back button action?

davids wrote on 2/13/2003, 3:30 PM

First off, thanks to SF for releasing this great product: I've worked with VV since v2 and the product is getting better and better!

I've got a dvda project consisting of a main title page containing 3 submenus. Each submenu contain a movie menu item (created by dragging the mpg file from the explorer to the page) and a scene selection menu (created by right clicking on the movie and selecting Insert Scene Selection menu). The scene selection menu was created with up to 6 chapters per page. Each of these were tweaked to get a decent still in the menu item.

Here's the question: when I preview the dvd, drill down to the scene selection menu, and select a chapter, it plays as expected. If I hit the back button on the remote, I seem to get one of three behaviors:
1. jump back to the submenu
2. jump back to the same scene selection submenu
3. jump back to a different scene selection submenu

For each chapter it does one of the above -- ie, it isn't random. The same behavior seems to happen when I watch the dvd in a pioneer DV-37.

Is there someplace that I've missed to set the link destination of the back button? The help files don't mention anything.

thanks
david

Comments

davids wrote on 2/13/2003, 8:13 PM

bump -- can anyone help?

SonySDB wrote on 2/17/2003, 9:06 AM

First, each title can only return to one location (i.e. one menu).

If the title is referenced (i.e. linked to) by more than one menu, it returns to the highest menu that contains all references to the title (either in its pages or submenus). If the title is only referenced by the pages of a scene selection menu, it returns to the first page of the scene selection menu.

When you have links to the same video and it has the same in and out points and chapter points as another link, then both links reference the same title otherwise, they are put in separate titles.

So, from the scenario you described, it should normally return to the submenu. If, however, the movie menu item is linked to a different title than the scene selection menu items, then links from the scene selection menu will return to the first page of the scene selection menu (and the movie menu link will return to the submenu). The reason it could be in a different title is for example, if the 'in' point of the video referenced by the main link is different than the scene selection menu.

I hope this helps to explain the behavior you are seeing.

doboyd wrote on 2/18/2003, 11:12 PM

I think this may help me, but I'm a little confused. I have a two hour file of a dog show. I want to author so that from a main menu I can play the whole file, from the same main menu I can select submenus of each dog class, and from each submenu I have a scene selection menu for each dog of the class. I can do all this with one mpeg file, but I'm not happy with the return (back?) button action. What I would like to do is from a scene selection menu, playing a dog, press title or menu (all I have on my DVD remote) and go back to the scene selection menu. Is this possible or because of one file, I would always return to the mani menu, as the highest level for that one file.

If DVDA had more navigation(linking) options it would be perfect, apart from my other glitches, text quality on the menu is blocky(?) and I cannot play the menu items on ome of my players (see other post). Is there a problem with any of my thoughts, am I doing something wrong, why is the text not that good.

I have none of these problems with Ulead DVD MF2 or DVD complete (text, navigation), but they are limited in either navigation options (using multiple references of the one file) or no. of chapter points etc (what is DVDA's limits??). At present I am using DVD MF2 because of the text issue.

Thanks

SonySDB wrote on 2/19/2003, 8:02 AM

The menu and title button always returns to the main menu.

We are working on trying to find a solution to the text appearing blocky on some DVD players.

DVDA is limited to 99 chapter points per title. This is a limitation of the DVD-video spec.

doboyd wrote on 2/19/2003, 4:42 PM

OK, thanks for th response SonicSDB, I think I'm getting this now, and another post asked almost the same thing, I guess its also related to the DVD player actions as well?? I will have to see what the back button equates to on my different players.

davids wrote on 2/19/2003, 8:06 PM

Thanks, I think I get it now.