"Easter" brought up 11 entries, of which two of them were our two comments. None pertained to Easter eggs and I think I want to make my request a bit clearer.
Let me rephrase the question.

I want to include a video on a disc that can ONLY be accessed by a menu button but NOT AT ALL by the chapter advance / back button.

I want to be able to hide a video within a disc that can only be accessed when found thru a hidden menu. (yes, I know if a DVD is ripped, any video can be found) I'm not trying to hide anything important. I just want to have some surprises (extras) for the future.

Every disc I've made so far, I can get to everything simply using my Chapter advance or back button. Even putting in a few tricks I've dreamed up, I was able to accidently find the video by just pressing the Chapter button enough times.

I can hide a menu page pretty good, but it does me no good if you can find the video by accident, by simply being impatient.

What? This can't be done?

Ahem!!!!

The only way I can think is to make it the FIRST file on the disk. Have the First Play Menu the second file. Most people will not hit PREVIOUS from the main menu and next will only go later.

Dave T2

I'm SORT OF playing around with that right now. I'm setting up my menus so that it pops in piece by piece at the beat of a drum. If you set up an image only button (without the frame and mask) and then right click on it you can access the "crop and adjust" settings for that button. If you zero out the alpha you can in effect 'hide' that button on the menu. The only issue is the highlighting which I think you will be able to adjust out but changing its color set. So the button and the highlight is still quite usable.... you just can't see it.

So set up your dvd with 2 separate titles and place a hidden button for the title that you want to be a secret.

If you want more info, see this thread here (I'm having a few issues with highlighting I'm trying to figure out)
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=623726&Replies=2

I am probably not understanding what you want because the solution seems to be trivial. Here's a project file that illustrates the concept (link good for seven days):

Hidden Video Example

When the project opens, when it asks for "1928 sports" tell DVDA to instead use your hidden video. For the other two videos, use anything you like. You should be able to play the other videos and advance using the chapter buttons. However, I don't think you'll be able to play the "hidden" video in any way other than to use the button on the main menu.

P.S. You may also want to turn OFF title play for each of the videos on your main menu. That way, the user cannot use their title button on their remote.

If I take that DAR it shows me three buttons on the menu. One is titles hidden video. But the button is not hidden (or a n easter egg). However if I go to the button properties and swith it to text only and then highlight and edit the text and delete the text I then have an empty space that serves as a hot spot that changes my curser to a selection hand when I pass over it. I can choose the hidden video but there is apparently no button there (at least not visible). I can't get to that video any other way.

I don't think he wanted a hidden button, although I've re-read both of his first two posts, and I still don't entirely understand. Here's what he said:I want to include a video on a disc that can ONLY be accessed by a menu button but NOT AT ALL by the chapter advance / back button.So, what I provided does exactly what he asks for in the first paragraph: you can only access the video via a menu button, and not by pressing the chapter button (especially if you turn off title play for the remote for your main videos, which I forgot to do in the DAR I linked to).

As for how you access the hidden menu, I think Steve already covered that, even though TGS didn't seem to like the answer. I believe you (Terry) are covering the same thing, namely you just don't attach any image to the button and then it becomes hidden, which is the main way that Easter Eggs are created.

Yes, it can be done. I've done it. It's been a while, but the key is in the button actions. In mine, when the last chapter is done, I send the viewer back to a menu page that looks exactly the same as the first menu page, but it has a button hidden in it. I set it up so that you would have to go left-left to highlight the Easter Egg. It wouldn't be difficult to make finding the egg the solution to a maze.

>>...that can't be accessed by the Chapter advance button?...

I think I am understanding what you are talking about. Start any part of the video, then you can access all video on the DVD via the next chapter button.

Adobe Encore has this same issue awhile back. In fact, the timelines of video would execute based on the order in which they were created/imported. It was a pain.

A solution that works is to basically have a chapter marker right at the very, very, very end of the timeline. We're talking a few frames before the end of the timeline.

With this positioning, you have virtually no (0) time elapsing between hitting that very end chapter marker and the actual end of the timeline which allows the timeline end action to execute.

Encore now had this marker right at the very end of all timelines by default.

This works.

Wow! No activity for a couple of days and suddenly it goes crazy.
OK. I think kentwolf understood and possibly provided the answer.

The one point most of you kept overlooking was that I can access ALL video by simply pressing my Chapter advance / back button. I even tried putting my hidden video with 20 blank chapters, hoping a watcher would just give up and not find the hidden video, but anybody that has a fast button finger can find it by accident. And blank chapters are almost a lure in trying to figure out why they are even there in the first place.
So, hiding a video is not really possible. Honestly, most people wouldn't bother looking that hard, but I've found mine by just being impatient and pushing my Chapter button numerous times...... although I think kentwolf answered my question with a workaround.
By not having time to press the advance button, only the hidden menu would allow access. This is what I want.
I'll have to experiment to see if this works.
Thank you very much, it sounds good in theory.

