Thanks Steve, I'll check out Muvipix tonight and see if it helps. I'm not trying to do anything really complex, but the program is somewhat confusing at first.

Top right next to the Menu screen you will see a box "Background Media". Highlight this, then find the clip you want to play in the background and drag it to this box next to where it says Video.

To create the first button, just drag the video file from Explorer to the Menu. Adjust the type of highlight by selecting the button and look top right for Highlight. You'll also see other variables up there - play and discover.

To create chapter selection, assuming the chapters are already there (Markers in Vegas) just right click on the aforesaid button and choose "Scene Selection"

This will automatically create another level of menu(s) depending on the number of chapters. These can have their own background - see how you go ....

Thanks Peter,
Here's where I am now:

I was able to create a compilation of my various clips, then right click and create a scene selection menu, which is exactly what I wanted. The scenes don't match up now but I'll work on that. I'm not having problems because I'm using 16GB of space so it'll have to be a BluRay...I still need to figure out how to make a DVD as well, but I'll do some searching. I assume that I'll have to re-render everything in Vegas at a lower resolution for a DVD.

Were your 16 Gb of clips already rendered to MPEG2? If so, what is the total duration. At a stretch, you can fit around 4 hours on a DVD, but the quality obviously suffers.
The crucial thing is calculating the average bitrate, not the resolution. DVDA can do this for you if you use the Optimize/Fit to Disc function, but it's better to do this in Vegas because you have more control of the render - things like CBR or VBR.

"The scenes don't match up now" - are the chapter markers where they should be? To check this, double click the Main Clip button and select the Timeline tab at the bottom. You should be able to see where all chapter markers are, and you can create new ones or move existing ones.

If you do this, delete the scene selection button you have created - this will also delet any sub-menus, then when you create Scene Selection again, the Scenes should be where you want 'em.

Hi Peter,
I have 15 separate "scenes/chapters" in VMS10, basically one for each day of my vacation. There are no chapter markers. I created a Compilation in DVDA and told it to create a scene selection menu, which it did successfully. I think the problem with my scenes is that I named them incorrectly. For instance, when I click on Chapter 4, it takes me to Chapter 5, so I just need to work with it a bit. Total playtime is 1 hour 46 minutes, but they are all rendered as 1080i in VMS10. I'll look into Optimizing in DVDA, as that sounds easiest. I don't have a problem re-rendering if needed for DVD quality, but would like to not have to. Thanks!

You should certainly be able to fit 1 hour 46 mins of video on a DVD at decent quality. You will have to re-render to do this. DVDA could do the re-rendering, but you'd probably get a better result in a shorter time by doing it in VMS.

Thanks TOG, so you're saying that it will probably be a better idea to manually render each of my 15 scenes in VMS than have DVDA do it all at once? I haven't seen how long DVDA will take to do it, but maybe I'll check it out later on.

I think so, although the DVDA method may be more convenient unless you have to go back and change something.