chapter breaks in MovieFactory 7

[snoopy990]

Hello,

I recently created a playable DVD with MF7. When I ran it in my PS3 (first generation, the bigger box), it played just fine with one exception - I couldn't advance to the next chapter within the current chapter. I also couldn't go to the previous chapter. But I was able to stop the movie, return to the main menu and choose the chapter from there. Other than that it turned out perfectly.

Does anyone know why I can't advance chapters? Did I miss a setting? I'm pretty new to MF. Thanks!

[Ken Berry]

I couldn't advance to the next chapter within the current chapter.

I'm not really sure what you mean, so could you explain a bit further please? To me, it is not possible to have a chapter within a chapter. Or do you mean a chapter within a separate video on the disc? If you, say, burn just one main video to a disc, that video is called, rather confusingly in video editing terms, a "title" (which of course confuses everything with the name you give the disc, but that is nevertheless what the video is called). So a DVD can notionally be made up of one video or several videos. All are called titles. Then each title can be divided into chapters.

So are you talking about moving between chapters in a title, or something else?

[snoopy990]

Yes - advancing from within a chapter to the next chapter in the title. So when I'm on the main screen of the DVD and I see chapters 1-4, if I select chapter 1, when I press the button to skip to chapter 2 I get a message saying that the function isn't allowed.

[Ken Berry]

How did you make the chapters: by manually choosing where to insert a chapter mark or by accepting a set time interval between chapters?

Did the chapters work when you previewed it before burning in MF 7?

[snoopy990]

I actually did not add chapters. I assumed that I didn't need to since I added several videos to the project and they came up individually as chapters when I went to the menu screen. Did I miss a step then?

[Ken Berry]

If you added several videos, they are not chapters but entire "titles" in their own right. The first page of the menu shows all the "titles" on the disc. The MF burning timeline should show all the separate videos. But as I said above, each title can be broken down into chapters, which show on a second -- or 'chapters' -- page of the menu.

On the main menu page of MF, you will see about half way down, an "Add Chapters" button. If you activate it, you are then given a choice of manually adding chapters in a selected clip/"title". With the video selected, you move the slider under the preview window where you want to add the chapter mark and select that. Then move the slider further till you find the next place you want a chapter, and mark that; and so on. Or as an easier alternative, you can select a regular time period in which to add the chapters. The default is every 3 minutes but you can of course lower or increase that.

When finished, you can then edit the names of the main videos/"titles" which show on the main page of the menu. (Confusing since you are in effect adding titles to "titles"!! ). And you do the same with the chapters page of the menu. Note also that you can select a different background and music for the chapters page than those you selected for the main page.

And you can preview the whole thing on the next page, using the remote control which appears on screen.

[snoopy990]

That all makes sense. However, my hope was that each individual video/title would be its own chapter and I haven't yet figured out how to do that. I tried joining all the files into one video then creating individual chapter breaks. This worked, except now when I go to burn it, I'm getting an "Unspecified Error" and it's not burning. Any suggestions there?

[snoopy990]

I'm not sure if this matters, but when I joined the files into one, it took much longer to pull up the preview, but when it did load it seemed to work. I just can't get it to burn - I'm getting that error.

[canuck]

That all makes sense. However, my hope was that each individual video/title would be its own chapter and I haven't yet figured out how to do that. I tried joining all the files into one video then creating individual chapter breaks. This worked, except now when I go to burn it, I'm getting an "Unspecified Error" and it's not burning. Any suggestions there?

The only way to have all your video clips appear as chapters is to first combine all the clips into one single video file. Then use that new video clip in a new project and you should have one title which can then be broken up into chapters. Is that what you did? Did you play the "new" video to see that it was created correctly as a single clip?
After creating the chapters did you play the whole project in the preview?

[snoopy990]

Yep, that's exactly what I did - combined them into one file then added chapter breaks in that file. Then on the menu screen, I eliminated the Main Title menu so it would come up right to the chapters. But now when I do that, it takes a lot longer to load in preview (though when it does load, it plays fine), and when I go to burn it, it gets only a little way through rendering and I get a pop up that just offers an ambiguous "Unspecified error". Any thoughts?

[canuck]

Yep, that's exactly what I did - combined them into one file then added chapter breaks in that file. Then on the menu screen, I eliminated the Main Title menu so it would come up right to the chapters. But now when I do that, it takes a lot longer to load in preview (though when it does load, it plays fine), and when I go to burn it, it gets only a little way through rendering and I get a pop up that just offers an ambiguous "Unspecified error". Any thoughts?

Why would you delete the main menu page? I would think you need that to get to the chapter menu page. You can't start from a Chapter menu page. That may well be the reason your are getting the error.

[snoopy990]

The main reason is I'm trying to skip the unnecessary extra menu. I prefer that when the DVD is loaded in the player, that the first menu screen that comes up is a list of chapters. It seems strange to me to have to select one video, then select a chapter within that video (going from menu to menu). Is there a way to put the chapter breaks on the title screen then?

[snoopy990]

On the menu template screen, there is a button for Advanced Settings and in there is an option to add a Title Menu so I'm not sure that would be the reason for the error if it's possible to not have the title menu.

[snoopy990]

I just tried adding a Title Menu and I'm still getting the Unspecified Error....

[Ken Berry]

Canuck wrote:

Why would you delete the main menu page? I would think you need that to get to the chapter menu page. You can't start from a Chapter menu page.

Sorry Canuck, but of course you can start off with a chapter menu. This is provided for in both MF and VS, and its main use is in the situation that snoopy990 finds himself in, namely where there is (now) just one video clip divided into chapters. In MF, with the 'Create Menu' box ticked on the first page, then on the Gallery/Edit page, you click the Advanced Settings button and simply untick the Title Menu box but leave the Create Chapter Menu box ticked. And it's the same in the VS burning module.

The question now, though, is the unspecified error. A few VS errors have also been getting this, though a solution is elusive -- what works for one doesn't for another -- and sometimes no solution at all is found.

snoopy990: how exactly did you go about joining all the original clips together? Did you use another program for that, and if so, what format did you render them to? Or did you use MF?