Adding a button that points to a chap/scene marker

brentnhunter wrote on 1/25/2008, 7:30 AM
I've set a number of chapter/scene markers on my main movie file and saved them. How do I manually create a button that will play the video starting at a certain chapter/scene marker, when that button is pressed? People talk about doing this but I can't figure out how to do it and all of the help screens aren't very helpful.

Any tips or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Thank you!

Brent

Comments

PapaGamer wrote on 1/25/2008, 7:37 AM
Right-click the main movie button and choose "Insert Scene Selection Menu..." It will ask you to name the menu pages (default is "Scene Selection") and choose the number of links per page (typical default is 6). It will then automatically create all the necessary sub-menus, with links to individual scenes as well as links between the menus and to your top-level menu.
brentnhunter wrote on 1/25/2008, 7:45 AM
Thanks very much, I should have said that I already did that. The problem is, since I did that I added additional chapter/scene markers toward the end. I can see them there when I look at the movie file but apparently in order to get them to show up on the menu pages, I have to do the whole create scene selection menu all over again ... which is not an option for me since I changed the graphics, text size, positioning, etc So what I'm trying to do is just manually add a button to a menu page. That's what I can't figure out, how to add a button that links to a particular chapter/scene marker. I can add buttons for new media, a new menu, a picture compilation, etc. but I don't see any option to add a button for an existing chapter/scene marker.

Any ideas?
bStro wrote on 1/25/2008, 1:55 PM
Right-click one of your other chapter buttons and choose Copy. Right-click the menu and choose Paste. This gives you another button that points to the same movie and has the same settings as your other buttons. Then select this new button, go to the Button Properties window and change the Destination Chapter to reflect the chapter you want this button to go to. Finally, edit the text for the button (if there is any) and adjust its image (if there is any). (For the image, go to the Media tab of the Button Properties window and change the Thumbnail Media setting. If your thumbnail image is a frame from the movie, you want to edit the Start Time.)

As johnmeyer (I believe) mentioned in another of your threads, you might need to fix your other scene selection buttons if you added chapters before any of the chapters that existed when you created the scene selection menu.

For example, if you had a movie with Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, and you created a scene selection menu of that movie, those buttons wouldn't point to Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. If you then inserted a new chapter between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, Chapter 2 would now be Chapter 3. But the original scene selection menu button would still point to "Chapter 2" (the new one) instead of "Chapter 3" (the old Chapter 2).

If this is the case, you'll want to use the same method as above to make each button point to the correct chapter. The thumbnails, I believe, would be correct since they point to a frame number, not a chapter number.

On the the other hand, if your new chapters are after all of the chapters you already had, they would have no effect on the original chapter numbers.

Rob
PapaGamer wrote on 1/25/2008, 5:49 PM
IMO, you would be better off deleting the current scene selection menus and re-creating them.
brentnhunter wrote on 1/26/2008, 11:50 AM
hey there bstro -- that worked! The copy and paste option is quick and easy and did just the trick. It still seems like there is a feature missing that should make it even easier, but hey this works.

Thanks very much for everyone's help!

Brent