I found the fix for Windows 7. :)

(Okay, well, not exactly. Site Staff member JMP discovered it this morning, as we ran some tests together at his place. But I'll be the one writing it up. He won't write more than one post a year, if even that. More of a site janitor and tester than anything else.)

It's a non-obvious yet easy fix -- but I need some time.

It does NOT work in Vista, but I may have an alternative to the Win7 method that will work. Not as easy of a fix, but still not all that difficult. No worse than editing video or authoring, to be honest.

You'll need a Dual Core or better, and I'd suggest 3GB RAM minimum.

More later this week... :)

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. :)

The required specs make me curious as to what this workaround entails.

Hello everyone,

I had the "no audio during authoring" problem myself (using Windows 7), didn't like the thought of cutting up the audio track mid-sentence with a chapter, did a ton of searching to discover a possible work-around for it, and stumbled on this message board in the process. So far I like what I've seen and read - keep up the good work.

The following details my attempts at getting DVDWS 2.x to work properly on Windows 7:

I had read a lot of different things about the AC3 status in the DVDWS.ini file and checked that the AC3 stuff =1. It was already set at 1 by DVDWS.
I had tried running DVDWS in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2 and SP3, but that didn't work at all.
I kept searching message boards for possible solutions to the problem.

While waiting for admin to show us his solution (I'm not trying to say you're slow, but it has been longer than "later this week" - no offence intended either), I continued surfing and found a reference to using Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC.

The write-up claimed that the use of these programs could give your Legacy software life again.

I thought ... "What have I got to lose?" - and tried it.

Success!

Here are the steps I used to get ULead DVD Workshop 2.x up and running with both audio and video in Windows 7:

1. Uninstall DVDWS from Windows 7 completely.

2. Download Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC from Microsoft here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/

3. Install XP Mode and Virtual PC.

4. Open XP Mode.

5. Install DVDWS, and all updates, while working in XP Mode.

6. Restart XP Mode from the Action\Restart button.

7. Begin using DVDWS.

While working in XP Mode, I noticed that when it was time to burn the disc DVDWS could not find a disc burner. What the???

After more searching and reading, I read that this happens because it's a virtual drive, not a physical one. All this = no burner drivers. Makes sense to me.

No big deal - create an image of the DVD on the HD with DVDWS and burn it to a disc using a program like ImgBurn (through Windows 7 now - it won't find any drivers through XP Mode for the same reason listed above) - it's free and does a good job. It can be found here:

http://www.imgburn.com/

I had a problem with one video that I wanted to burn to disc - it had perfect audio, but no video. I installed the ffdshow driver (while in XP Mode) and haven't had any grief since. It can be found here:

http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/

Good luck and hopefully this helps.

Rick

Have you ever watched Pawn Stars on the History Channel? One of my favorite lines is from Rick, the owner. "You never know what's going to come through those doors." The same applies to our field, too -- you never know what studio exec, crime lab, TV station, etc, will contact you needing something done. And alas, that always chews up the site's time table. But work is work...

And that was precisely what our fix was. :)

Exactly. My plan was to create a guide with images. Not many people are familiar with virtualization, which was finally included native in an OS for the first time that I'm aware of (not sure that I count OS9 Rosetta for OS X).

For Windows Vista, you have no "XP mode" available, and it gets more complicated. Not impossible, but not a one-click installer/fix. You'll have to download VirtualPC, install Windows XP inside of it (using a disc you already have bought or acquired), then install all of DVDWS.

Beyond all this, virtual environments pull on the CPU and RAM, as you're essentially running a computer inside a computer. The main "host" Windows install creates fake hardware with the virtualizer, and the "virtual" Windows is installed into this fake/virtual environment. That means you'll do best to have 4GB of RAM (2GB left to host, 2GB used by virtual session), and then you get a lousy experience with anything less than a decent dual-core processor. So that all had to be considered, too.

Surely somebody, somewhere, has Windows Vista or Windows 7 running on some ancient computer, and I can just see them trying to install all of this, wasting time and making a mess. Yet another reason I planned on a long guide, to preface it with all of those warnings.

Honestly, it's for the best anyway. DVDWS2 is an excellent authoring tool, but it's secondary abilities (editing, encoding, burning) are all rather disappointing. It's an authoring tool anyway, so that's almost to be expected. The "me too" features rarely work well in a program. Just think of all the "me too" tools that come with Windows or Mac OS X -- most of them very pale shadows of better apps.

DVDWS2 has never burned single-layer media properly, with 32k gapping of IFO and BUP, which is required for compliance when pressing discs. And then it does not set layer breaks, so it's useless for DVD+R DL burning. ImgBurn is the best tool. Just author out to an ISO file or a VIDEO_TS folder set, and then move on to the next app in your workflow -- the burning software ImgBurn.

It sounds like you may be using DVDWS2 for encoding, too. As per above, you're often best served by encoding in other programs first. Then feed DVDWS your encoded video. Also note that trying to encode a video in a virtual environment is going to be slow, and possibly unstable, as it cannot access 100% of the hardware in true hardware fashion -- and some encoders really need full hardware access to work properly and/or efficiently. The only real attraction to DVDWS encoding is that it uses the MainConcept SDK encoder, which is one of the best encoders. Unfortunately, the ability to custom set the encoding parameters is limited and weak -- Ulead chose to hide pretty much everything.

Indeed, it has! Thanks so much for posting your tip. If nothing else, it saved me some time, and will help others that were having to wait --- and I was able to "flesh it out" with the warnings and other tidbits (in this very post) that I wanted to include in a guide. Now only to find time to expand on it more, and with images.

Thanks. :)

Good morning all,

admin

Thanks for adding your comments and "fleshing out the details" - it'll really help others better understand the computing needs of the Virtual PC idea.

When I built my machine for video authoring I went whole hog on it - 3.06ghz P4 processor, 4GB RAM, etc, etc.
It made everything tick along a lot more reliably and quicker.

As for the one video that wouldn't play properly (excellent audio, no video) - it was a PAL .avi file, a relative had made in the Netherlands from an old tape, and it wouldn't play on anything that I had on my machine. I would have wound up installing ffdshow regardless if I was using Windows 7 or Windows XP Mode. Either way - I was able to convert this file to the NTSC format, author a disc and distribute copies of it to the family like they requested (even though it's been a year in the making - oh well ... patience is a virtue).

Thanks for the suggestion about encoding the video prior to loading it in DVDWS - I just let DVDWS handle it all because it seemed like the right thing to do (according to ULead).

I look forward to seeing your guide when you finally get it made, because I'm sure there will be other points that I can use to streamline my own DVD creations.

Regards,

Rick

(And yes ... I do watch Pawnstars regularly - I've gotta have a laugh every now an then too)

Be sure to watch this site guide, too, when you get a chance: How to Author with Ulead DVD Workshop 2 [VIDEO GUIDE]
There's some good tips in there, if you watch closely.

Expanding that one, and to written form, is another thing on the to-do list. :o

anyone happens to have this patch 2 232 for dvd workshop they don't provide it anymore

This should be it. :)

thank you very much