Linking to videos in a DVDA Compilation

Jillian wrote on 2/17/2013, 1:32 PM
Say I have several videos A,B,C,D,E etc. I render them separately so they will fit on a DVD.

I want to play them together, ABCDE, and also access them one by one on a "Chapters" menu.

I can do this with a Playlist, but when played together, each video "freezes" for a second before the next one begins, and you can't freely navigate back and forth through the various videos. On the other hand, I have no problem linking to each video separately.

When I put the videos together in a compilation they play one after the other beautifully, and you can navigate (fast forward, jump, etc.) through the entire compilation, but I can't figure out how to link to the individual videos without adding them to the DVD a second time, which means I run out of space.

Am I missing something simple, or is it not possible to link into a compilation?

I realize I can achieve the same thing by adding the videos to a project and re-rendering with markers, but I'm trying to cut out a rendering step and also learn how to use compilations.

Thanks for any help.

Comments

Former user wrote on 2/17/2013, 1:49 PM
If you import the same video with the same attributes more than once in DVD, it will actually only print the video once. The other "links" will be pointers to the same video.

Dave T2
Jillian wrote on 2/19/2013, 5:21 PM
Hi Dave,

Thanks for the reply.

It appears that when you add video to a compilation, DVDA sees the compilation as a stand-alone unit and does not recognize that it might be video you've used before. Having a video in a compilation and listed separately so I can link to it individually counts as two separate videos.

Since I haven't figured any way to actually link to something inside the compilation, it appears what I want to do is not possible and I'll have to render everything together as a single file with markers between the sections.

TOG62 wrote on 2/20/2013, 2:41 AM
If you render as a single item you can then import into DVDA once for each clip and once more for a 'Play All' function. you them create a button for each clip and one more for Play All and set the in and out point for each button to correspond with the original clips.

As Dave has said, this method does not take up extra space on the disc.
Chienworks wrote on 2/20/2013, 5:54 AM
To address a slightly different point, i always add two seconds of blank-silence to the end of my rendered files. Generally i do this because some players seem to inexplicably have trouble playing the last second and either hang or skip it. In your case i would at least mean that the part that freezes would be black and silent, which wouldn't be as noticeable.