Chapter titles in customized theme

aldo12xu wrote on 2/4/2013, 2:47 PM
I'm trying to set up some customized DVD templates and exporting the themes I want to use for the Main Menu page and Scene Selection page. I simply exported the look of one the DVDs I had previously created.

My Menu page is ok. But when I drag the theme I created for the Scene Selection menu, it renames all the chapters for the current video according to the chapter names I had on the DVD project I originally exported my themes from.

All I really want to be able to do is set up a theme, drop in a new video and have the theme arrange the buttons and name them according to the marker titles I created in Vegas for that new video.

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 2/4/2013, 3:00 PM
The best way to explain it - themes are not templates. What you are expecting in my opinion is to have a DVD template that you can drop resources into and it will work like the previous version.

Themes are really only a means of expressing the simplist look to the DVD (like a main menu background) but are useless for controlling the architecture of programming a DVD. So themes have really limited value to an authoring sequence.

What you can do is to save a previously working DVD architecture and then use the import and replace function for inserting new assets such as video streams. Even so this has limited applicability for most people.

No way really better than customizing eash and every DVD you create -because eventually you have to do just that.
aldo12xu wrote on 2/6/2013, 4:54 PM
Yeah, that's what I've been doing. I thought this might be more efficient.

I did notice the Advanced Settings when exporting the theme. So I'll check the manual and see what I can do under those settings.
aldo12xu wrote on 2/10/2013, 10:41 PM
Well playing with the Advanced Theme Settings got me 90 percent there. The only thing I have to do after dropping in the new video and applying the customized theme is adjust the font size and double check the navigation on the menu buttons. The main thing is that I don't have to retype the chapter titles.

The key thing after choosing Advanced Settings was to click on Preview Changes (bottom left) and to change the theme type to Grid. This way, even though I wasn't quite sure what the different parameters meant, I could see the effect I had by adjusting each parameter.

The only thing I couldn't figure out was how to increase the size of the thumbnails. And I couldn't find which folder the themes were being exported to (eg. not in the Themes Folder under DVD Arch).