Bob is right about having the whole set of songs be a single clip with chapter marks. It avoids a ton of problems.

The one odd thing i notice is that you have Page 2 be a submenu of Page 1, and Page 3 is a submenu of page 2. Is there any reason you did it this way rather than having Pages 1, 2, & 3 all be submenues of Main? It almost looks like you might have the end action of song 5 linking to Page 3 rather than Page 2.

Actually, DVDA can have conditional end actions - this is possible because DVDA keeps track of things based on instance - if you have more than one instance of the same object in the project, you can modify the behavior of each instance. So....

If you want to have a "Play All" function as well as individual selections, you need to include 2 copies of the clips.

You'll need 2 menus that are accessed off the main menu Yourfirst selection menu and a "hidden" play all menu.

Drag all of your clips into the "Play All" menu. Then in the tree view, rename each clip the clip name + "PA" (for PLAY ALL - it can be anything you want, but you need to rename them to keep the names unique from the clip names on your selection menu).

Delete the background of the play all menu, change the button style of each clip to Text Only and delete the text in the buttons. Set the timeout on the menu to be zero (DVDA will change that to a value near zero) and set the end action to link to the first clip you want to play. Also set the selected and active color set to transparant (none).

Then, navigate into the first clip via the Play All menu and set the end action on the clip to play the next clip in the sequence (make sure you select the clip with "PA" on the end). Move back up to the "Play All" menu, navigate into the next clip, set the end action, repeat for each additional clip. Set the end action on the LAST CLIP to return you your main menu, otherwise you'll end up with the default action of returning to the most recent menu which will cause you to loop endlessly on your "Play All" sequence.

Now, navigate into your first scene selection menu and drag in as many clips as are on this menu again. This time you do not change the end actions on any of the clips - just create all of your scene selection menus as needed.

It's not strictly necessary to rename the play all clips if you follow this flow, but if you have to go back later to modify things it makes it MUCH easier to figure out which clip is which.

That's it.

DVDA 2.0 is smart enough that each clip will only be included on the DVD a single time, and it also keeps track of each clip instance so it can easily determine conditional actions based on the clip instance.

<edit> another variation on this is to skip the creation of the "Play All" menu and just insert the media directly into the project. I've updated the little tutorial I created to reflect this other approach as it's actually easier.

<yet another edit> Ooops. There appears to be a bug in DVDA, and using the second approach caused it to bring the media into the DVD twice (not a good thing), and the title sets got ordered differently for some reason. I'll put the old tutorial back.

---Scott

Wow,
Scott that's pretty amazing. I seem to recall the designers and many others saying this couldn't be done in DVDA! It sure doesn't sound like an intended design feature.
From what you're saying then I should be able to create two instances of the one clip with different in/out points as well.
Bob.

Scott, that's great news! Thanks for sharing that with us.

Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, I must admit that I understand what you've said in theory, but I'm not totally grasping the mechanics of applying this.

Perhaps this is asking too much, but would you, or some one who fully understands, be willing to create a step-by-step tutorial with screen captures to illustrate what's being done?

Thanks again!

This is how I set up my play alls.

Another nice thing is that you can make markers on one instance of the clip, save them and then recall them for all of the rest of the clips in the project. This works good for me since I always forget to make the appropriate chapter markers in Vegas.

Initially I had to lay it out that way due to the fact that each video was rendered seperately and different times. I also figured it would be just as easy to use end actions to just link to the next video. I've checked and double checked each end action and they all point to the correct video.

I've tried adjusting the OBJECT ORDER, PAGE ORDER, but that didn't work either....

It seemed to be the logical way to lay it out... based on other menu based DVD's that I previewed....

I think I'm grasping the concept... not completely clear though.... so I would need to have the video elements on the DVD twice? taking up twice the space? As it is now I have all the elements at 4.5 gig and the mpg2 renders I've done are pretty high quality and look as good as they're gonna get.

So to make sure I understand you're theory correctly, I would create my MAIN page, with the PLAY ALL link (as I do now) and that would link to the first video, and the next video would follow and so forth and so forth? Then in another menu I will have the scene selections? grr.... ok now im brain farting and i'm a little confused.... a healthy tutorial would be nice..... :-(

so much for my deadline..... . but thank you guys for all the suggestions....

(at your mercy.....)

http://www.dvd-reflections.com/DVDA-Tutorial/step1

Sorry the images are so large - it was a quicky and I wanted to make sure everything could be seen.

Ok after tweaking my OBJECT order I got them all to play in order correctly (or at least they are so far... im watching the render I did before i passed out at 2:30....) I'm on song #7 and so far the play all is working ok..... BUT

when i skip or (next) the order is still messed up after song #5, it goes to song #11 when 5 is skipped.... I dont know what's causing that... all end actions are pointing to where they need to be..... AAGGHHH!!!!

