Losing My Menu

Dave484 wrote on 11/1/2006, 9:10 AM
Hello All,

When playing my DVD movie on the computer, it skips the movie menus and begins playing the movie. However the same DVD plays perfectly, including all menus on a DVD player.

Another odd thing. If I use Nero to copy the DVD movie to another disk, that new copy will now skip the menus when playing on the home DVD player. This is a problem for me because sometimes, months or years later, I want to copy one of my movies. Popping the original DVD into the computer and copying the disk with Nero was the easy solution. But that no longer works since I’ve started using DVD Architect.

I use Vegas 7.0b to render the 1 hour movie to ac3 sound, and video to MPG2 / DVD Architect NTSC video Stream. Then in DVDA 4a I make my menus with scene selections and burn the disk. DVDA will burn as many copies as I want and they all play perfectly on the home DVD players, but not on my computer. In fact, it’s the same computer that I used to burn the DVD in the first place. I’ve used different programs to view the DVD movie on the computer, with the same results... no menu.

I’d appreciate any ideas you might have.

Dave

Comments

ScottW wrote on 11/1/2006, 11:58 AM
Not opening with the menu seems to be a common problem with WinDVD, possibly others. It's certainly not a function of the authoring software since I have it happen with both DVDA and DLP created stuff (or at least I don't think it's a function of the authoring software). I think part of the problem may be related to the software players "remembering" more across invocations - if WinDVD starts and thinks it is being asked to play something it was previously playing, it tries to pick up where it left off. What I usually end up doing is clicking on the chapter selection button and forcing it to go to the root menu.

Re Nero - are you copying the entire disk or just a portion of it? What happens if you copy the folders off the DVD back to your harddrive and you burn with DVDA? If that works, I'd say something is up with Nero and it's screwing with something.

--Scott
Dave484 wrote on 11/1/2006, 8:05 PM
When using Nero I'm trying to copy the entire DVD, not just a portion of it. As you suggested, I copied the folders from the DVD to my hard drive and then used DVDA to burn a copy. Put it in the home DVD player, the movie started playing without menus. Just like Nero, it skipped the menus and went directly to playing the movie.

About 4 years ago, I burned a home movie using Pinnacle Studio software. It had a menu with chapters. I pulled that old movie off the shelf and put it into the computer. Up came the menu and the dvd functioned as it should. Likewise, when I copy that dvd with Nero, everything transfered correctly, menu function and all. This copy worked on the computer and on the home dvd player.

I've used Nero Showtime and Medial Player Classic software to view a dvd movie on the computer. Anything burned with DVDA does not show menus. Disks burned with other authoring software play menus just fine using Showtime and Medial Player Classic.

This really has me curious.

Thanks

Dave