DVDA basic question

[Ian Stark]

I'm a bit confused with how to achieve something fairly straightforward in DVDA.

I want the viewer to press a button which takes him/her into a mandatory disclaimer page that is displayed for 30 seconds before going to a second (shorter) page, before going to the actual video itself.

I thought I should be using End Actions but I can't get my head around where I need to apply this. I have created video files for the two text pages but I guess these could more efficiently be stills. If that's so, how do I loop a still image for a fixed amount of time?

I'm a very rare DVDA user as most of what I do ends up on the web. It's not as intuitive as I thought it would be for doing what I would consider to be fairly simple things. At least not for a thicko like me who has just spent 11 hours driving 300 miles to get home!

[Michael Hutson]

Just a thought.....Since you are making it "mandatory" for it to be viewed, would it not be easier for you to add the disclaimer pages at the beginning of the timeline in Vegas and render out in one file.

[Ian Stark]

A very good thought - and in fact that's what I have been doing - but I thought it was about time I learned how to link the end of one video with the beginning of another!

Also, there are ten videos in total on the DVD (all of which need the disclaimer) and this would increase the video content by almost 10 minutes, hence the idea of linking to a still to save disk space.

[Don Bloom]

Won't really save space since the disclaimer has to be there anyway but to use end actions bring the rendered clips to DVDA, open the first clip on the DVDA timeline goto properites>end actions set the end action to point to the next clip.
If you don't open the clip on the timeline end actions doesn't know what to do so you have to open it.

[Ian Stark]

Thanks Don. What I meant by saving space was that if I need to repeat it at the beginning of each of the ten videos then by including it in the Vegas render for each video I would be adding another ten minutes of video to the total as opposed to adding it once and referencing it once.

I see where I was going wrong though - thanks for the tip.

What I have since discovered is the joy of Introduction media, which I was previously unaware of. This means I don't need to show the video each time a viewer clicks one of the ten clips - I can show it as soon as the disk is inserted, forcing the viewer to see it. That solves my problem.

Thanks for the advice though.

[Don Bloom]

Ah I see. Yeah introduction media or first play is great.
Some feel DVDA is kind of basic but frankly with a little playing around you can create some very creative DVDs.