Two playlists, order on clips and skip

Per1 wrote on 1/1/2008, 8:41 AM
Hi,
I have listed my media as follows in the DVDA project

A1
A2
A3
B1
B2
B3

I then did 2 playlists

1:
B1
B2
B3

2:
A1
B1
A2
B2
A3
B3

(A* is introductions to B*)

Here's the problem. When playing playlist 2 and skipping with Next/Previous the DVD skips in the project order, and not in the playlist order. So when I'm at A3 and press Prev it skips to A2, then A1 and not B2, A2, etc.

OK, I could change the order of the media to follow playlist 2 - but then when playing playlist 1 everything is wrong, then it follows the "new" media order.

Is there any solution to this or do I have to give up the idea of having 2 playlists - one with introductions and one without?

Regards
Per

Comments

MPM wrote on 1/1/2008, 12:42 PM
What you've described is the problem with using the remote's Next button on many players... It can jump titles, and Prev may or may not work. 2 solutions that I can think of right off the top of my head -- besides disabling the Next button ;-) ...

Instead of playlists combine all the video into one file (Cuttermaran etc or re-encode), import into DVDA adding a chapter wherever your segments were joined, then add 2 titles featuring the main video. Shorten the play duration of the 1st to save time, render to hdd, then using PgcEdit remove the chapters you don't want playing in the first title, & test. You might see the process for achieving the same thing called *Stories* or as a special version of playlists in some other authoring apps, but as of yet it's not available in DVDA. That said, once you figure it out it only takes a few minutes.

The 2nd approach, which avoids PgcEdit, would be to use scripting to switch between the 2 sequences. While there are likely better ways to do it, my first thought is to use a dummy video (or menu page) as the end action for each individual video, in order to give you a place to activate your script. The scripts would then target one of 2 video choices based on a variable that's set when the viewer initially clicks the play button -- one variable for the short sequence, another (or the absence of the 1st) for the second sequence.

*IF* you wanted to get Really fancy, your script could do something along the lines of setting another variable to track whether the script's been parsed or not -- That way with the addition of a little more code the Prev button would work, on those players where the Prev button will work jumping titles in reverse anyway. Just remember to zero the variable out so the correct jump is made next time.