Too many buttons on Scene Selection...???

gibbles60 wrote on 10/10/2007, 12:19 PM
In DVDA 4.5 I created a scene selection menu for an event video that has 24 discreet "acts" in it. When I prepare the DVD I get the error (not warning) "Too many buttons on 'Scene Selection'. The maximum is 18 for a widescreen asset."

Is this for real??? Only 18 buttons??? The buttons are text only with the boring rectangle highlight, everything fits fine and is very legible.

How do I get 24 acts (or 30 for that matter) to fit on a single scene selection menu? There is no way I can reduce the number, there are definitely 24.

Thanks in advance

Comments

ECB wrote on 10/10/2007, 1:31 PM
You can change to a 4 x 3 project and you can can have up to 36 buttons (DVD spec max) or you could use 2 scene selection menus. If you change the project to 4 x 3 only the menus will be 4 x 3 and the videos will be widescreen. DVDA handles the mixed format in the abstraction layer transparent to the user.

Ed B
gibbles60 wrote on 10/10/2007, 2:03 PM
Thank you for the reply.

Is the limit of 18 buttons on widescreen imposed by the folks at Sony, or is it a DVD spec? It is absurdly low. 36 makes a lot more sense, at least for the event DVDs I am doing.

Is there any way to force DVDA into more than 18 buttons? The main menu has background video that either gets squished or letterboxed when I change the project format.

Thanks
ECB wrote on 10/10/2007, 5:08 PM
The limit of 18 buttons for 16:9 is imposed by Sony and no you can't override limit (no way that I know of). This imposed limit is common, DVD Lab Pro is limited to 18 for 4:3 and 18 for 16:9 and I believe Final Cut Pro limits 16:9 buttons to 18. Any chance you can you crop your menu background video without killing it?

Ed B

gibbles60 wrote on 10/10/2007, 8:45 PM
Yes, I can make the main menu video work. I have burned a DVD and the widescreen is widescreen but does not fill the screen the same as it would when the project is 16:9 instead of 4:3. The scene selection menu looks dumb being 4:3 when everything else is 16:9, it is puzzling why it came out 4:3 when the background was rendered 16:9.

I will have to rethink this I guess. Thanks for your help.

MTP
MPM wrote on 10/15/2007, 9:36 AM
@ gibbles60, no idea if this might work, but have you tried adding the buttons manually rather than automated scene menu?

If there's no way to get all your buttons on one wide menu, create two menu pages that appear identical with all button graphics/text in place. Then if for example you had 4 rows of 6 buttons each... Page one would have working links 1 - 12. Buttons 13 - 18 would auto-activate links to buttons 13 - 18 on the 2nd page -- these 2nd page links would function normally. The 2nd page links for buttons 19 - 24 would also function normally. 2nd page buttons 7 - 12 would switch (auto-activate) back to page 1 menu.

One of the limitations of DVDA is that you can't have multiple menu aspect ratios. It's either 4:3 or 16:9, though titles can be either. You can do whatever you want with the menu backgrounds, but they will be rendered either all 4:3 or 16:9 mpg2 video. If you're having unpredictable results, I'd guess the problem is either the backgrounds or the player settings.