Thanks. I'll check this out. First I have to digest the info and then I'll try it out.

You can do what you want entirely within DVD Architect. Check the manual for "Adding a Scene Selection Menu." You want the sub-section called "Create a menu that returns to the scene selection menu after playing the selected chapter."

Rob

I tried both suggestions and following the manual was the easiest to accomplish. They worked. Thanks for the help.

I am rather new to DVDA, having just got to the stage of being able to create Chapter Menus that play any selected chapter from its start to the end of the video. However I am totally failing when I try to make a Scene Selection menu that will stop at the end of the scene and return to the Scene Selection Menu.

I believe I am following the process outlined in the DVDA Manual (for DVDA v4.5) on Page 51, "Returning to the menu after playing the Scene/Chapter".

I can create a menu -- let's call it the SCENE menu, --- add the video and copy the resulting button (say) 4 times,. If I correctly understand the manual I should then be able to double click on any one of the buttons, set the IN/OUT points for that button on the video, and then do the same for another button but choose different IN/OUT points.

However, whenever I change the IN/OUT points ALL buttons will only play the Scene defined by those (new) IN/OUT markers.

Further, if I also create a Chapter Menu, which has buttons corresponding to Chapters created on the video by setting Scene/Chapter markers on the video, any that relate to chapters that fall outside the currently-applied in/out points are designated in the Project Overview window as "Broken Links", highlighted in red, and not playable if I try to choose them from the Chapter Menu.

I am clearly missing some vital point, and would greatly appreciate any assistance anyone can offer. Thanks in anticipation.

Robert Nicol

The Sony Manual method: What you want to do, Robert, is create more than one title, with all of these titles referencing the same video & audio files. This works because each title is actually a list of what cells to play - If Title 1 is your full movie, Title 2 might play just cell (chapt.) 1, TItle 3 plays just cell 2, and so on...

In DVDA you create a duplicate title - more than one *title* referring to the same video - by having more than one button pointing to that video. The catch is that you have to be careful how you add all those video buttons, since you can just as easily create a whole bunch of buttons all pointing to the same *title*, which is what's happening to you. You can spot the difference right off -- ***every time you add a duplicate title you should see another video title in the project tree on the left.***

You can drag the same video file from the explorer window to your menu page, or insert the same video file using the menu or the project tree, and when you use the project tree, you can insert the same video at either the *root* level or under the menu. OTOH, if you try to duplicate a video already in the project tree, from the project tree, you'll likely just get another link to the same video title. Remember that you want to see a video title for every duplicate in that project tree, but have the video file itself only listed once in the optimize dialog.

Now, to create one chapter titles you need to define your chapters (cells). If you defined and kept your chapters in Vegas encoded mpg2, every copy of the video you add imports those same chapter markers. Or if you have a list of the times that works, or you can set your chapters in the first title you create - the first time you import the video file - and copy that menu button over & over... for that to work the video needs to be below the menu in the project tree.

Now you can create a chapter/scene menu based on the original, 1st title, which will refer to all the existing chapters. Once you have that in place, you need to edit what title those chapter buttons point to. Then you edit what cells/chapters that title plays. Or, as the page 51 in the DVDA 4.5 manual seems to state [paraphrased]: screw the scene selection menu stuff and just label your individual, duplicate title buttons as chapter buttons. Of course that won't work out so well because when you create a scene menu that get's labeled in the DVD as a scene menu so the scene menu button on the remote displays it on TV -- IOW words you might need that scene menu.
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To do it using PGCedit, you might have to experiment a bit to get it working with your DVDA DVD the way you want it. To me, bearing in mind I'm more used to PGCEdit, it would be quicker to add a conditional cell command to return to the menu, with a GPRM set by the button to play the complete video - if that GPRM value is not met or there, the cell jumps to the menu. The cell command itself would only be inserted once, and then each chapter (cell) edited to include it, versus creating duplicate titles, editing the chapters played, & editing the buttons.

Robert,

One way to keep the duplicate videos, one for each chapter, sorted out is to rename each duplicate video, after you have dragged it to the program tree, with the chapter name . Then double click on each one and set the return link and start stop points for that chapter. When you drag each chapter video to the scene selection menu it will have the correct chapter and link.

Remember to rename the vidoes after you drag them into the project you only want one copy of the movie on the DVD not one for each chapter.

Ed

Many thanks, MPN; I think you have saved my sanity, and certainly saved my remaining hair!! It seems, if I have it right, that one can have as many "copies" (which are, of course, only data pointers) of the video as one needs to operate both:

a) "Chapter selection Menu", which allow oneto select a chapter and then play to the end, which needs only one copy,

AND

b) :Scene selection Menu" which allows the selection of scenes, each of which plays from the In-point to the Out-point which has been set for the particular linked copy of the video;. In this case, there need to be as many "copies" of the video as there are different Scenes.

Perhaps when I have got it all worked into a "fail safe" set of steps, I will document them and paste this into a forum message, so that others who have my mental block will have a step-by-step instruction set, including that ABSOLUTELY VITAL stepof ensuring that there is at least one "copy" of the video immediately below each menu. So far as I can see, this is not stated anywhere in the DVDA User Manual.

As a new member of this Forum, I would be grateful of your comments on the advisability of doing this -- I do not want to come over as a smart-arse!!!!!

With sincere thanks again

Robert Nicol