Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 4/20/2010, 5:56 AM
If you're asking how does one determine what the first thing is that plays when their DVD first starts loading -- that's determined by the Set DVD Start indicator. That's the purple button with the white star on it at the top of the Project Overview windows.

Whatever menu or video clip has that star on it is the first clip or menu that will play when the DVD starts up in a DVD player.

This is separate from the root directory. The root directory is at the very top of your DVD's structure, and it can be used to place elements that aren't necessarily part of your DVD's structure. This would include things like a PDF or a ReadMe file that don't play on a DVD player but which can be accessed when the disc is placed in a computer's drive.

There's much more detail on these tools in my book on Amazon, if you're interested.
JRK1 wrote on 4/20/2010, 6:18 AM
No, I'm referring to what happens when either of the two menu buttons are pressed when a video is playing. There's the regular menu button, and the root menu (or Title menu?) button. One would normally take you to the last menu displayed (and that action is modifiable in DVDA); the other takes you to the root menu. But, I don't see how one specifies which menu in your project is the root menu.
Steve Grisetti wrote on 4/20/2010, 8:30 AM
Isn't that set up in your Remote Buttons properties? (You can customize how your remote buttons behave for the entire disc or for each individual menu page or clip.)
JRK1 wrote on 4/20/2010, 9:02 AM
Nope. The only option for the Top Menu button is whether it's enabled or not - you can't specify what it does like you can with the regular Menu button.
JRK1 wrote on 4/20/2010, 9:03 AM
From searching on the web, it looks like others have run into the same issue, without ever finding a solution. :-( It's looking like the only answer is to just disable the top menu button. Not good, but better than having the top menu button taking you to a completely unrelated menu.
bStro wrote on 4/20/2010, 2:55 PM
Honestly, it depends more on the DVD player / remote than it does on the authoring app -- since some players have both a Top Menu button and a Menu button while others only have one. At least in DVD Architect, there's no way to specify which is the "top" menu, and I'm not aware of any other authoring apps with a way, either.

I would suspect that in most cases, the "top" menu is going to be the first one displayed for your DVD. All other menus should branch out from that, so it stands to reason it would be the top menu. The player should look to see which menu called the current one, then the one that called that menu and so on until it can't go any further.

Unless you've got the user somehow getting to a menu without choosing a button on another menu, it should be obvious which one is the top menu (as you say, root).

Rob
Former user wrote on 4/20/2010, 7:03 PM
You can probably do this through some scripting. Most consumer DVD authoring programs don't really handle the Top menu thing correctly. From what I have seen, the only program that gives you that kind of control is Sonic Scenarist.

But read up on scripting, it might give you what you want.

Dave T2