combining single-movie dvd's into multi-movie dvd

navboy wrote on 6/16/2009, 7:22 PM
Just got this software recently (DVD Architect 4.5), and made up three separate dvd's, each one with a single menu, single button, and single short original movie/audio. This was for a concert event, where the soundman needed to put different dvd's of different works from different composers into the dvd player at different times during the show.

Now that i've got the menus and movies all neatly set up the way i want them for my short movies, all i want to do is combine them into a single portfolio dvd that contains them all. Ideally, i'd like to have a main menu that lists all the titles, then when you choose a given entry it would take you to the menu with the play button for that movie that is currently the main menu on the individual dvd, since i've got those tweaked and operating and looking the way i want them on the individual dvd's/projects.

In other words, it'd be something like in my new portfolio project, i'd use the default menu as the main listing, then somehow import the main menus and their attendant media from the other projects (or directly from burned dvd's i made from the other projects) into my portfolio project as sub-menus to the main menu.

I can't figure it out - i can't seem to drag anything in from the dvd's i've created or from the Prepares folders in the associated projects (that would be the easiest, i'd think - just combine existing Prepares into one big project) or figure out how to import menus/play buttons with their linked media from other Sony DVD Architect 4.5 projects....

I'm racing to meet a deadline - i figured it'd be easy with all the work already done on the individual dvd's and now i'm kind of stuck. Any help greatly appreciated!

-steve

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 6/16/2009, 8:37 PM
DVD Architect is an authoring program, not an editing program.
As such, it does not combine multiple DVDs into a single DVD.

If you want to import and combine the previously rendered MPEG-2 or .vob files into a single project, and create a new project in DVDA while creating new menus, you may succeed in meeting your deadline.

You did not specify what the size or length of your previously prepared DVDs are. Keep in mind that a standard DVD will hold approximately 4.3GB, or about 2 hours at minimally acceptable quality, so you will need to adjust accordingly.

Users who are relatively inexperienced and who are also "racing to meet a deadline" often find themselves left to their own devices . . .
Steve Grisetti wrote on 6/17/2009, 5:21 AM
I agree. Racing to meet a deadline is never a good time to try to master a program.

But, that said, the process is fairly simple. You just drag each video from the Explorer onto a menu page in the workspace. Buttons will be automatically generated and the video will be added to the disc.

My one concern is that you seem to be adding video from DVDs. That won't work. The video you add to your DVD must be on your hard drive.

If you're using video from DVDs, this video will be in the form of VOB files, which are essentially MPEG files. In fact, you may want to rename them, once you've copied them to your hard drive, with an MPEG suffix so that the program can organize them.

As musicvid says, keep in mind that you can only get about 70 minutes of full quality video on one DVD.

If you need detailed instructions, my book is available on Amazon.com.
navboy wrote on 6/17/2009, 6:38 AM
Thanks. Well, the first movie is 2 minutes, the second is 7 minutes, and the third is 8 minutes - there's no problem with space issues. I already created menu's with play buttons and got it all graphically looking the way i wanted when i created each movie's dvd project in Sony DVD Architect.

Since all i want to do now is create a portfolio dvd with all three of those shorts as menu selections, that seems more to me like DVD architecture and not movie editing. Since i already did the work to get menus and buttons in the individual projects, it seems logical to me that i should be able to roll those into a master portfolio project with those menus intact - all i really need in the master project is a top menu with three choices, each one leading to a submenu, where the submenu in each case is literally the main menu menu in each solo movie project that i've already created.

Being new to this kind of architecture program, i'm not sure if it's reasonable to expect to recycle work done in other Sony DVD Architect projects or not ... ?

If i have to, i'll do as Steve says, and just create the whole thing from scratch, replicate the menu grpahics backgrounds and play buttons with certain thumbnails etc, but i'm also figuring out my general workflow for future use as i go, and i'm hoping i won't always have to duplicate work like that, so if i can figure out now how to avoid it, i'll have a much better workflow as i go forward, unless figuring that out takes much more time than just starting from scratch, then i'll have to fall back to that for now.
musicvid10 wrote on 6/17/2009, 9:51 AM
I have no earthly idea how you would import menu data from a finished DVD back into a new project. When your DVD was created, it rendered the menus as little movies, called .VOB files, with instructions in .IFO files to use them.

