"Play All" menu button

DGrob wrote on 12/19/2004, 7:53 AM

On some of the VASST training DVDs there is a "Play All" menu button as a first choice, followed by individual buttons for playing the chapters. I've searched the knowledge base and seen the posts that will allow end actions to link to sequential chapters. How does this translate into its own menu option?
TIA, Darryl

Comments

ScottW wrote on 12/19/2004, 8:10 AM

If you just drag the movie onto the menu, then right click on it and select "insert scene selection..." you'll get a chapter selection menu created for you (assuming you put chapter marks in your movie). Since the chapters aren't broken up into individual movies, there's no end actions needed.

If you just want to play a single specific chapter and then have it return to the menu, more work will be needed - one method is to drag the movie onto the menu as meny times as there are going to be chapters, then for each individual movie, set the in/out points as needed.

--Scott

DGrob wrote on 12/19/2004, 2:15 PM

Thanks for the insight, Scott. Darryl

SR1200 wrote on 12/28/2004, 8:48 AM

I've been playing around with getting a scene selection / play all thing going...
Only problem I have is that every time you put a scene selection in, it wants to add the clip over and over making the size of the project incredibly huge.

For Example... as a test i used a 38 mB video and placed in 4 chapter points.

I drag the media onto the the size of the project goes to 38 mB as expected... (plus the size of the menu) when I use the chapter selection, the size of the project goes to
186.1 mB!!!!

Ok, now since the first chapter can be essentially used as a "Play All" I can get rid of the original source and just leave the Scene Selection menu up. This knocks the file size back to 149.9mB....

Is there a way that the program can use a single media clip instead of having to re-render the same clip over and over again??

Thanks much! :)

ScottW wrote on 12/28/2004, 8:52 AM

With DVDA 2.0 it will only pull the movie in once. With DVDA 1.0 you'll get the behaviour you are seeing - the only option that I'm aware of with 1.0 is to break the movie chapters up into individual files - you'll end up with effectively 2 copies of the movie - one for the "play all" and a second with the individual chapters.

SR1200 wrote on 12/28/2004, 9:39 AM

2.0 it is then.... this is drivin me up the wall!!! ;) thanks much!

texan wrote on 1/30/2005, 7:16 AM

New to DVD Arch and it appears that this question continues to come up in this forum. Plus, I am having the same issue. (one button that will play 'all' and seperate buttons that will play each chapter seperately - all on the same page) Anyone aware of Sony's plans to provide an upgrade or fix for this particular issue? And, if this is an "easy" thing for DVD Arch to perform, why are so many people missing it? Or, perhaps Sony should either have a list of "things this program cannot do" or a more comprehensive explanation of "how" to best do this without sacrificing video qualtiy.

In the meantime - can anyone suggest a software program that is "best" at doing the above?

ScottW wrote on 1/30/2005, 8:03 AM

DVDA does have an easy way to create a scene selection page if you have chapter marks in your movie; you right click on the movie and select "insert scene selection menu," specify how many scenes on each page and poof, it's done. This is probably 95% of what people want - it creates exactly what you see in Hollywood movie DVDs.

If you want to have a "Play All" and then a scene selection where it returns to the menu after that chapter plays, you can do this in DVDA - yes, it's a little harder because the software doesn't do it all for you, but it is certainly possible to do.

1) Drag your movie onto the menu. This is your "Play All"
2) Drag your movie onto the menu again; navigate into the new instance of the movie and set the In/Out points for that chapter on the timeline. Repeat for each chapter.

With DVDA 2.0 the movie will only be placed on the DVD once (unless you do something different with one of the other instances such as an additional audio track - that will force DVDA to put an additional copy of the movie on the DVD).

So, the program can do this, you just have to learn how to author your DVD; it's called PWTFS (play with the flippin' software).

I remain unconvinced that additional documentation would solve the types of problems people seem to have with authoring. Based on many posts in this forum, IMO, no one is reading the documentation that currently exists.

There is no single authoring package that I've seen that does everything that everyone wants. There's always a trade-off - if you want a point and click WYSIWYG, then you end up sacrificing certain functionality that doesn't lend itself to point and click, or the WYSIWYG ends up being incredibly complicated (MS Word is possibly a good example). If you expose low level functionality (like Scenarist and DVD Lab do) then people complain because of the learning curve.

Actually there is probably one thing that would really help - if DVDA supported scripting. There's an incredible number of scripts available for Vegas that take some of the more complex operations and reduce them to a single click - if DVDA supported scripting then the user community could extend DVDA functionality.

--Scott