Resizing scene selection menu

bbq wiz wrote on 2/14/2006, 7:57 PM

Hello

My first post here. I've been using Vegas for several months and will be using it to create DVD's for my sons High School wrestling team.

Each wrestler will get two DVD's. One is a highlight DVD with wrestling themes I have storybooked out during the year. The 2nd DVD will be the wrestling matches for each wrestler and I'll have 30 of these unique DVD's. I have all of the Video clips tagged and loaded into veg files for each wrestler.

Here is my question. I have added markers to each event with Ultimate S. When I bring this into DVDA I am adding these in as a scene selection menu. However the default video "boxes" when 6 is selected is small and does not use all of the real estate it could take.

How can I resize these boxes, save it and have it create the multiple scene selection menu's using these resized "boxes". I can resize one menu, but how do I save this?

Thanks in advance.

Steve

Comments

GaryKleiner wrote on 2/14/2006, 8:59 PM

Set up your menu as you want, then go to File> Export Menu as Theme.
This setup will now show up in your themes tab, which you can apply when needed.

Gary

rs170a wrote on 2/14/2006, 9:13 PM

Thanks for the tip Gary. I didn't know that.

Mike

bbq wiz wrote on 2/15/2006, 4:18 PM

Thanks Gary

Another question on the same topic.

I have marker names for each event that indicates what wrestling match the clip is for.
I don't seem to be able to bring in these marker names when I setup the selection menu. Is there a menu item I need to edit to be able to do this?

Steve

rs170a wrote on 2/15/2006, 4:56 PM

I've never used Ultimate S but, generally speaking, marker names are not the same thing as clip/event names. This will have to be done the old fashioned way (i.e. renaming each one).

Mike

bbq wiz wrote on 2/15/2006, 5:36 PM

Let me say this differently

I have markers at each event. The events show the file name, as I have this turned on for my view. When I bring the file into DVDA, each marker creates a menu scene (if I select 6 I get six boxes with my video clips in it. Some of our wrestlers have 40-50 clips so I have quite a few menus with 6 video boxes in them.

I would like to label some of these clips and my question is is there a way to have these brought in automatically as the clip do when I create a selection menu?

Gary- how do I bring up the scene selection menu to pre-set the size of the video "boxes". It appears I don't have an option to bring this up until I have added a video project and then select that video file. At this point I can create a selection menu.
Are you suggesting I create a project with the correct size boxes, and then when I save it as a template, the template does not include the video file? I tried this, but when I bring the template up I get broken links and don't appear to be able add my file and have it fit into this template.

Steve

bbq wiz wrote on 2/15/2006, 6:51 PM

Ok

There is a way to make this work. I was able to select each menu and copy the theme over it and it would get modified.

But is there a way to create a theme that has the right size boxes and will create every menu automatically with this revised size when I create a selection menu?

B.Verlik wrote on 2/15/2006, 8:03 PM

The way I do it, and it looks different each time (by choice), is when the scene selection boxes appear, center them as much as possible, then starting at the upper left side, I left click and drag the mouse icon across all the boxes. This will engulf them all. Then you can resized all of them evenly, at the same time (lettering and all). You can delete either titles or the pictures first, or you can drag the titles over each picture before resizing, to keep the sizes uniform. (I like new designs with each DVD I make, so having a preset to use every single time I make a DVD, gets old for me.) This is a quick way to resize all the windows in each 'Scene Selection' menu. (you may have to line things up, before resizing, depending on how many windows there are.)
If you wanted, you could just use the Titles alone, and have as many as you can navigate through on one page. But my experience doing things this way, is that sometimes you have difficulty getting to one or two titles in the list if many are included. So, if you try this, you may want to use a DVD-RW to make sure the Scene selection menu will work properly. Usually, if it works in DVD-A, it will work. But be sure you can actually access each title, before assuming.
Make sure the 'Title' perimeters don't overlap. I've had as many as 20 titles on 1 page before, but the titles were so large, it caused the icon to jump over certain titles and you'd have to access that skipped title, coming from a different approach.
I believe you can 'type in' the number of Scenes you'd like for the menu. If you just used simple numbers for titles, you could probably get 50 if you wanted. Yes, you can change the names of the chapters to just be an arrow or comma if you wanted, so you can make the titles to each scene any way you'd like. You can use Pictures and Titles or just Pics or just Titles.
I hope this helps. I know it's not like just typing in the size you want and presto. This will give you the option to experiment a little.