Here's a step by step. As I mentioned, DVDA 2.0 is smart enough that the actual clip is only put on the DVD a single time, even though you may have multiple instances of on object that points at the same clip in your project - assuming you don't do something like change the audio source file with different instances (which you don't seem to be doing, so don't worry about it).

http://www.dvd-reflections.com/DVDA-Tutorial/step1

Bob, it's my belief that this is intended, though possibly not as well documented as it could be behavior.

From an object oriented programming point of view, this is exactly what you get by default for behavior. You create instances of an object, each instance is a unique representation of the object and has attributes that it inherits from the parent object, but also has attributes that can be modified.

The confusion comes when you try to think of the movie clip as the object. It's not. The object has the ability to point at the movie clip, and when you create an instance of the object (by dragging the clip onto the menu), the attribute of the instance is modified to cause that instance to point at a specific clip.

Same thing with end actions - each instance has its own unique end actions that it initially inherits from the object, but that you later modify.

Hope this helps.
--Scott

I've had the same experience with wierd clip order. Let's say I have a menu of five clips, and their titles are clip01 - clip05. I make it so that their end action always goes back to the clip menu.

With this layout, human intuition would follow that while clip01 is playing, pressing skip fwd would either send me back to the main menu, or send me to clip02.

In realization of this DVD, the skip fwd and reverse buttons advance a 'title', and the 'titles' on the DVD seem to be stored in some kind of random order. clip01 then clip03, clip04, clip02, then clip05.

Why is that, and what is DVDA's process for determining the on-disc order of files?

This really isn't the same issue being discussed, but DVDA puts each movie in its own title set, and the title sets appear to be created in the order that the movies are first brought into the project.

So if you brought in clip1, clip3, clip2 then that's the order you would see them in when skipping from one title set to the next. I'm not aware of any way to change this order after the fact.

<edit> on re-reading I see that the ordering thing may be part of the problem; anyway, the solution is to bring the first instance of the media into the project in the order you want things to play when skipping by title set.

<Another edit> There's some sort of strangeness going on here that's I've not fully figured out.

--Scott

Hi,

It seems that the problem is in the end-action area.
It will be helpfull if you expand the end-action (Above the project window, the left most button - toggle Display of End Action) and post the project window with the end-action.

BTW, I don't think that Object order has anything to do with play order. It specify the drawing of object on the page, and also the default button of the page.

Udi

I too, have noticed that the order seems to be the same as the order you bring in media. I've tried to change it, with no luck, and ended up having to delete the media and re-importing it.
ScottW, I saw your tutorial and this was the first time I got to see what the DVD-A 2.0 layout looks like. (still on DVD-A 1.0) It looks considerably different. I don't suppose you know if your tutorial works with DVD-A 1.0, or are there special features on 2.0, that are required? This sub-menu (play one clip out of many) is something I'd like to know, but is something that I would only use once in a while. Still, I'd like to be able to do it.

DVDA 1.0 doesn't have the ability to set end actions, which is something required to do this. In addition, DVDA 1.0 will copy the media to the DVD as many times as it appears in the project (which can be an issue with size sometimes).

The GUI for DVDA 2.0 was substantially re-worked in order to accomodate the new features that were added.

Thanks for the quick reply. I had the feeling it wouldn't work for me. I'm going to have to upgrade. It's getting to the point where I don't know what people are talking about sometimes and it's because I don't have that feature.

Scott.... let me buy you a beer!!! whoooo major big help buddy.
Took be about an hour and a half to retweak it but it looks much better and it appears that everything is going to work.

U da man, if you ever come to Hawaii i owe u......

I checked the tutorial you did...

Brilliant!

Thank you!!!

Just passing along something I noticed when I ripped a commercial DVD (slap on wrist OK!).
All the menu backgrounds end up as one continuous file. Obviously the control logic sets in and out points. I'd guess much the same thing happens with the actual clips. So If you have clips A, B and C but bring them into the project as A,C,B they get assembled in that order. Now all that's fine but if you're using end actions to link them that too should be fine until the viewer starts fiddling with the remote. The player blindly plays along thru the file ignoring the end action so the thing plays out A,C,B.

I only bring this up becuase my new DVD player does some really odd things.
When you're navigating and hit a scene selection button it looks like it rewinds at hyperspeed back to the main menu and then jumps into the clip at the selected point.
Bob.

Hey Scott,
ok i followed your directions pretty much to the "T" and everything works perfect... EXCEPT.... when I'm watching the DVD as a "play all" and i try and skip to the next video, it has each video twice..... i will post an update on the structure here....

http://www.overdrivelive.net/dvdhelp/

I don't get it.... i'm totally stressing out now.... im about to get rid of the damn video selection menu.....

HELP!!!