Perhaps I wasn't clear enough... I want to be able to define the in/out points for videos *in a compilation*. As far as I can tell, I can't get the usual timeline functionality to work while working with videos in a compilation...

Am I doing something wrong?

Steve

Every title in a project has only one beginning and one end. When you create a compilation, you are creating a single title with each item in that compilation acting as one chapter. As such, you don't get to change the In and out points of individual items in a compilation. That would make DVDA and editor, and DVDA is not an editor. ;)

Your best options are;

A) Use a playlist instead of a video compilation. Pro: You will be able to change the In and Out points of each video since each one will then be a full-fledged title. Those titles will be played in the order you set up in the Playlist. Con: Since each item will be a full-fledged title, the Next Chapter and Previous Chapter buttons (on a player remote) may not behave the way you want it. Also, most players will pause slightly switching from one title to another.

B) Edit them somewhere else. If they are MPEG2, it shouldn't be hard to find an editor that can do smart rendering. I use the products from Womble. And even Vegas Pro 8 (and 9) will smart render MPEG2 if your output uses the exact same settings as your input. If your files are not MPEG2, then it doesn't really matter what you use since DVDA would have to re-encode them anyhow.

Rob

They're actually already in AVC blu-ray format at 17Mbps, and DVDA reports it will not need to reencode.

It's all right, I will probably just keep going as is then and not worry about it. I suppose it isn't the end of the world; this isn't really a professional production or anything. But still, it's great to get a good answer. Thanks very much!

Steve

bStro:
I think you describe exactly the scenario I'm currently working with.
I'm making a DVD of a concert that we recorded (with 2 cameras & multiple mics plus a stand-alone digital audio recorder) in three separate "acts", which I then edited and rendered as separate mpg files.
In DVDA, I have the files set up in order in the playlist window, so that the entire concert plays continuously if you let it play through.
I also have a Scene Selection menu for each individual act. I created buttons in the Main Menu for the beginning point of each act, and also for each of the individual Scene Selection menus.
Everything works just the way I want, except that when playing the DVD, if I use the "PREV" button during the FIRST selection of act2 or act3, it jumps to the first scene in that same act. I'd love to be able to make it jump to the LAST scene in the PREVIOUS act -- but that doesn't seem possible.
I can live with this minor inconvenience, and I'm quite sure that my clients, can, too -- you just have to jump out to a menu, to get to where you wanted to go.
But I'm curious -- is there ANY way, in DVDA, to set up all the behavior I've described, PLUS make the PREV button jump to the last scene in the previous act if you press it during the first scene in an act?
I think there probably isn't -- except by rendering all 3 acts as one single mpg (which is the way I usually work, but this particular project had some serious audio-video synching-issues in each act [because the best audio was on the stand-alone recorder] that made it much "safer" to render the 3 synched/edited acts separately).

Do you need chapter points within any of those acts? If not, go with the music / video compilation method I described above. It creates a single title with each act as a chapter.

Otherwise, the most reliable solution is to use a single file that contains all three acts. There are programs out there that will merge MPEG2 files without having to re-render everything. Womble, VideoRedo, and (I believe) TMPGEnc come to mind. Recent versions of Vegas can do it, too, but your outputs settings (including average and max bitrate) have to be the same as the input.

Rob