audio restarts as I highlight each DVD menu option?

[username]

Just two quick questions! I have an outputted test dvd with background music on its main menu. There are 5 options to choose from on this menu (3 photo galleries and 2 videos). The main menu background music can be heard, which I had chosen from moviefactorys list of default menu sounds. Ive noticed that when I press up and down on my dvd players controller to highlight each of these 5 options, the background music will stop and then start again every time, despite still being on the same page. Is there a way to browse through menu options without this happening to the menu backing music, as it doesnt happen with any retail menus that contain a backing track, in comparison? Ive also noticed that menus created with moviefactory can be quite slow to browse through, when moving up and down the same menu pages, but Im now wondering whether the stop>start of any added audio soundtrack may be the main cause of that-no doubt menus do work faster with no audio.

I have 2 pages on my dvd, to display my 5 menu options, so I have set each of my 2 motion menus page length to the maximum 30 seconds, to cover the time the audio can be heard. I have noticed when browsing forward and back through the pages I have created, that sometimes the motion menu with its audio will only play for 3 to 5 seconds, and after that play for the full 30 seconds-is this a known issue? It could be the dvd player causing the problem, but it happens with the two players that I have here. thanks for any info if possible! perhaps its related to the preview length of each gallery, which is usually set to around 3 seconds, although the motion menu itself as a whole is set to 30 seconds?

[UncleBoo]

I have the same problem, and so far have not found any solution. Given all the other issues with DVD authoring on VSX3, I've decided it's best for my blood pressure to just accept this one as a quirk of MF7SE.

[username]

Ive decided if I ever want to include music in my menus, I'll have to make sure that both "fade in" and "fade out" are always activated, to lower the annoyance of the stopping and starting, as I move up and down a menu page. If I remember correctly Im pretty sure that creating a still menu with no motion at all doesnt help the stopping and starting audio either, so this might well be one issue to definately add to the list of wanted features/corrections in future.

While im on the subject of audio, Ive also noticed that with photo galleries I create, that have one single music track for each- at the very end of playing one gallery, just for a split second/quarter of a second, before starting the next gallery, you can just hear another audio track playing, or the same one starting up again! Im thinking it might be to do with the audio Ive allocated to each gallery-each wav is in a folder with many other audio tracks, so perhaps the program tries to continue playing them all? I suppose I could run a test with all my audio tracks for each gallery set in their own specific folders, that hold nothing else... Id like to also see the option of my photo gallery dvd being able to go always back to the main menu after playing a single photo gallery, instead of trying to play them all in one go! At present, my relations will be very confused after they look at the main menu, choose an option of a "wedding" (as an example) and wonder why after 20 photos theyre now looking at some holiday 3 yrs later

edit >> I have found that its definately the same audio track assigned to each photo gallery that tries to start up again- at the very end of each gallery! I cant think of a way to sort it-each of my galleries is set to "match with background music", so it sounds like there could be an issue with that causing it to try and start up again for a split second-perhaps its something that could be fixed in future

Ive never tried Video Studio, it sounds like an interesting app, but I would definately not try it out on this 1.5 single core athlon with 1 gig of ram ..its taking long enough (5+ hrs, possibly alot more) to create dvds on moviefactory, but at least the option is there to automatically switch off once its completed overnight, that I can be very thankful of, and the fact that it works on my age old system, lol- I will upgrade my system this decade! thanks for the reply

[DVDDoug]

NOTE - I haven't used Movie Factory for awhile... I've been using some "higher end" DVD authoring software. (There might be an easier solution than what I'm going to suggest.)

But, I've been playing around with PgcEdit and I think it can solve the problem. Here is some information about how to edit the action of a menu button, including a check-box for enabling/disabling "auto-activation", which I suspect is is part of your problem.

PgcEdit it not easy to use,* and it might take several hours (or a day) to figure it out... Especially if you've never done any programming... You need to get a feel for the VM Language Commands and learn about SPRMs and GPRMs.

But the DVD VM language is really simple for a programming language, with only a few commands. And with PgcEdit you don't have to actually write the commands. You can simply click on buttons and the program will generate the command and automatically keep the syntax correct and the commands valid.

Because of the learning curve, PgcEdit isn't something you'd want to use just once to fix-up one DVD, but once you learn how to use it it's another tool in your "audio/video toolbox".

