Menus and Chapter Markers

MHONDO wrote on 7/19/2006, 3:28 PM

I am new to the whole digital video scene and I apologize for the length of this posting, but I wanted to give enough information so that my question could be fully understood.. I recently bought a Sony DCR-DVD405 camcorder and also the Sony Vegas Studio with the DVD Architect Studio. I’m trying to convert home videos I have on 8mm tapes to DVD (that’s not the reason I bought the DVD405, but I thought it would be something I could use it for). I first thought I could capture the video with Vegas using the DVD405 for pass through since it has an AV in and USB out but I couldn’t get Vegas to recognize the DVD405. So I just recorded onto a mini DVD in the DVD405. That went fine, I was able to bring the video into Vegas, it all came in as 1 clip, so I had to go through and split it at the beginning of each new scene and I added a marker at each new scene. It was a little tedious but not bad once I got the hang of it. I ran the “Make Movie” wizard and saved it to my hard disk. I opened it up in DVD Architect and was able to make a menu and added a scene select menu (all the chapter markers came through fine). At this point I’m having trouble organizing scenes into specific menus. This is what I want to do: the video contains many different types of scenes such as Holidays, Vacations, School Concerts, etc. and the scenes run chronologically. First, a Holiday, then a Vacation, another Holiday, Concert, Vacation, Holiday, Concert, and so on. With the scene select menu I can select a scene and the video plays from that point to the end. What I want is for it to go back to a menu once that scene is finished. I want to set up a menu for say, just concerts which are locates at Chapter markers 3, 7, and 12. I tried to make a button start at chapter 3, then return to menu, but it continued to play into Chapter 4, 5, 6, etc. Can I make it so just one chapter plays and then it returns to the menu and/or make it skip chapters and play Chapters 3 then go to 7 then to 12 and then back to a menu. Can I make this happen just with chapter markers or do I need to make each scene into its own clip and add it to DVD Architect? I’m guessing there’s an easy way to do this but I haven’t been able to find it through the manual, the helps, and the tutorials. Thanks for any help you can give.

Comments

DrLumen wrote on 7/19/2006, 5:52 PM

I have DVDA and not DVDA Studio but I'll give it a shot...

If you want to be able to return after each scene (clip) it is better to have the individual clips. If you want to pre-arrange your clips by, for example holiday, and want all holiday clips to play then return to the menu, you can render that sequence as a clip in Vegas and then bring it into DVDA as a scene.

Another way is to bring all the various clips in and create a playlist - if DVDA Studio has that option. That will allow you to play through all in the playlist or create a scene button for each particular clip.

Hope this helps.

elvindeath wrote on 7/20/2006, 7:04 AM

I would try playlists to do what you're talking about. Barring that, I would actually split the single clip and rearrange so that the related scenes are in sequential order (Christmas clips are Ch 4,5,6 etc) - and then you place a return after the sequence.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/20/2006, 9:00 AM

I just thought I would mention that you are not getting the best quality by recording to a DVD camera and then copying to your PC. You are highly compressing the video with the camera and then recompressing it to create the second DVD. This is not good. You should really invest in a DV AVI capture device like the ADS Pyro A/V Link which will allow you to capture your video in higher quality DV instead of lower quality MPEG.

Also if you bought this camera with the intention of editing your footage you really bought the wrong camera. DVD cameras are for people who just want to shoot and view (not edit). If you want to edit, seriously consider getting a miniDV camera. The quality of your end result DVD’s will be much higher.

As for organizing your DVD:

You really have to think about how the DVD will be watched and then render the number of clips you think you’ll need from VMS accordingly. Since you’ve already render this as one big video, you can drop that video into DVD Architect Studio multiple times. Each time it will make a button. You can edit each button (double-click on it) and change it’s yellow IN and OUT markers to only play one chapter. You will then have the ability to just play one event (Vacation, Holiday, Concert, etc.) and return to the menu.

Now that you have each event as a button, you can make playlists by assembling the various media from the buttons. In this way you can make a button that plays only the vacation videos one after the other. The only difficulty is that when you select media for the Playlist, it only shows the media name and it your case ALL of the media has the same name because it’s only one movie. The workaround is to Select All when creating the Playlist. Then edit the Playlist. When you edit, it will let you see the video for each item in the Playlist by double-clicking on them and then you can just right-click and delete the ones that shouldn’t be in the list.

Drop the main video into the menu one last time to make a Play All button. I would also add a submenu called Vacation and cut & paste all of the vacation buttons onto that menu. Do the same for Concerts and Holidays. Something like:

Main Menu

+ Play All

+ Vacations

  + Vacation Menu

    + Play All (Playlist = Vacation 1 + Vacation 2)

    + Vacation 1 (just Chapter 1)

    + Vacation 2 (just Chapter 4)

+ Holidays

  + Holiday Menu

    + Play All (Playlist = Holiday 1 + Holiday 2)

    + Holiday 1 (just Chapter 2)

    + Holiday 2 (just Chapter 5)

+ Concerts

  + Concert Menu

    + Play All (Playlist = Concert 1 + Concert 2)

    + Concert 1 (just Chapter 3)

    + Concert 2 (just Chapter 6)

Does this make sense?

~jr

MHONDO wrote on 7/20/2006, 12:02 PM

Thank you all for your help. I now have a good idea of what I need to do to achieve the final product I was looking for. Thanks again.

Mark

darrenanderson wrote on 7/21/2006, 3:47 AM

I had the same issue and was able to easily get around it. In a nutshell you are going to add the same video file to the same project multiple times and rename each one to a unique name. You will then set the in and out points for each one. The amount of space it will take is the same. I even add the whole video file to watch the whole movie as well (still the same amount of space).

1) Add your video file and add a button to watch the whole movie (if this is something you want as an option)
2) Add the same video file again (really)
3) Right click on the file to rename it to something that makes sense for that selection. For example "Thanksgiving 2005"
4) Set the in and out points for the section of video you want to play when they click on a button (e.g., Thanksgiving 2005 section).

Repeat steps 2-4 for each section of the video you want to create a button for.

Let me know if you have any questions.

MHONDO wrote on 7/21/2006, 11:46 AM

Thank you for your reply. I've only had a chance to play with it a little bit, but it seems your method of adding the media multiple times and setting the IN and OUT positions is exactly what I needed. Thanks Again