How To: Multiple movies w/ chapters

dand9959 wrote on 9/21/2004, 10:53 PM
Hi all...I'm a newbie to DVDA Studio

I'd like to create a DVD consisting of multiple movies, played consecutively as one. I want to add chapter points throughout the sequence (as if it were one long movie), and scene selection submenus.

I can add chapter marks to a single movie.
I can play a sequence of individual movies within a music compilation.
But I can't put chapter marks in movies within a music compilation, right? (Or can I?)

Is the solution to create one long movie from the individual movies using MS?
I'd like to work with separate pieces if possible.

Any guidance is appreciated!

Comments

bStro wrote on 9/22/2004, 7:19 AM
But I can't put chapter marks in movies within a music compilation, right? (Or can I?)

As far as I can tell, each segment of a music compilation counts as a "chapter"...so, no, you can't put chapter markers in movies within a music compilation. Also, I believe all your videos have to use the same bitrate, though maybe that's not a problem.

Is the solution to create one long movie from the individual movies using MS?

I believe so. Though if they're MPEGs, you'll probably want to use some kind of MPEG joiner / editor rarther than Movie Studio. Like Vegas, MS would re-render the whole thing. This takes a long time and will reduce the quality of your files. If you haven't got an MPEG editor, try one of the Womble products or TMPGEnc MPEG Editor.

BTW, while DVDA is on version 2.0, I think(?) DVDA Studio is on version 1.0 (or doesn't have a version number). Might want to edit that part of your post as some might be confused by it.

Rob
GTakacs wrote on 9/22/2004, 7:28 AM
You will have to set the end action of the first movie stream to play the second stream and the end action of the second one to play the third one, etc. These movies will be separate titles with their own internal chapter numbers, but it will get what you want acomplished, however I don't think you can go back from one title to the previous one using the remote you can only go forward. You can still go back chapters within the same title though.

Other than that, your only option is to have the mpeg sterams either re-rendered as one or use something like womble to merge them outside of DVDA.

If I were you, I would re-render the whole movie as one stream if you still have the original media and veggie files.
johnmeyer wrote on 9/22/2004, 9:19 AM
I don't think you can go back from one title to the previous one using the remote you can only go forward. You can still go back chapters within the same title though.

I think this depends on your player. Some won't even go forward when the disc has been created with the movies in separate titlesets (which is what you do when you put all the MPEG files into a Menu project). Then again, other players will go back and forth. However, no player that I know of will be able to fast forward (or reverse) through the title boundaries.

The MPEG joining is the ultimate way to go, but requires a lot more time and access to another piece of software.

Click on the link at the top of this page (Support) and drop a suggestion in the suggestion box, asking Sony to add the ability to combine multiple MPEGs into one project, allowing you to put chapter stops withing the individual MPEG files.
bStro wrote on 9/22/2004, 10:57 AM
He's using DVD Architect Studio, the one that comes with Vegas Movie Studio. DVDA Studio doesn't have end actions.

Rob
dand9959 wrote on 9/22/2004, 12:34 PM
Wow, seems like a glaring oversight in "normal" functionality. Or maybe its just that I'm used to being able to do that in other authoring apps.

The nature of the types of videos I build lends itself extremely well to creating each chapter as a separate project in MS4, rendering to MPEG, and then assembling them in sequence in the authoring app with each marked as a chapter. Since I usually tweak individual chapters from time to time, this also keeps me from re-rendering the entire dang movie.

As you suggest, I guess I'll use one of the other apps to joing the mpegs together as a separate step in the process.
johnmeyer wrote on 9/22/2004, 2:16 PM
Wow, seems like a glaring oversight in "normal" functionality.

Couldn't agree more. We're taught in programming and in virtually every other endeavor to break the problem down into smaller pieces, and then build those pieces into a larger whole. DVDA, even with the significant improvements in 2.0 and with the Music Compilation feature, still doesn't let you do this. The obvious workflow for many projects -- including yours -- is to create separate MPEGs for each part of the project, and then assemble these in the authoring program. Obviously, DVDA can accept the multiple MPEG files, but what it can't do is let you create a seemless project, all in one titleset, with chapter stops wherever you want. The Music Compilation trick works up to a point, but you can't insert any chapter stops within the compilation.