Title Play function: What IS it, exactly?

Rich 1975 wrote on 7/28/2012, 8:36 PM
Hey everyone...

I feel silly having to ask this but the Help menu and User's Guides have next to no info on this. I've scoured Googled and searched other forums too all to no avail. Despite a video background spanning a dozen years or so, at this point, I almost feel dense.

In DVD Architect (still using 3.0), what exactly IS Title Play?

All I've been able to come up with is that if you don't disable it then the Next/Prev buttons can trigger the next title as opposed to the next chapter. Okay. So, for that reason alone, I'm leaning towards disabling it on all menus and titles. However, I don't know what other effects that may have since that's all I know about the function. I've read some conflicting info on how it may be connected to the Top Menu function (despite there being a separate field for that under Remote Buttons). I also read that it may be connected to First Play media (of which I have none).

In short, I want to disable Title Play completely (all menus and video titles), but fear it may interrupt things in an unexpected way. If my project weren't so huge with dozens of titles and a hundred plus menus, I'd gladly burn discs and go through the entire DVD but alas, that's a lot of ground to cover and I simply don't have enough time. Besides, information such as this shouldn't take an odyssey to discover.

So, would anyone happen to have a good handle on what Title Play actually does?

Thanks,
Brice

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 7/28/2012, 8:46 PM
What title play will accomplish is based on whether your authoring software can actually create more than one title per project. DVDAPro 4.5 through 5.0b can only create one single title per project.

To understand what a Title actually is - read through the DVD specs or go through a read of the excellent documentation of DVDLaBPro authoring software available on-line from Canadian company as I recall.

So this function would appear literally irrelevant in SCS DVDAPro but if you have the later documentation with 5.0b - it is discussed as a trouble shooting matter within the help file. Depending on the firmware of your set-top players used for playback of your burned projects- it may or may not influence any behaviors of the disc playback.
TOG62 wrote on 7/29/2012, 1:41 AM
What title play will accomplish is based on whether your authoring software can actually create more than one title per project.

I think that this should refer to title sets. Recent versions of DVDA(S) can certainly handle many titles.

This is what the help in DVDAS has to say:

What problem can we help you fix?

DVD or Blu-ray Disc player's Next button goes to next title rather than chapter

The Next button is normally used to navigate to the next chapter. On many players, the Next button either jumps to the end of the title or does nothing when viewing the last chapter. However, on some DVD and Blu-ray Disc players, this button jumps to the next title when viewing the last chapter.

To prevent the next button from jumping to the next title, turn off Title play.
videoITguy wrote on 7/29/2012, 9:27 AM
Watch out when you use the word 'Title" when dealing with DVD Specs. It means only one thing "Title-set" . The confusion comes from very poorly worded documentation in consumer authoring packages.

SCS DVDAPro all versions can only create one (1) Title set -it's auto and you as author-editor cannot change it.

SCSDVDAPro can import all kinds of assets, including media audio and video, buttons, moving graphics, menu backgrounds...that can be linked through interactive menus into a unified whole project. Chapter marking is a way of dividing video assets for programming purposes- these are not titles, any more than the individual assets can be considered titles.
PeterDuke wrote on 7/29/2012, 6:44 PM
If I create a DVD with two movies (sometimes called titles), each with a play button on the main menu, and at the end of play of either, control comes back to the main menu, are these strictly called titles? If not, what should they be called?
videoITguy wrote on 7/29/2012, 6:55 PM
Hello PeterDuke - I think you could call them 'Titles" if that helps you think about them - but it means nothing inside of the DVD specification for coding and authoring. In that way they are well for lack of a better word - media assets of your DVD Title set. You could have created them in SCS DVDAPro authoring by either importing two distinct movie renders from SCS VegasPro in a separate sequential time OR as you know you could have them as one single render split into two in-point / out-point selections in DVDAPro.

If you create scene selections on a single timeline with chapter marks you would call them chapters or scenes or some would even call those entities -- titles. Doesn't make any difference what you label them - when created in SCS DVDAPro you are automatically creating one and only one TitleSet that contains many different assets of video, audio, menus, buttons etc.
PeterDuke wrote on 7/29/2012, 10:53 PM
Actually, it doesn't help me to call them titles. I consider a title to be the name of a movie.

When is a title not a title? :)

Maybe one day I will get a title: Sir Peter Duke