Play all and Scene Selection

[breadman]

Hello everybody
I have made six slideshows and saved them as mpg files. I have not made any chapters. I now want to do a DVD menu.
What I would like to try is a first menu screen with two options "Play All" and "Scene Selection". Play-all will play all and then return to this first menu page. Scene-selection will go to a second menu page. Any scene selected will play and then return to this second screen which will have a link back to the first menu.
I'm really at a loss to see how to do this using the menu creation in VS. Is it possible?
Mike

[lata]

Hi Mike

To burn a disc first start project, nothing in the timelines.

Share Create Disc DVD will open the burner module.
Top Left Add media Add Video files.

For each file you add a link will be placed on the Main Title Menu
Do not add chapters
NEXT -- accesses the Gallery—choose to use a Thumbnail or Text Menu
Some have 6 links others only a few,
From the Edit tab you can Customise the Layout, allowing you to select up to 8 links.

Ok complete the editing of the menu.

Your main Title Menu should now display all 6 thumbnails.

To the bottom of the page choose the Project Settings cogwheel.
The navigation controls allow several options.

Back to Menu will play the selected Title then return to menu allowing you to choose another to play.
However if you simply choose the “play” button (Play All) the disc will play from beginning to end.

From the last page choose to create a Disc Image, this will create an Iso file, play this using VLC Media Player to test the menu and movie quality, if ok burn the iso to disc.

[breadman]

Thanks for answering and yes, this will put the menu selection and the Play All button all on the same menu page. But that wasn't what I was aiming at.
Mike

[lata]

Hi

Why do you need a second menu page when you can Play All or select any of the Slide Shows from the same menu page.

Unfortunately what you are asking cannot be done with Video Studio.
You are trying to create two main menu/title pages?

[breadman]

I've just checked half a dozen commercial DVDs at random off the shelf and they all do this. They all have a title screen - some with:
Play
Scene Selection
Special Features
Setup
Simpler ones (Peppa Pig!) just have Play and Scene Selection.
If we are producing DVDs for the general public to use (my target audience is normally non-technical and some are elderly) it makes sense to follow a logical sequence they may be familiar with. Maybe VS is intended only for home use where the creator of the DVD is also the user.
Thanks anyway and thanks for reading this far!
Mike

[Ken Berry]

Well, yes, comparing commercial and home made DVDs is a bit like comparing apples with oranges for a number of reasons. The companies producing DVDs of course had hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars at their disposal for the software and equipment to do the job.

There used to be a Ulead program called DVD Workshop, which was a bit expensive but allowed you to build a menu from the ground up. When Corel took over Ulead, it dumped DVD Workshop, to the disgust of its many loyal users. While you can still find it around and about, it is now rather limited in that it is Standard Definition, and I don't even think it can do 16:9 since it was never updated after the takeover.

The only other programs I am aware of which will allow the sort of thing you are after is DVD Laboratory which is reasonably priced, though there are mixed reviews of it and I have not looked at any recent version of it. And then there is Sony DVD Architect which is a bit on the expensive side and an equally steep learning curve. (The version I have is 5, and is probably an older version which they bundle with the latest Sony Movie Studio rather than the full Vegas program.) I imagine that Adobe Premiere or a related product might also do the job, but though I have used in the past both CS2 and CS3, I never built any menu with those programs, just did editing. And I don't know what has happened since Adobe has chosen to go exclusively on the cloud. In any case, Adobe is very much at the professional end when it comes to pricing.

[breadman]

Thank you Ken. Much appreciated advice.
Mike

[canuck]

The Scene Selection in your example for a commercial DVD is completely different from what you have in your project. In the commercial DVD there is a Play button which will play the movie. The Scene Selection button would then go to a 2nd menu page from which you would select different scenes ( also called chapters in video terminology).
In your project you have 6 different slideshows (or movies) and those are not really considered scenes. If you want those 6 slideshows to be considered as scenes then you would have to combine the 6 mpgs into one movies and then you would have to create 6 chapters and then you could have "Scene Selection".

[lata]

Hi

Following on with canuck’s reply

When you play one of the Chapters the disc will play to the end of the title playing all remaining chapters.
The Navigation controls used by Video Studio affect the Main / Title menu not the Chapter menu.

Using Video Studio the Scene selection and Special Features would be made from short clips taken from the main movie, rendered to a separate movie then chapter points applied.
If you created such a video you could add to the main menu then you would see the main menu having :-

Play all
Play any slide show
Play Special Features, accesses a chapter menu where you can select a short sample clip.

As I said earlier “Unfortunately what you are asking cannot be done with Video Studio.
You are trying to create two main menu/title pages?”

[breadman]

Just to say, if anyone else is interested, I've found that the freeware DVDStyler does what I want.
Mike

[Ken Berry]

Thanks for that tip breadman. I see DVDStyler is a SourceForge related project, and I rather like most of their work, so I am downloading it to have a look...