@ann-hesselsweet

Hi Ann

. . . . it is the only section that is this bright blue color . . . .

The bright blue colour indicates which video, image, title or audio file is currently selected.  If you were to add an appropriate effect, the selected item is the one that the effect would be applied to.

I cannot see anything obvious that would stop the burn process from using the entire timeline.

You could try removing the highlighted clip video clip and, rather than waste discs, try burning again using the Image recorder option instead of the disc burner, you will be prompted for a folder location and file name. If the burn completes then the movie clip removed is the issue.

Unfortunately there is no quicker way to determine this.

HTH

John EB

I tried your recommendation. I removed that MOV file, saved it and chose image recorder in the burn section. after a few minutes this is what i received. also does it matter where i saved it? I saved it under videos. So something is still wrong. and i emailed 2 different emails for magix support and got a reply that said they made a ticket but have heard nothing since. ann

i looked for imgburn to down load and there are at least 50 different choices. I am suspicious, which should i choose? i am afraid to download some fake compromising software. thanks for your help in this, ann

@ann-hesselsweet

The official download page for ImgBurn is here.

Jeff
Forum Moderator

went to the download page and there are multiple places to click download and all appear to be advertisements. cant tell which to download.

@ann-hesselsweet

Hi Ann

Try using Windows Explorer to burn the ISO image - right click the ISO file, select Show more options, you should then see the Burn to disc option.

Does this mean you have successfully created/burned to an ISO file?

John EB

i have no idea what an iso file is? there is an mp4 of the whole thing stored in my video file. not sure how it got there. maybe that's what export does. is that an iso file? i was going to download the imgburn but on the page there are 4 downloads that all say advertisements at the top and i am not sure which one to download.

i right clicked on the mp4 and there was no show more options nor was there an option to burn. In the video section on the top line there is a burn option but it wont access my bluray burn device. i would try the imgburn once i figure out which download button to click on.

@ann-hesselsweet

An .iso file is what is produced if you follow the earlier instructions to use the Image Recorder option on the burn screen. This wil NOT create the actual disc nor even use your disc-writing drive.

Your mp4 file is NOT an .iso, hence no options that John is asking you to find. However, if it is, as you say, the whole thing then you have exported your project, albeit to a different format to the one you wanted!

Re: downloading ImgBurn. See the attached image (from the page I gave you a link to in an earlier reply):

Jeff
Forum Moderator

i am doomed. i clicked on where you pointed the arrow and my bitdefender antivirus blocked it and said it is malicious software.

i checked photostory for export and my only choice is mpeg4 so there for that is what is stored on my computer and i assume that is what i will burn if i can ever get burning to work. Does photo story burn at a higher quality than mp4? if photostory would do what it is supposed to do. ann

@ann-hesselsweet

Hi Ann

. . . i have no idea what an iso file is? . . . .

When you burn a project and use the Image recorder option instead of an actual disc, see image below, the program will create an 'ISO' file which contains an exact copy of what would be burned to a disc. This enables you to check that the burn completes correctly. The file will be in the folder where you told it to be saved to.

The ISO file can be burned to a disc using the Windows Explorer option as I posted above.

Note: if you make changes to the project after burning to an ISO file, then you must burn the project again, for the changes to appear in the ISO file.

. . . . there is an mp4 of the whole thing stored in my video file . . . .

Did you export the project as a mp4 video file using the option shown in the image below?

If so, this is a video which can be played on the computer, however it is not in the correct format for burning to disc to use in a Blu-ray player.

However, if it has the entire movie as you wanted, then you may have another option to getting the project on to a Blu-ray disc, avoiding the problems you have had with the burn not completing properly from within Photostory.

To play the video file on your computer double-click the filename to play it, if you get asked which program to use select Films &TV and click the Always button.

John EB

@ann-hesselsweet

Hi Ann

I see Jeff has also posted and we have 'cross' posted.

. . . . i am doomed . . . .

Not yet!

I interpret your comment as meaning the mp4 file is the complete video, in which case did you use this export setting?

If so then try the following to get the disc created:.

1. Start a new project in Photostory
    
2. Add the mp4 video file to the project, do not make any changes to it
    
3. Select the Burn option and Burn to disc.

If all goes well, doom has been postponed, 😂, and you have a Blu-ray disc of your holiday. Looks like it was a great holiday - beautiful scenery and sunsets.

John EB

John and Jeff thank you thank, you so so much. I will have a DVD to show my family for Easter!!!!! Your last idea worked. I am not sure exactly what i did. i am going to try to write it all down to remember it and take screen shots of what you told me to do. The mp4 ( which I was able to create after many tries), I exported using photostory's export ( and that played just fine on the computer), I was able to import as a new project (and didn't lose anything) and then use the image recorder to make an iso (it worked this time) and then burn using photostory burn. Sorry for the bad run on sentence.

But I now concerned about making my second video for the second part of our trip (to Cambodia- that video was of Borneo). Will I have the same trouble? (rhetorical question) I am thinking i might have to switch to another software. Magix support is nonexistent. If it wasn't for you both and your willingness to keep trying to help me, I would have given up long ago. Thank you so much.

@ann-hesselsweet

Hi Ann

That is good news.

. . . . Will I have the same trouble? . . . .

That depends on what the cause of the Borneo project burn issue was to behave the way it did.

I suspect that after the export to a working mp4, that later edits may have caused a corruption in the project file which stopped the burn process from completing properly.