Of course, make a backup of your DVD files before experimenting with PgcEdit.


* Actually... PgcEdit itself isn't that hard to use. It's just that you have to learn how DVDs work in order to understand what you're doing.

[username]

thanks for PgcEdit, I will give it a go. the furthest Ive gotten into any type of programming is through using 8-bit BASIC, although defunct now, im guessing it may have very little in common? Ill look for some "basic" guides (!) on how to use PgcEdit, it would be good if PgcEdit could solve the audio issue, even though its not a major one.

Would PgcEdit also allow me to edit a DVD so that after playing each individual chapter, the dvd will always return to its main menu? This would seem to be the biggest "flaw" in corel, as no one wants to be viewing a wedding, and then a holiday without notice! I know I can add text at the start of each photo gallery or video when it plays, but I believe always returning to the main menu would be the best option-especially if I create a DVD with alot of photo galleries or small videos.

If I can find out exactly where the "end" of each gallery or video is located within PgcEdit, Im guessing its a fairly simple process of knowing where to add the "action" to always return to my dvds main menu? Automatically returning to the last viewed page within the menu would be what Im after..

[DVDDoug]

If you programmed in BASIC, I think you can understand the VM commands. The trickiest part is to figure-out what the existing commands are doing. The DVD authoring software I'm using (DVD-Lab) seems to be loading information into registers (like loading the current menu and next-menu) even if that information is not used...

Would PgcEdit also allow me to edit a DVD so that after playing each individual chapter, the dvd will always return to its main menu? This would seem to be the biggest "flaw" in corel, as no one wants to be viewing a wedding, and then a holiday without notice!

I think that's possible, but I don't know how to do it. From what I've read it has something to do with "cell commands".

I'm pretty sure Movie Factory can do this if you make a separate title. (A DVD can have up to 99 tities, and each title can have up to 99 chapters.) For example, on a commercial DVD, the first-play intro-video, the main movie, and the special features are usually separate titles. You can easily control what happens at the end of a title, and I think it's easier than causing something to happen at the end of a chapter.

There are optional "pre commands" and "post commands" before and after a title (or menu), so at the end of a title you can continue to the next title, go back to the main menu, loop & play again, etc. And there are conditional "if" commands, so for example if you came from a sub-menu, you can store the menu-number in a register and jump back to that menu at the end of the title. Or, if you started by hitting a "play all" button, you can play all titles and then go back to the main menu, etc.

There is a timer-register (SPRM 9) and I was thinking that could be used to "do something" at the end of a chapter, but if the viewer hits pause, or fast-forward, or anything else, the timer won't time-out at the right time.

[username]

all media added to MF7, photo gallery or video- automatically gets created as a new title, with one chapter.
Ive tried adding chapters to individual titles. I thought this might solve the matter-perhaps its only titles with one single chapter that never go back to the main menu... but in the preview mode, after all chapters in a title are played, eg to the end of the first title, the second title still starts up.

edit>>> I found it! - hidden under "project settings >> clip settings", I just had to change it to "back to menu" instead "play next clip"... dont know how I had missed it, lol I need glasses. I think Id like to see this simple "back to menu/play next clip" option to be selectable for all individual media I add - so that I can have photo galleries that always return to the main menu, but also with my small video clips to continue playing (never returning to the menu), all on the same dvd. In the meantime I can simply join related videos together before adding to MF, or for each video clip I add, in MF - highlight more than one and use the "join" feature. Ive found I can also click on one video and then use "edit room" to import clips which will add on to the first. Im experiencing some slowdown in the preview for clips that have been joined together in these ways (using either join or import) even when they are from the same source. I will need to create a dvd to find out if its just my age old pc trying to use preview mode, and nothing else! Im sure its most likely to be my age old pc.

With audio always starting up again for a brief moment at the very end of each gallery - I also managed to fix this by simply adding one second of silence to the start of each music track (I used audacity, generate>silence). For photo galleries with more than one song, its always the first track which needs the one second of silence.

thanks for the help - Im still going to try PgcEdit out in future to see what it can do/what dvds I can ruin lol. If I can stop the menu audio restarting on each video option I highlight, and the unrelated join/import feature for video does not cause slowdown, then all my problems will be sorted!