I think your customer has a problem with their remote - like weak batteries maybe. I've burned many hundreds of DVDs with DVDA over the past ten years and in that time, no one has ever said that the menus don't work.
(Also, BTW, I have only had to replace three discs due to problems - all to the same customer).

Actually, there is a HUGE difference in how various DVD players handle different DVD structures. This has nothing to do with whether the DVD is burned or whether it is commercially pressed or whether you are using a quality brand of DVD blank (e.g., Taiyo-Yuden, TDK, or Verbatim). It also has nothing to do with weak batteries.

I had this problem many, many times over the years for the reasons discussed below.

The most common cause of this different behavior is using separate MPEG files for each part of your DVD. If you drop multiple MPEG files into DVD Architect and then make each of these a separate "chapter," the default DVD Architect behavior is to actually create separate titles from each MPEG-2 file.

The key thing is to understand that chapters and titles are two different entities, even though they both can be used to provide instant access to a specific point of a DVD. I don't have the time to describe all the differences, but now that you know about it, you can consult the help menu in DVDA and can Google the subject.

When you navigate this multiple titleset structure within DVD Architect using its "virtual" DVD remote control, it will appear to navigate just fine. In particular, if you press the chapter + or chapter - buttons, you will go to the next or previous "chapter." However, you are actually going to the next or previous title.

When you put this type of DVD into a DVD player, it is a coin toss as to whether the DVD player will let the user navigate between titles using the chapter button. Some let you do this; others do not. Some will let you go forward to the next title using the chapter button, but will not let you go back.

There are many solutions to this problem. The best solution is to always render the entire project to one single MPEG file and then add chapter marks to that. Another solution, if you have already rendered to multiple MPEG files is to use Womble or VideoRedo to join them together prior to importing into DVDA.

You can also place multiple MPEG-2 files into a Music Compilation and DVD Architect will then place them all into a single titleset. However, you won't be able to add any chapter marks within any of the MPEG files: you only get chapter marks at the beginning of each MPEG file.

Finally, if you are stuck with an existing DVD architecture and want to change it, there are some tricks using a shareware program called PGCEdit that can let you add navigation logic to the DVD structure so that a DVD player that won't navigate between titles using the chapter button will in fact be able to do so.

[edit]I just read this other current post:

Previous Button Navigation

and if your situation is similar or the same, I think you'll find a lot of useful information in that thread.

"The best solution is to always render the entire project to one single MPEG file and then add chapter marks to that."

I tend to disagree with that. Sometimes you need seperate titles. For instance, I regularly have seperate titles as bonus features. I need these, after being viewed, to go back to the menu they have been selected from. You can't do this (as far as I'm aware) from within a single title.

I regularly have seperate titles as bonus features. I need these, after being viewed, to go back to the menu they have been selected from. You can't do this (as far as I'm aware) from within a single title.You can use multiple instances of the same, single MPEG file to do this same thing. What you do is to set different "in" and "out" points for each instance. The MPEG file only gets put on your DVD once, but each instance starts and stops at the points you specify with the in/out points.

Also, my comments about the "best" way were mostly aimed at situations where you want the person to be able to navigate the entire DVD using the chapter up/down buttons. If that isn't a requirement, then separate titles are definitely the way to go. In fact, separate titles are preferable in that case. For instance, on a commercial DVD, you wouldn't want the user to be able to navigate beyond the end of the movie into the "extras" because it might be very confusing, especially if the extras contained outtakes and alternate versions.

Hi John.
Thanks for that tip. I'll put it in the reference document I'm building up. That method certainly offers some interesting possibilities.