EDIT: Let me also clarify. My stand alone Toshiba player will access all titles on discs made by DVD-A by simply using the chapter advance / back button. When I test with DVD-A, it plays by the rules better. So, I want to make sure this works on all players, equally. I already knew how to make hidden buttons and Menus, but my Toshiba bypasses them with the chapter advance. I'm also presently experimenting with the remote button commands to see if they work, but I'd rather feel sure that what I want works universally. The work around seems more trustworthy. I'll report back.

Wow, I'm intrigued. I CANNOT use the chapter button to advance to the end of an asset (or out of it) when I'm in the last chapter of the asset (I get the red circle with the bar through it in the corner of the screen). I have been working around this by putting a chapter marker as close as legally possible to the end of the asset. (This is when I have the end action of the asset linked to another asset instead of the most recent menu) This is on two different toshiba players. I'll have to fiddle some more.

On the maze idea, very neat. you could but in a bunch of invisible unlinked buttons and lock out some navigation directiions for each one so you would have to execute a specific sequence of u/d/l/r presses to get to the linked button (which you would not be able to get to directly because of the button restrictions).

OK, I solved what I wanted to do. So far.

My problem originally,.... I just made a secret hidden button and thought that was good enough. It worked fine if I only tested it within DVD-A
But as I discovered, when I played the disc in my stand alone Toshiba DVD player, I could rifle through all the videos and chapters by simply pushing "next Chapter" or "Previous Chapter" and basically rotate in a circle over and over each video.title and chapter.
I could also do this using Power DVD on my computer, but it would stop when I got to the last video, instead of rifling over and over.
I had read Johnmeyers post,above, and realized I'd never bothered trying the "remote button" options before. What I discovered is that I had to set those options in the videos before and after my hidden video (assuming they would rifle continuously in a circle as they did on my Toshiba) and turn the "Time/Chapter search" "Previous/Up" and "Next" options OFF on the videos prior to and after my hidden video. This worked, as both the before and after videos had no extra chapter markers and were both very short video/titles. It not only worked with my remote control, but also with the buttons on the front of the deck. I can still access the hidden video, via the secret, hidden menu/video button, but can't jump to them using any other button.

This may not work with all players, but it seems like an answer so far.

Now If I did have chapter markers on the before and after videos, that may have presented another problem.

(If chapter markers happen to be in the before and after videos and cause a problem on future videos, I'll put in a dummy short video of black screen for a couple of seconds on each side of my hidden video, each as a separate video/title. These will serve as roadblocks from either direction by not allowing you to jump back or forward)
Also, more experimenting may find a shorter route to do the same thing, but I'm already up to 12 extra, useless, discs and it's working now. (not really useless, I know 12 people that would never play them anyway. lol)

Thanks for all the replies......

Also, more experimenting may find a shorter route to do the same thing, but I'm already up to 12 extra, useless, discs and it's working nowGood heavens, get a few DVD+RW discs and use them for your experiments. Depending on your burner, you can get discs that will burn at 8x. I almost always burn a short version of anything experimental and then play that on my set-top player. Usually takes about 1-2 minutes to do the burn when using +RW media. You can use the same disc thousands of times. Much better than sending polycarbonate to landfill ...

Although they will be landfill someday anyway, as I said, I know people that will accept them as gifts but will never get around to watching them more than once, if at all.
I was too lazy to type out that the first 10 were made when I thought I figured out a way to make it work and discovered afterwards, that I could rifle up to it using my Chapter advance on my set top. They worked fine when I tested them in DVD-A.
#11 I tried to encode the remote features of the hidden video itself, but discovered I could jump to it from either direction, then I couldn't jump from it.
#12 works pretty good, but I forgot to encode the video after the hidden one and you can get to it going backwards. I should have thought of that before I made it, but I was too anxious and rushed
but you're right, I need to restock my RW's. My old ones have been used to the point that I can't do anything with them. So on top of the original 10, only 2 extras and one kind of works and as I said, they will be gifts for people that never have time for this stuff. And what I mean by time, is that they'll watch it, but never bother with it again. So, the extra stuff means nothing.
What I discovered is that DVD-A's Chapter button only jumps Chapters and everybody elses (the 3 others I tried) jumps Titles and Chapters
And this is what makes me believe that there is probably some brand that will allow somebody to find my hidden video early. I wonder how well the remote buttons options work on all players. Does some company make a player with a "Super" button that will allow jumps no matter what.?

Hi,

actually you won't be able to achieve total control about how a hardware player will handle these jumps. Each player is behaving a bit different. Mine jumps from the end of a title to the next title no matter whether both reside within the same title set (VTS) or not (chapter button used). However, the very same player does not jump back from e.g. title 2 to title 1 in no way. It will in this case simply start track 2 again each time I'm pressing "previous chapter". The remote control of this player does not even have a "next title" button on it. Accessing titles however can be achieved by typing in the title's number. The hardware player of a friend of mine stops forwarding at the end or the beginning of a title when the chapter buttons are used. That one however has got "next title" and "previous title" buttons.

The only reliable way to prevent poor user from jumping through the titles is to add user prohibitions for the chapter and title buttons as hardware players are respecting those prohibitions normally. Forgive me that I cannot tell you how to do that in DVDA as I'me still using a different application for DVDs.

Cheers

darkframe