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Debugging DVDs Creation

This section contains helpful hints, how to initially check the results, and some information on determining what might have gone wrong and how to address it.

1. For first time users, taking the defaults seem to work very well when running as root.
2. You may want to use rewritable media to see how it goes before using permanent media.
3. Until you are familiar with the procedure, start with shorter input in order not to waste time.
4. Test the generated output with a compatible media rendering tool before burning DVDs.
5. Check the list of files and file sizes after the batch jobs are complete before burning DVDs.

For blu-ray creation, cd /workpath/bd_date-time directory and look for similar files:

bd.jobs bd.m2ts bd.sh bd.udfs bd.xml

udfs directory which is used as a loopback mount point

Note that the size of bd.udfs should be larger than bd.m2ts because this is the final file which is actually going to be written to the disc media. It contains contents of bd.m2ts and all of the required disc structure.

For DVD creation, cd /workpath/dvd_date-time directory and look for similar files:

dvd.ac3 dvd.jobs dvd.m2v dvd.mpg dvd.sh dvd.xml
iso directory with VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS subdirectories of non-zero size.

Note that there will be no files in the actual AUDIO_TS directory.

1. The bd.sh and dvd.sh files are script files that you can carefully run manually from some start point to determine where the failure occurred. You must BE CAREFUL and know what you are doing and what directory you are in because dvd.sh contains an rm command and will delete files. The script takes a command line parameter of the directory where the file was rendered to and which is usually the directory where dvd.sh or bd.sh was created.
2. There is also a file in the same directory, called bd.jobs. It was the information that was used in creating the batch jobs and may be helpful in determining what parameters were actually used if there are any resulting problems. With enough background knowledge, you can make changes and rerun.
3. For blu-ray check to make sure you do not have any spurious loopback disks mounted that may interfere with the correct generation. Use the df command to check this and then the umount command to unmount these. Also, check to make sure you have used the gsettings command to disable automount.
4. For blu-ray loopback mount the <target>/bd.udfs image, and see if it has the BDMV filesystem written to it, and in particular a subdirectory named STREAM. Look at the results in ./udfs and check for the stream file which should exist in ./udfs/BDMV/STREAM/00000.m2ts and should have the same size as ./bd.m2ts.

           mount -o loop <target>/bd.udfs <target>/udfs
           ls -lR <target>/udfs
           du -sc <target>/udfs
           umount <target>/udfs

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Checklist for Troubleshooting

- Are you logged in as root? This is required in order to loopback mount files for bluray and to write media on /dev/hardware. See section 13.7 for a workaround for normal user mode.
- Did you startup CINELERRA-GG from a terminal window so you can see informative messages?
- Is udftools installed for BD and dvdauthor installed for SD?
- Do you have loopback not enabled for bluray? At least temporarily, disable automount via:

          gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.media-handling automount false

- Did you have sufficient disk space for working/writing files? In the Create window, the disk space will be displayed in green if sufficient, but in red if less than what fits on the disc media.
- Did you use /tmp as the work device, then rebooted the computer, which deleted files on /tmp?
- If the input media is interlaced, did you check the Deinterlace option to eliminate interlacing?
- Did you change the output name in the Batch Render window after the batch jobs were already created? These filenames have already been written to disk. If you want to change either the Title or the Work_path, you have to start over.
- Have you selected a Title in the Create window that is a directory that already exists? The program attempts to create that directory and will give you an error message if it exists.
- Did you replace the /dev/bd or /dev/dvd on the command line with your hardware device name?
- If a warning was issued in the Create BD/SD window of * non-standard format and your bluray reader could not play the disc, did you change to a standard format instead?
- Did you correctly interpret the frame rate if using interlaced format to be due to interlacing?

Subsections

- - Checklist for Troubleshooting