To Loop or not to Loop

bakerbud9 wrote on 7/22/2006, 10:50 PM
I'm a moderately proficient user of DVD Architect for some time now. I know how to assign an end-action to a media clip in order to make it loop. But I haven't been able to figure out how to have two links from a menu to a single media file wherein one link plays the media and then stops and the other link plays the media file and loops.

The problem, it seems, is that end-actions are associated with the media, not the link to the media. So in order to accomplish the desired effect, I must store two copies of the media file on the DVD so that one end-action is "stop" and the other end-action is "loop."

This seems a terrible waste of space to have to store two copies of the media only to facilitate both a "looping" and "non-looping" link from a menu. So I wonder if there isn't a better way to achieve the same effect? Ideally, only one copy of the media file is stored on the DVD and two separate links from the menu would control the end-action.

But if such a capability exists, I don't seem able to find how to do it... there also seems to be no mention of such a scenario in the help files.

Any thoughts?

Comments

ScottW wrote on 7/23/2006, 9:15 AM
You did it just right - you bring in 2 copies of your media. One instance has the end action to loop, the other instance has the end action to stop. As long as you don't change anything with the media (like different audio tracks or subtitles) then DVDA will only put the media ont he DVD a single time (that is, assuming you are using 2.0 or later).

--Scott
bakerbud9 wrote on 7/23/2006, 9:30 AM
You're right, I'm currently using DVDA 3.0.

Interesting. So that means DVDA is smart enough to prevent storing multiple copies. That's good news.

The only drawback, then, to this approach is that for each one of the two links, I have to import the same media files, etc. This isn't a big deal if the link only has video and audio. But I once did an hour-long project where I created subtitles in DVDA. For that particular project, I didn't need a looping capability, by my point is it would have been a total pain to try and manually re-create all the subtitles for the second link that loops.

In a case like that, it would be really nice if there was a way to associate video, audio, closed captioning, etc. all into a single "bundle" and then have two separate links from the main menu... one that loops and one that doesn't.

For this reason, I was beginning to look into playlists. I've never used them before. I started using DVDA back at release 1.0, and I think playlists are new to release 3.0. So they are still unfamilliar to me. But I wonder if it's not possible to create the "bundle" of media and then create separate playlists: each playlist would only contain one instance of the "bundle," and then have a different end action (one would loop and another would stop).
bakerbud9 wrote on 7/23/2006, 10:52 AM
It turns out that playlists do indeed seem to facilitate having different links to the "bundles." For those that are interested, here's what I did:

1. At the desired menu page, insert a video media object called "Test 1".
2. Navigate into "Test 1" and go to its timeline.
3. In the timeline, add audio tracks and subtitles (if desired).
4. Leave the end-action of "Test 1" as a link to "Most recent menu."
5. Navigate back to the menu.
6. For button properties of "Test 1," adjust the subtitle track to "1".
7. Insert a playlist into the menu called "Play Loop".
8. Select "Test 1" as the title for the playlist.
9. For button properties of "Play Loop," adjust the subtitle track to "1".
10. Go to the "Playlists" tab.
11. For playlist properties of "Play Loop," adjust the destination link to "Play Loop," that is, to itself.

Preview the DVD menu. If you click on the "Test 1" button, the video object with audio and subtitles will play once and return back to the main menu. If you click on the "Play Loop" button, the same video, audio and subtitles will play in an infinite loop.

The great thing about this is I only had to assign audio and subtitles to the video once. Also, if I make changes to the subtitles in the original video media, the changes automatically propagate to the looped link, as well. Perfect... just what I was hoping for.