Architect sub menus

vegasnewbie wrote on 1/19/2004, 1:15 AM

I am a complete newbie and I would be very grateful if I could get some advice about a problem I am having with Architect’s menu system. I have prepared one edited .avi file that contains the whole of one of my recent trips to the United Kingdom (called trip.avi). Assume that this file contains continuous footage of visits to two separate places in the United Kingdom, that is, London and Scotland.

The aim of the DVD menu is to have two links on the Main Menu, that is, “London” and “Scotland”, and sub menus on subsequent pages for each of these links. I do not want to prepare two separate .avi files, that is, one for London and one for Scotland, because if you are playing the movie right through, it would stop after playing back through the London .avi file and go back to the menu. I want the whole movie to be able to play right through, hence the reason for using only one .avi file (trip.avi).

When I transfer the “trip.avi” file into the main menu, I have no problem with inserting the scene selection menu and getting into a second menu headed “scene selection” which has the chapter headings I have created for the visit to London.

But I cannot work out what to do to get the scene selection menu for the visit to Scotland. If I had two separate .avi files, there wouldn’t be a problem, but because I have only the trip.avi file to work from, if I bring the “trip.avi” file into the main menu for a second time, and then insert the scene selection menu and create chapter headings for the visit to Scotland, these are not shown. All I get are the chapters I created for the London visit.

There is obviously a simple answer to this problem, so I would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks very much.

Fred

Comments

JSWTS wrote on 1/19/2004, 6:26 AM

You can import your avi the first time, create all your chapter marks, and name the button to show the two sites/trips one after the other "play all" (or something to that effect). You can then right click on the button on your main menu, copy and paste two more times. Name one of them "London", and the other "Scotland". When you double click on one or the other of these buttons, you will get your trip.avi and all the chapters you previously created. You can trim the clip by sliding one end or the other (depending on whether you are cutting off the beginning or end) until you reach the transition point between the two trips/places. DVD-A won't duplicate your assets to do this, and I think it will accomplish what you are looking for.

Jim

jetdv wrote on 1/19/2004, 9:45 AM

1) Add you video to the main menu.
2) Right-click and insert a scene selection menu
3) Go back to the main menu and insert a menu (NOT scene selection - just a blank menu)
4) CTRL-X the scenes from the scene selection menu that need to be on the second menu.
5) CTRL-V those scenes on the second menu.
6) Continue rearranging scenes as needed
7) Delete any blank scene selection menus.

vegasnewbie wrote on 1/20/2004, 12:48 AM

Thanks very much for these replies, they were most helpful. I managed to get the approach of "jetdv" to work, and I was able to cut and paste as suggested. I needed to create new pages for the second and third pages of the new inserted menu. This approach has the advantage that the full .avi edited file is available at all times to navigate through (forwards and backwards) when the video is playing. However, it does require some time for doing the cutting and pasting and rearranging.

I also tried the approach suggested by "JSWTS", and as long as I didn't cut off the end of the clip when trimming it, each link on the main menu would play through to the end of the video. This is a tidy way of doing it and doesn't require any cutting and pasting.

Another approach is to copy the main .avi file several times into the main menu, and to delete the chapters that are not required for any particular link. However, I couldn't delete on the timeline the very first chapter made at the start of the video. However, I could delete this chapter's scene link from the scene selection menu, but this required the menu to be rearranged.

Is there a way of deleting the very first chapter from the timeline?

I guess there are several approaches that could be used to create sub menus for this example, but because it is a common DVD menu structure to have three or four major headings on the main menu, and sub menus for each of the links on the main menu, it has been worthwhile to me to look at different ways of achieving this aim.

Regards, Fred