MPM
Thanks for the reply, but I guess I'm a bit dense -- not understanding what you are saying. Let me try a different approach, by explaining what it is I want to achieve.

I have a 2-hour file. I need a menu setup that will permit the viewer to (1) watch the entire program from start to finish, or (2) watch any one of 5 segments from the file. How do I do this? How do I attach the appropriate parts of the 2 hour file to each of the 6 menus?

Hopefully this will help...

"I need a menu setup that will permit the viewer to (1) watch the entire program from start to finish"

Drag your video to the menu -- this will give you a button (that you can customize) that will play the complete video title.

"or (2) watch any one of 5 segments from the file. How do I do this?"

Double click the video in the project tree to bring up the video on a time-line. Set your chapter points, including at least the 5 segments (scenes) -- each segment should have a chapter point where it starts, & one where it ends -- usually the end chapter for one segment is also the beginning chapter of the next segment, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Drag the same video onto your menu 5 more times. Every time you drag the video onto a menu, it creates a new title and a button linking to it. It does not include & burn the video multiple times to the DVD, but creates instructions to play that same video when the button is selected and the viewer presses play/enter. You can then customize the video that each button plays.

The way *I* do it is using the properties section of the window, I set the start chapter in the drop-down box. The button for the 1st segment would start at the chapter that marks the beginning of the 1st segment -- the button for the 2nd segment starts at the chapter when the 2nd segment begins. So assuming 5 chapters to match your 5 segments, and assuming each segment starts where the previous segment ends, the button for segment 1 would point to chapter 1, the button for segment 2 points to chapter 2, the button for segment 3 points to chapter 3 and so on.

TO set the stop or end of each segment, bring that segment onto the timeline [double click, or rite-click & navigate into etc...], then drag the the end point left so that the shaded portion on the right of the time-line goes right up to, matches the chapter where you want playback to end.

That should do exactly what you want, and is AFAIK the preferred method, but there is another approach... Use 5 separate video files, either by rendering/encoding each segment separately to individual files, or use something like Cuttermaran to split your existing file into 5 segments -- that avoids re-encoding, but would require you to demux the video if it's in the mpg format plus you should double check your audio at the splits afterwards.

Then just drag each of the 5 new titles to the menu, & create a playlist for your play-all button. If you start out with 5 video files, it's easier & faster to implement but you might have a delay between segments when playing the playlist, which is why I think the first method is preferred.

RE: the PgcEdit method I probably shouldn't have mentioned -- Sorry:
A *Title* is just a list of chapters (cells really) in a video file that you want to play. Using the first method you create 6 titles -- 1 for the complete video, plus the 5 segments. Each title has a different list of chapters/cells to play. If you have problems getting DVDA to create your 6 titles, each one with its individual chapter list, it is easy to edit those chapter lists in PgcEdit to get the same results.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Exactly what I needed. Not in the manual anywhere. Intuitive knowledge, I guess. One of my skill sets is as a trainer. Much documentation is deplorable, and rarely, if ever, field tested before release.