Navigation and DVD menus

[Peter S]

I have produced a show with a menu and three parts. It all works perfectly as a PC production. DVD is a different proposition and I have not been able to figure out a way to get the menu working properly so would appreciate some guidance.

It took me two attempts to get the burn to work. The first at 8 times speed on a DVD-R failed, the second at 6 times DVD+R was fine.

Played via a Panasonic DVD player that is part of a "Freeview Box" that has a hard drive and DVD recorder/player (for recording TV) the picture quality is fine. It is however very difficult to get the menu working properly. The menu has 4 items on 2 pages. I cannot see any way of flipping between the pages. The only way to get to the second page is by pressing the number buttons for 3 or 4 - not very elegant. The < and > keys do not seem to have any effect. The controller does not have a MENU button and although the show returns to the menu if the STOP button is pressed it will not return to the menu after a section of the show has been completed.

There does not seem to be any way to operate the Navigation buttons when viewing the DVD Menu screen. Do I need to programme these in some way? (The ones for the Navigation Bar in the PC version I have programmed and they work perfectly.)

Commercial DVDs work perfectly on this machine.

I also played the DVD on a cheap stand alone DVD player connected to a different TV. The remote for this DVD player does have a menu button and the DVD returned happily to the menu when this button was pressed. The page function on the menu screen still did not work.

As a separate issue I noted that the colour on the second DVD/TV combination was all washed out. I would expect some variation but not as big a difference as this showed. Is a wide variation in colour something that is expected?

[nobeefstu]

Peter,

I suspect you have built a menu based executable slideshow ?

Menu based executable slideshows are not useable in DVD movie format shows .... it a totally different format and process for DVD.

I have produced a show with a menu and three parts

You must create your three parts into separate .mpg (mpeg) files using Video Builder. Then using Video Builder to create a DVD Menu to access the three shows.

In Video Builder main window:

-Make sure you enable checkbox Create Menu (lower left)

-Open Video Builder| Project Options for any additional features available.

[Peter S]

No nobeefstu,

I created the DVD version using videobuilder and created a menu as you describe.

Peter

[Hawk]

Hi Peter

In regards to.

it will not return to the menu after a section of the show has been completed.

In VideoBuilder - Project options - Do you have " Return to menu after each title " checked ?

Navigation buttons on menu.

On my Panasonic DVD player’s remote I use the < and > buttons to scroll left and right across the navigation forward or backwards buttons then “Enter” button to change page, once on correct page use up button to highlight show and “Enter” to play.

[Peter S]

I have now got my DVD menu to work OK. Thanks for the suggestions.

I am not sure if I found the cause of the problem or not but it may have been something to do with the fact that the first item on my DVD menu was a looping menu created for an EXE version of the show that I had not changed. I really don't know if this was the cause but changing it and re-burning resolved the problem.

I have had a couple of times when the burn ( with a +RW disc that had been used before) has ended but the burning utility in VideoBuilder refuses to recognize that it has completed the process. It just sticks at 99% and the DVD burner light stays on. On one occasion I had to reboot but the DVD was OK and played without a hitch.

Anyone else had this problem?

Kind regards

Peter

[Carol Steele]

Personally I prefer not to have multiple pages for the menus. I edit the options.ini file and change the Count number to however many chapters I want (normally five or six). The line which needs changing is around 8 lines down and is:

Count=n (where n=number of chapters I want).

I then change the size of the 'chapter images' and their text descriptors - and arrange them to fit within the safe area of the intro screen. Here is an example of a 'Wedding Sampler' which I send out to potential clients:-

[Peter S]

Hi Carol,

Thanks for your comments. Your menu certainly looks very good and very professional. You reminded me that someone had made a post quite a while back on this topic and after a bit of searching I found this thread started by Mary Warner - http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....ost&p=42594

She produced a very helpful pdf tutorial on changing menu templates that I see you used and she ended up by saying "One thing that I haven't figured out yet is that the default templates supplied with the product include two sets of Option... ini files in the folders -- one labeled Options_4_3.ini" and one called "Options_16_9.ini".

When you create a new version of the template by selecting the "Templates\Add Template" button, only a single "Option.ini" file is created. I have not experimented enough to determine how you would set up the two ini files. I will leave that exercise for another day (or perhaps another user who has already figured it out).

Did you figure this out or do you have any other hints to add? I could well end up with 10 or 12 chapters in my current project so it could get a bit cluttered on a single screen but I'll have go and see what it looks like.

Kind regards

Peter

[Carol Steele]

Hi Peter

Well 12 chapters might be a bit tight - but it could be done fairly easily if you wish to forgo seeing a viewable representative image as the chapter as you can make the 'icons' to be whatever size you wish as you can see below:-

Simply change the text descriptors of the chapters to something very simple such as 01 or 1, 02 or 2 etc.

You could even create a startup slide with just a number on it and place that as the first slide in every chapter - and you could delete the text descriptor which goes under each icon for that chapter. The possibilities are endless - but it does become very fiddly as you have to edit each one separately - which is why I have put in a feature request (see here) which would allow you to do this more easily with a group of 'icons' and 'text descriptors'.