SDK? Scene Selection vs Chapter Selection

Ira Grollman wrote on 1/5/2009, 3:33 PM
Is there a SDK or other programming capability to set the in/out points for a media title to a given chapter? And yes, I can do it manually, but that gets a bit old with 5-10 DVD projects per week. As background, think of shooting a 20-30 scene event with different performances by different people and folks want to be able to select just their performance or view the whole event.

I am familiar with DVD level programming and prefer to avoid it with the volume of changes I get. I am looking to augment (or fix) the "Insert Scene Selection Menu" command. I am comfortable with the Vegas Pro .NET scripting and really hoped V5 would add that functionality.

As discussed in other posts, there is the capability for:

"Chapter selection Menu", which allow one to select a defined chapter marker and then play to the end of the media. This is the menu set created by the "Insert Scene Selection Menu" command (right-click on a media title)

What I consider the "Scene selection Menu" concept uses multiple references to the same media with distinct in/out points to achieve a "play the chapter" effect.

Thanks, Ira

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 1/5/2009, 5:36 PM
Insert markers at the chapter points and name them appropriately in Vegas, edit, import the markers in the rendered mpeg, add your menus in DVDA and burn.

That's how the rest of us do it, or have I missed something in your post?
PeterWright wrote on 1/5/2009, 6:11 PM
If you want to play each scene, then return to menu, add the big clip containing the scene separately for each scene, then double click on the thumbnail and set In and Out Flags on the Timeline by dragging. This is made easy if, as musicvid said, you already have markers at the beginning and end of each section.
No matter how many times you do this, DVDA will recognise that it's the same clip each time, and space used won't go up.
Ira Grollman wrote on 1/6/2009, 11:41 AM
Thanks for the responses, but I am familiar with the mechanisms used as discussed in the responses. I was hoping for a SDK similar to the Vegas Pro SDK to automate the tedium of setting in/out points for each chapter to achieve the playing of a chapter and then returning to the menu.

The "Insert Scene Selection Menu" function would be so much more useful if it had an option to select and play just a given chapter.

Thanks, Ira