I don't think that's gonna work. DVDA will multiplex the audio and video together into a single file. Since the audio is different every time it's going to have a copy of the video for each different audio clip.

I just looked & it doesn't even look like you can use media on the left for backgrounds anyway.

Generally speaking, if you want to use the same video with different audio clips, you would just add more audio tracks to the video. Then create buttons that link to that video but switch the audio track. Granted, the video will be limited to eight audio tracks, so you'll still need to add the video a bunch of times (each with multiple audio tracks), and DVDA will add a title for each one. But that at least cuts the number of copies needed.

Rob

thats what I wanted to try when I found out you can't use a vid on the left for a menu.

thanks for your replies. Adding multiple audio tracks to the video clips would not work first because I am doing it already (each vide clips needs 3 audio tracks), second because I would have too many audio tracks anyway. Is this a DVD Architect limitation, or is it just the way DVD authoring works in general?

Pretty much the way DVDs are structured.

Hi,

@Salsalsgood:
you were talking about "a few hundred" menus. I'd say that you'll have problems with that many menus as the space for menus on a DVDVideo is rather limited. All menus on a DVDVideo end up in files which are named VTS_xx_0.VOB (xx can be anything from 01 up to 99). There's only one such _0.VOB file allowed per VTS (Video Title Set) and additionally a VOB cannot be larger than 1GB due to the DVD specifications. Hence you would need to add a new VTS each time the current menus of a VTS are getting larger than 1GB in total. However, as far as I know DVDArchitect does not allow you to create additional VTSs so you're limited to 1GB for all your menus.

Regarding the necessity to have copies of the same video over and over again: That's how DVDs work. Video and Audio cannot be looked at separately. In fact all audio tracks that are meant to be played back along with a certain video clip will be multiplexed with the video. There's no way in having audio separated from video.

Cheers

darkframe

Can't a person add diffent audio tracks as different laguages? That would minimize the space needed for hte video multple times but would make the menus not as straight forward.

an audio track can be whatever you want, languages, beeps, etc.

Once you add anything to an instance of a video, regardless of where or how that video is used, it MUST be added to the disc as a separate VOB, and thus the data on the disc grows tremendously.

This is true for subpictures as well.

This is the way DVDs work and is NOT a limitation or bug or problem in DVDA.

Putting ALL the audio tracks into the video, and then using that "entity" via playlists or just doing a copy/paste will let you avoid duplicating the video, although once you duplicate eight audio tracks, even with AC3, you'll not be saving that much space compared to duplicating the video and just a single audio track.