have missed distortion to this degree. The one or two that I still have source files for show no distortion at all in the sections that are ruined in the exported projects. I could use Debut to capture the video from the DVD, but in that case I might as well go back to my original source tapes and start each project from scratch again. I'm hoping to avoid that, obviously. I'll check out HandBrake. That looks like it might save me some of that effort? There's no artifacting or blurring on import, only on export. So the links don't apply to this issue. I'm still mystified as to what has been causing this. I tried exporting one video with higher settings last night (instead of default) and that one came out OK. I'm doubtful that's the fix, though. If you saw the screen shot I'm sure you'd agree those are not the expected results from the default settings! Something went wrong, probably on my computer's end, I guess. I was hoping this might be a familiar problem that people had a ready fix for. I guess until I figure something out I'll just have to visually check my video files immediately after export, and attempt to re-do if they show corruption. Thanks for looking into this. Hopefully HandBrake might save some work in restoring my already-bad files.

It's set to auto-match resolution, but it hasn't anything to do with selected resolution: the video is fine on DVD, and fine through large portions of the project. Then it suddenly randomly goes bad for a while, and comes back, goes bad again, and so on. It would all be bad if I'd selected a low resolution. And this is WAY worse than a mere resolution issue. If it helps, I was using default settings for export: Compressor was H264, Video Quality/Bitrate was set to Default, Lossless Export was set to Auto Detect. I can trying upping those settings, but I certainly can't imagine that this is the expected result of the default settings. If this link works, this is what I'm ending up with for large stretches. And keep in mind the original video is fine, looks perfectly normal at 720 x 480. Only the exported files have these stretches of corruption. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RMQNIAJfuBDeIEJ-Pelvg0uuAP0cGGCE/view?usp=sharing I'm attempting to let the computer run the export with no other applications running. Again, so far it has seemed that the DVD burns I've done are fine. This has apparently only happened on Export/Video File. A lot of the original files have been deleted by now. All I have are the DVDs and the corrupted mp4 file. I don't suppose there's a fairly easy way to convert the DVD back into a mp4 video file?

I'm suddenly noticing that quite a few of my mp4 files saved from VP have large regions of extreme pixel distortion. I'm not even sure how to describe it. Giant block-sized pixels, colors completely blown out or changed, enormous compression artifacts... the video is unrecognizable and unwatchable. (Is there a way to post a screen shot here?) So far I haven't found it in any of the DVDs I've burned from the same projects, but I haven't watched them all through end to end. I normally make a backup mp4 file to my PC so it can be watched directly from the computer (on the assumption that one day DVDs, practical as they are for archiving video material, will be too denigrated to play anywhere). By accident I discovered this error on one video, and in checking a number of others found large regions with the same problem. It's oddly inconsistent... the video will play fine for a while then reach a messed up spot which can go on for minutes at a time. I've tried viewing the same video on different computers, and the ruined sections are in the same spot each time, and identical pixel-by-pixel, so clearly this is a problem with the saved file itself, not a playback issue. The problems did not appear in the original videos: only in the exported file out of the VP project. Obviously this is a major concern. Most of my mp4 files turn out to be unwatchable, and I'm concerned I'll find this problem in my DVDs as well. Why should I be getting such bad results from exporting to video file as opposed to burning directly to DVD? Is there a setting I need to be aware of? Should I just give up on "Export/Video File"? Use a format other than mp4? Could something be wrong with my workflow?

Yeah, I can erase the DVD on my PC. I hadn't discovered that, even on the Mac, VP asks you to overwrite the data if you put in a DVD-RW. As far as the menu... I found that (after burning with the Basic (List) menu) my DVD player does display a menu after burning it with bookmarks... but they don't do anything. The opening menu comes up with no chapters showing. When I hit Play, though, rather than starting to play, it then brings me to the list of chapters. But if I choose a chapter, any chapter, it always and only starts playing from the very beginning of the video. Worse, it no longer allows me to skip chapters. If I use the Skip button it keeps bringing me back to the start of the video. It worked better without using the List option. At least that way I could skip through the chapters. I'm assuming that's not the way this is supposed to work. Can anyone confirm that they've had a different experience using the Basic (List) menu option using bookmarks to create chapters? Or has anyone else had my experience? This seems odd. Unfortunately I can't justify buying another program for this project. VP does everything else I need. I tried the demo of ExpressBurn a while back but I've long-since used up my trial period. It seemed like the only thing it might do (that VP doesn't seem to) is create a custom menu with nameable chapters. Thanks again for the advice and help.

Hmm. No such thing as a Tools menu on my Sylvania player. I can't find any option to jump to any chapter. As far as testing on a DVD-RW, it appears that VideoPad finalizes the disk when exporting to DVD, so it can't be used again anyway. Is there a way to prevent that? Any way to divide the video up into 25 separate files w/o manually exporting one clip at a time?

What I'm looking for is a menu with the individual bookmarks listed. So I can jump straight to that bookmark or "chapter" directly from the menu. When I attempt the Basic List option it only lists the name of the entire video. The bookmarks are there when I export... you can click through the video one chapter at a time while playing it from the start. But they don't show up in the menu, and there's no way to play the video starting at any selected chapter. Is that the expected behavior? That's why I thought I would need to divide the single file into 25 separate files, so each one would show up individually in the List menu. If that really is the only way to get a list of chapters or videos in the menu, is there a way to save or export to automatically divide the file into the 25 separate files? Or do I need to manually export each clip one at a time? Or am I still doing something wrong using chapters? Thanks again for bearing with me! (FYI, I'll split the 4.5 hour down to 2 smaller segments if necessary. I'm just hoping to avoid doing that 25 times! I'm experimenting with much smaller videos to see how this will work.)