Having trouble linking buttons

[Jeff Bradt]

I have 3 different videos I'm putting onto a DVD for a wedding. I want a button for each on the DVD menu page. I also want to link them so that if the first button is hit, it will play and then the video file that is linked to the 2nd button will automatically play when the first is finished.

I think I need to use the "end-action" butI have the end-action for the first button set to: Activate Button, time-out is set to the length of the first video (3 minutes), and the Button Link is set to the name of the video file I want to play next.

I'm testing this with PREVIEW but when the first video finishes it goes back to the menu.

What am I missing?

Thanks. - Jeff

[Edward Troxel]

Change the end-action of the first VIDEO to point to the second video. Now change the end-action of the second video to point to the third video.

Now, be aware there will be a slight PAUSE as it switches between video clips. If you do not want that pause, give DVDA a SINGLE video file instead of multiple video files.

[Jeff Bradt]

Thank you for your reply Edward. When you say:

"Change the end-action of the first VIDEO to point to the second video. Now change the end-action of the second video to point to the third video."

I thought that is what I was accomplishing when I did to following:

"I have the end-action for the first button set to: Activate Button, time-out is set to the length of the first video (3 minutes), and the Button Link is set to the name of the video file I want to play next."

What part of that is incorrect?

Thanks again.

[Edward Troxel]

You're changing the end-actions of the BUTTON instead of the end-action of the VIDEO.

[Jeff Bradt]

Bingo! Thanks Edward. I have a lot to learn. I appreciate your patience.

[Charlie Wilkinson]

I have dropped multiple pieces of prerendered mpeg2 media into a single DVD project. Some have one one (default) chapter, while for others I've created additional chapter marks within DVDA. I typically name the chapter as the name of the competitor (figure skating). I can link videos/chapters through end actions and playlists so that all media plays in the order I want, no problem. Where I run into problems is that the behavior of the "next" (skip forward) and "previous" (skip backward) remote buttons are not consistent with the links I've created, or what happens if I just let the disc play.

I should mention, it all works as expected in DVDA's simulator. But alas, I doubt most of my customers will have that handy. ;-)

In one player I have (Philips DVD783C), it simply forbids me to skip beyond the last/only chapter to the next peice of media. I get to "talk to the hand", so to speak. If I fast forward or just let it play, then the player will transistion to the next media as soon as the current one ends.

In another player (Philips DVD622), things get a little more bizarre. If you try to skip forward from the last/only chapter, it will simply loop that piece of media, starting over at the beginning. Once again, fast forward, or simply letting the disk play yields the expected results.

In either player, trying to skip backwards does even stranger things...

Please forgive me if this is a FAQ, but I've been searching for an answer all morning and I'm just flat searched out at this point. This is really frustrating the heck out of me. It looks like somebody failed User Interface 101 - "Make your UI behave consistently." Is there a way to get the "skip" linkage behavior to be consistent with the "play" linkage behavior in DVDA?

Any clues *greatly* appreciated!

--Charlie

[Brian Kennedy]

Charlie - if you are asking what I think you are asking (hitting "next chapter" won't jump to the next video that's linked to the last via an end action), then I've run into that problem too. It works in the DVDA preview, but not on my player.

As a workaround, I put a chapter flag one second before the end of each video, so that when I hit "next chapter," it jumps to the end of the current video. DVDA2 requires chapters to be at least one second long, so you can't put the chapter flag at the very end, but the one second difference isn't noticeable, since there's a pause there anyway. This doesn't help with the "skip backwards" issue, though.

[Charlie Wilkinson]

That's exactly what I was asking! Failing a more direct approach (anyone?), that sounds like a pretty good workaround. Thanks Brian!

<time passes>

You mention that chapters must be at least one second long. In playing around with that, I noted that DVDA will let me create chapter marks right at the very end of a video, and "prepare DVD" runs without incedent. Is the "one second chapter rule" going to bite me later?

Thanks again...

-cw-

[Edward Troxel]

I really believe you'll be better off giving DVDA a SINGLE file instead of multiple files and simply using chapter points as needed.

[Charlie Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

I really believe you'll be better off giving DVDA a SINGLE file instead of multiple files and simply using chapter points as needed.

Thanks Edward, point well taken. I'm working on another job where I'm doing just that, but for this job (and many to come, I hope), it's a workflow thing. I'm assembling DVDs for numerous customers, where each gets a unique DVD assembled from different bits of video out of a larger selection -- buffet style... It would be prohibitive (on my current hardware at least) to render out each entire DVD seperately. Much much quicker to select the desired bits from a pile of prerendered mpeg2/ac3 files. Well... Except for the noted problem. Not a showstopper, but frustrating as all getout...

Do you know offhand if this problem is a general DVD spec issue (i.e., every DVD authoring program will have this issue), or specific to DVDA?

-cw-

[Gints Klimanis]

Would anyone recommend a good workflow to edit chapter movie segment as individual Vegas projects, yet provide DVD Architect with a single movie (+ AC3) that can respond to Prev/Next chapters and Rewind ?

I have Vegas 6 and DVD Architect 3. Largely, I've just used Vegas for basic editing and effects, so I'm new with DVDA. With the new features of Vegas 6, should I place each of my 20 or so "Chapter Projects" on a Vegas time of a Master project and render that out as a single MPEG2 and AC3 ? Would I prerender projects as I go, which Vegas would assemble (no rerendering) when I render the Master project ? What happens to the Chapter points?
Or, should I fill the Master project with MPEG2s ?

I like the Project idea as it will manage my batch rendering quite nicely, and if the DVD needs to be rendered with different MPEG2 or AC3 parameters, then I can do that from a single project.

I do wish that DVDA had an option to use Vegas Projects as Media, or at least allow us to specify which media files will be contained in a particular VOB file. Right now, I have 22 MPEG2 files, 22 AC3 files, which DVDA renders to 22 VOB files. With this structure, I don't understand why DVD seems to force a single MPEG2 bitrate for all 22 MPEG files when they are output to
individual transport streams. Ideally, I would like to have some lower bitrate video files to save space. If I've misunderstood the DVDA bitrate restrictions, please correct me.

Thanks for any help,

Gints

[Edward Troxel]

I frequently work this way:

1) Work on a section, render that section to DV-AVI
2) Work on another section, render that section to DV-AVI
3) Repeat step 2 until all sections are complete
4) Start a new project and add all the sections to the timeline
5) Render that complete new project to MPEG2

If you wish to not lose as much color information, you could substitute uncompressed AVI or Sony YUV instead of DV-AVI. I figure that starting with DV-AVI anyway I'm not losing any more by going to DV-AVI in the interim.