DVD Architect Question

[John Rofrano]

[Sam Caino] “What is the easiest way to have my ‘destination’ after a video ends be a midway point in this 2 minute menu loop? I tried creating a loop point off the main menu and setting the destination to ‘loop point’ on the short video element, but this seemed to inactivate all my buttons when previewing the disk.”

I don’t believe you can return to a loop point. You can only return to a menu. The loop points is only for when the menu ends playing and starts to loop but once you link to a movie, the movie links back to the beginning of the menu. You would have to make an entirely new menu that doesn’t have the beginning and return to that.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Sam Caino]

Interestingly enough, it actually worked when I tried it again. I set each video clip’s “Destination” to “Main Menu” and “Destination Item” to “Loop point” and the DVD returns to the point in the menu timeline where I placed the green marker (in Architect, not Vegas).

The glitch seems to be – upon starting the dvd for the first time, buttons aren’t activated until after the loop point. But this works to my advantage because the viewer has to watch the animation before moving forward, as I intended.

[Dave Haynie]

Usually, you get the effect you’re after by using two video segments, one as “introductory media” (aka “First Play”), which then links to the first menu. Oddly enough, that has exactly the same effect, too.. the First Play media has no menu items — the user has to watch it, to get to the first interactive menu. Makes me wonder if DVDA was just smart enough to do this for you.

In general, though, menus can be used to add all kinds of transitions between other menus… you can enter a menu, play its contents, then chain directly to another. DVDA seems to optimize the DVD layout to keep menus together, so this is often a bit better looking than chaning to a random video asset, then to a menu, though it ought to look the same.

-Dave

[Sam Caino]

Does the “First Play” option cause that brief pause that all DVDs do when switching from one menu page to the next? The cool thing about this method is that it seamlessly transitions from intro animation to menu, yet you still get the effect of skipping the animation after returning to the menu from your movie(s).

[John Rofrano]

[Sam Caino] “Does the “First Play” option cause that brief pause that all DVDs do when switching from one menu page to the next?”

Yes it will pause. 🙁 I was going to originally suggest this but realize that you wanted a seamless transition. I’m glad you found that DVD Architect can do this. I was at my editing workstation when I replied so i couldn’t check. This is good to know.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Sam Caino]

Thanks, as always for your attention John and Dave. I am glad I made a tiny contribution to this forum since you guys have saved me countless times on the job!

[Greg Barringer]

Here’s what I did. I have a video for the first play that lasts 17 seconds and links to the main menu. To create the main menu I took a snapshot of the last frame and used that as the background of the menu.
That way the video plays at the beginning only and the buttons appear at the end. When you go to a sub chapter and return to the main menu the first video does not play.