Video Thumbnail Problems in Scene Menu

rem715 wrote on 7/19/2007, 9:59 AM
Hello, I'm using DVD Architect Studio 4 and I am having a problem trying to create a scene selection menu page with video thumbnails. The background for the menu is a short video I rendered in VMS. I have my chapter markers selected in my full length movie and created the scene selection menu using the AS4 shortcut. Each button is a thumbnail image. Now once I select "video" in the properties for each of the chapter buttons, the buttons won't show the correct video clip running from the chapter marker. Instead when I try to select the proper beginning point in my movie using the slider tool, it repeats the first few seconds of the movie over and over instead of the entire movie. So what I am left with is a scene selection menu with the same video segment from the movie (the beginning of it) on each of the buttons, however, the menu buttons work properly, i.e. the Chapter 3 button goes to chapter 3 of the movie. If I switch the properties back to still, the correct still image shows from the corresonding chapter shows up.

Weird!! Does anybody have any suggestions?

Comments

TOG62 wrote on 7/19/2007, 11:31 AM
I presume you mean that the properties of the chapter buttons were changed from Still to Animated.

I couldn't reproduce this effect. Do the start times get changed to zero when you do this? If so, maybe you can correct things by changing them back to their original settings.

Mike
bStro wrote on 7/20/2007, 10:14 AM
How long is your background video? And is that how long your thumbnails are playing before they repeat?

A DVD menu is a single video object. After your project has been prepared, all the content on your menu (background, thumbnails, graphics) will be combined into that video object. As such, all content has to play for the same length of time. That length of time is decided by, in order of precedence:

1. Menu Length setting (Menu Properties tab)
2. Length of menu audio
3. Length of menu background

Fas as I can tell, thumbnail videos have no sway in the matter.

So. If your background is 20 seconds long, the video in your thumbnails is 20 minutes long, and menu length is set to Auto Calculate (Menu Properties window), then the entire menu is going to play for 20 seconds before it loops. The video in your thumbnails will get truncated to 20 seconds.

If your background is longer than the audio, the background will get truncated.

If your audio is longer than your video, DVDA will fill in the extra time with a blank screen.

And if you specify a menu length longer than everything, DVA will fill in the extra time with a blank screen and silence.

One thing you could put your background video on a Vegas timeline, repeat it several times (for as long as you want your thumbnails to play), and render that out to a new file to use as your menu background.

Rob