To expect DVD Architect to reverse-engineer the rendered data and recreate the project menu data, and then combine and re-write that data into a new project, is well beyond the scope of an authoring program.

You should approach this, as Steve said, with getting your actual media files into a single project, and creating new menus and submenus from scratch. That is the only way I know of to do it. As far as I know, DVDA does not have the capability to open multiple projects and combine them in one window.
Former user wrote on 6/17/2009, 9:53 AM
Musicvid.
I got the impression he is not talking about using a created DVD. I think he has created three DVD projects with menus. Rather than re-create those into one project, he wants to be able to cut and paste the menu pages from one project to another.

I have not tried this in DVDA so I don't know if it works. If I misunderstood the project, then I apologize.

By the way, there are a couple of programs that will try to reverse engineer a DVD, but they are expensive and I don't know how well they work.

Dave T2
musicvid10 wrote on 6/17/2009, 9:57 AM
Yeah, I picked up on that while you were posting and amended my post accordingly. If there is some trick for combining projects with menus into a master project that uses the existing menus as submenus, I haven't heard of it.
navboy wrote on 6/17/2009, 10:03 AM
Exactly DaveT2, that's it. There's no reverse engineering, that info is stored in the project files.

I did find that i could drag and drop menu items around within a given project, but after opening two instances (since you can't apparently open 2 projects at once in a single instance) i discovered you cannot drag a menu from one project to the other. Bleh.

But, i just did a Save As to the project with the most complicated menu and made that my new master portfolio project, inserted a new top level menu, dragged the existing movie menu into the top menu folder thereby making it a submenu.

Then, i had to re-create the menu for the other two movies by dragging the media in, then opening up a second instances of the software and copying/pasting textboxes, media and button settings from the original project to the master project. That saved me considerable work, but it still seems silly to have to duplicate it all, even with copy/paste, then rearrange. In some cases, paths to files didn't copy/paste, so had to go re-browse for those.

I noticed on those it auto-added a link back to the main menu from the submenus, and i didn't see right off how to create on the original menu i'd dragged under the top level menu (something i need to learn how to do), so i just copied and pasted a link from one of the auto-created submenus and that worked.

Took me about 20 minutes or so, burned a dvd and tested and i've got some menuing sequence issues, like the original movie submenu that i created by dragging under the top level menu it still the start menu for the dvd, and the return link is the default on the other submenus rather than the media button. I'm sure these are easy to fix, will have to make another run at it in a bit and re-burn.

EDIT: musicvid - you edited your post while i was posting, so i redited - yes, that's it. If there are any shortcuts, they are 1) starting with one of the existing projects which totally eliminates replication that menu system at least, and then 2) opening up the other movies in other instances of the application to make for direct copy/paste back and forth between the project you wish you could import and the new inclusive master project.
musicvid10 wrote on 6/17/2009, 10:30 AM
Thanks for sharing your experience!
You have probably hit upon something that others may not have tried, and which they may find useful.

"i can't seem to drag anything in from the dvd's i've created or from the Prepares folders in the associated projects"

That's what threw me off -- I got the impression you wanted to import menus from prepared or burned DVDs. Now that I understand you wanted to create one big project by using some of the data from smaller projects, your approach makes a lot more sense to me.

Your notion of wanting to do this automatically might be a feature request for future versions.
navboy wrote on 6/17/2009, 10:42 AM
I guess it depends on who all uses this product. Personally i'm a composer and as i pick up projects where i add a score, or get video from a live event that i've scored, i created a single standalone dvd featuring that particular work both for having it available to copy and send to someone, and also for use in some other event.

But, of course i want to have a portfolio dvd which is a collection of all the works available on a single dvd.

I suppose the equivalent for someone else might be if you create home movie projects now and then and then want to combine the various features onto a single dvd, etc.

Since i was able to drag menus around so easy within a project, i would imagine it wouldn't be all that hard in a future release to either allow opening more than one project in a single instance and dragging between them, or to allow dragging between multple instances of the application.

----

Btw, it was very easy to fix the menu sequencing issues left over from my approach - i noticed the submenu that was starting had a little star icon as part of the menu icon, so i rightclicked the top level menu and chose "Start DVD". Then, i went to the submenus where the return link was the default, noticed it was first in the tree structure before the actual media button, and just dragged it to be beneath the media button in each case rather than above it. Just tested, works great.