Re: content of opening menu?

"Ken Maltby" <kmaltby@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Terry Pinnell" <terrypin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:b48q03hq7v1ck9eiqlhdjjgapis7dg3nth@xxxxxxxxxx
Using TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.6 (TDA), how do I get the opening menu to
contain
* 1 labeled button that plays the whole DVD
* 5 suitably labeled buttons for each of the 5 chapters I have
defined.

So far, I have managed only to get a single button on the main menu
which when activated displays another screen showing the 5 chapter
buttons.

Perhaps it's not possible? Maybe it's assumed you would always want to
use the Play All button?

The reason I'd prefer to do it my way is because I could then
presumably make the first (full play) button a relatively large one,
with smaller buttons for the chapters. That seems more intuitive for
the viewer IMO.

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK

In two parts/ways:

A lot depends on how you are using the term Chapter.
A chapter is a Part of a Title ( or "track" in TDA), so
you see "Chapters" in a "Track Menu". There are no
"Chapters" in the Main menu, just tracks.

In creating a DVD you can treat each track "as if" it
were a special "Chapter" of one movie/presentation;
if that suites your needs. That is what the "Play All"
button on the "Main Menu", is for. So, if you were to
divide the clip that was your one track into 5 clips
that correspond to your "Chapters", you could have
5 tracks that you can individually address and can
be played, in order by the "Play All" button.

I think from your later comment that you understand exactly what I'm
trying to do. Just to be 100% sure, and in case anyone else is
interested, here is what I want my (only) menu screen to look like and
do:

.------------------------------------------------------------.
| |
| Title |
| |
| |
| .-------------------------. |
| | | |
| | | |
| |Nice large image, ideally |
| | | |
| | inside one of TDA | |
| | | |
| | standard 'button frames'| |
| | | |
| | Or maybe even a | |
| | | |
| | movie clip? | |
| | | |
| '-------------------------' |
| Play whole DVD |
| |
| |
| .------. .------. .------. .------. .------. |
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | |
| '------' '------' '------' '------' '------' |
| Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch. 5 |
| These all play from start of that Chapter. |
| Ideally to end of DVD! But I suppose I could live with just|
| the section itself. .--.
'--------------------------------------------------------|--|'
Play All button reduced
to minimum and moved beyond TV safe area
so cannot be seen in DVD

Once you have changed your "Chapters" into tracks, you
could do the following:

I did toy with idea of doing that. But if I want each to play right to
the end of the DVD, rather than just that section, then I would be
using much more DVD capacity and encoding time. Assuming for
simplicity that each chapter was at equally-spaced points, then the
requirement would be
100% + 80% + 60% + 40% + 20% = 300%, so instead of say 1.5 GB I would
need 4.5 GB.

Assuming you have made your own Main menu theme,
you can just edit it.

One concept to keep in mind is that you can easily change
what any feature/item of a menu "looks like", but you have to
trick TDA if you want to change what a menu item does.

That's one of the key messages in your post for me - and one that
clearly doesn't come across in the TDA Help!

It sounds like you want an item on your menu that does what
the "Play All" button does, but have it look different, no problem.

Exactly right.

Very many thanks for the detailed guidance below. I haven't yet
stepped through it, but aim to do so carefully shortly. At the moment
it looks dauntingly complex, but I expect - once I've done a simple
example - it will become clearer.

I don't have Photoshop but I expect I can do similar stuff in
PaintShop Pro (PSP 8).


The "Play All" button is a graphic image/video menu item (as
opposed to a text field) so you would need to create a graphic
image to be your larger first menu item. You could create an
image file (a psd file would be best, with a transparent
background) with text in the same font as you are using for the
other menu items, just at a larger font size. That's if you are
using text menu items.

If you want it to be a "thumbnail" image just select your first
"chapter"/track .mpg, then find the frame you want to use, as
the still image. (You could use a frame capture tool to select
a frame and save it for manipulation in a graphics editor, if you
wanted more options like changing the shape/AR of image or
adding titling or placing a text title under your "Play All"
"thumbnail") Or you could use any Bitmap, JPEG, PSD, or
MPEG image you wanted.

Then you could have the menu you wanted, with your larger
first selection and all 5 of your "Chapter" tracks on your first
menu page. Just set the "Menu display settings"; "Action to
take after each track has been played:" to "Play next track".
That way it will function just as if the tracks were real chapters.

--------------------------

Now the super hard way, just use the "Track menu only"
setting. Then change the "Play" button into your larger first
menu item. (The same way I described for the "Play All"
button.)

Luck;
Ken



Will be back in a day or so...

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK
.

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