Create the Cambodia project as before, and try burning it in Photostory to make the ISO image file. The export to mp4 and using this to create the disc from the mp4 file is work around.

If the Cambodia project also has the same issues then there is one more option to try to see if the project file is corrupting - we can deal with that if it happens.

I would suggest during and after a long editing session that you do 3 things:

1. Save the project at regular intervals eg every 15 - 20mins when working on it.
    
2. At a longer intervals, eg every 2 -3 hours and at the end of a long session, save the project file using the Save as option and add a version number to to the project name - I do this with every project as shown below. The next editing session I start with the latest version and if something goes wrong during an edit you can then revert back to a previous project, use the Save as option again changing the version number and continue editing.
   
   
    
3. Export as mp4 to check everything is OK at the end of an editing session.

HTH

John EB

John, Thank you so much. I making copies of all your advice so maybe next time i will know what to do. Thank you for the photostory tutorial and all of your support. I truly appreciate it. I hope I am able to quickly put together the next video so our family can enjoy all the photos of our travels when they come for easter. We are headed to the Galapagos and Africa in a few months. So I really want to be able to work with this software to share our travels, rather that have to purchase and learn a whole new software. I hope i have learned enough to make that possible. thank you thank you, ann

But oh darn, there is still a problem. GRRRRR. I know now how to recognize the problem that locked the project up before I burn or export the project (and waste discs) but I still do not know why it is happening. There is no obvious logic. This time most of my Mp4 video clips transitioning to jpgs or other mp4s locked up and but only1 of my many MOV clips transitioning to a jpg, locked up. I hate to have to remove so many scenes from our trip. Last project, I either deleted those videos or in a couple cases i chopped the end of the video clip off and some of them then worked. It becomes quite tedious to try and figure out what will work. And sometimes just changing the placement worked.. NO logic.

Does anyone have any contact or connections with Magix photostory to find out what is wrong. They "made a ticket" about my problem, when i finally found an email and asked me to do a system check. I did and sent that to them. That was over a week ago and since then ... crickets. I have heard nothing. This forum is much more helpful.. Sorry to have to ask for help again. ann

@ann-hesselsweet

I'm really sorry that you are still experiencing these problems!

Having just re-read the whole thread (and seen that you have tried all the various suggestions that both John and I have made - thank you for doing that) I see we have never asked you for the specifications of your computer! I realise this is a slightly daunting request to make of you but I really think all the difficulties you are seeing may be related to your computer hardware.

In an attempt to make this process of discovering more about your computer as easy as possible I am going to suggest you follow this procedure:

1. Please tell us exactly which version and build of Window you have. If you're not sure how to do this, press the Windows Key (towards the bottom left of your keyboard) and the R key at the same time. On the screen that opens type "Winver" (without the quotation marks). You will see something that looks like this. (This is mine, yours will have different data).
   
   
2. To find out exactly what hardware your computer contains please go here to download and install the free and very useful "Speccy". (Just to reassure you: it's perfectly safe, there's no malware in it!).
3. When you run it it will search through your computer's hardware and produce a screen like the one below. Again, this is mine, yours will be different.
   
   
   That is what the "Summary" page looks like.
4. Please take a screenshot of that page, or, if you are not sure how to do this, please write in your reply all the data shown on that screen.

Jeff
Forum Moderator

hopefully i did everything correctly.

My computer is not that old and i bought it so that i could process our photographs and make videos for our family so that when we are no longer on this earth, the family will have the memories of all the travel that we have done.

I value your information about whether or not there is something about my computer that is interfering with using photostory. thank you, ann

oh, and by the way, you were very clear as to how to gather the info for you. I was easily able to follow your instructions. A

@ann-hesselsweet

Hi Anne,

Well done in getting all that info together!

Unfortunately, I can see nothing there that would account for the problems you are experiencing, I think. Your computer is definitely a higher spec than mine, though I am surprised to see your CPU listed as "i9" without any exact model number. Perhaps, just to satisfy my curiosity, could you run Speccy again and this time click on the "CPU" listing in the left hand column? This will then show the full details of your CPU which you can screenshot again as you did before.

My only other thought is to ask on which of your drives are your photos and video files stored? I see you have a mixture of SSD, NVMe and USB drives; that combination should not be a problem but I notice that your NVMe is listed as being in a RAID formation. Although very far from being an expert in this field my understanding is that it is unusual for there to be a single RAID drive in a computer. (I will tag @johnebaker because he has much more knowledge of such things than I.)

Are the USB drives USB3 (which they ideally should be for video files) or are they the slower USB2? I assume your computer's USB ports are USB3.

Is your computer a Dell XPS 8940, the same as the one shown on this page? If so, I see it has a mixture of USB2 and 3 ports.

Jeff

@ann-hesselsweet, @emmrecs

Hi

Ann, Jeff.

Unfortunately I have found Speccy to be sometimes 'sparse' and/or incorrect in the info it retrieves. The drive being in a 'Raid' - with that drive mix it would not form part of a true RAID configuration for which all drives need to be the same type and size, it maybe plugged into one of the SATA sockets that can assigned as part of a RAID configuration.

If either or both the Seagate 512GB hard drive and/or the Crucial 480 GB SSD drives is the OS is/are for Windows and Programs, how much free space is there available on them? Ideally for these size drives there should be at least 20% free space.

When burning the project to disc you need at least 2x the space used on disc, free on the C: drive for the temporary files created.

Windows Explorer will give you this information in this view:

John EB