DVDA Pro General Questions

[Stephen Mann]

1) DVDA is not an editor. If you want a longer piece of media, you need to make it longer in the editor (Vegas).

2) Button overlay will do this.

3) This is the default mode of DVDA. Just go to the Project Overview menu and arrange things where you want them. You will likely have to fix broken links (in Properties) after moving menu items.

4)In Properties, look for “End Action”.

Sorry that this is not a step-by-step tutorial, but I make all of my menus and buttons in Photoshop, so a lot of what I just told you is from memory.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Matthew Jeschke]

Hey no worries, that was excellent help. I wasn’t even sure where to get started. I had figured as much on question 1 but am still curious, DVDA doesn’t have a setting to change the default duration of a jpg image? It seems to be really short as my FBI warning is only a JPG.

I had thought about rendering it to video in vegas and then porting it over but didn’t want to have to go to that trouble if I didn’t need to.

Thanks!!!!

[Nigel O’neill]

1. I inserted an FBI copyright warning, but it only displays for 3 seconds then goes on. How do I increase the duration of the image?

You could do this in Vegas and stretch the image to what ever duration you want it to be nda re-render, then reimport into DVDA.

2. I want to display a small icon next to the menu item that is currently selected. How do I do that?

Do you mean like a pointing finger that moves as you select?

3. I want my chapter selection menu to be on the same page as the main menu. But it always give me a scene selection menu which I cannot figure out how to create the links on the main menu.

Create the scene selection menu as per normal and then simply drag n drop the links to the top most menu. Delete the scene selection menu when done.

4. I want the video to just start playing after my menu (background) video finishes (around 4 minutes).

I’ll let someone else answer this… .

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Matthew Jeschke]

Na on question 2 I was meaning just like an overlay that displays next to the selected menu item. Mr. Mann was right and I just figured it out. It’s the button “highlight” properties 🙂

I’m slowly but surely churning out the menus. thanks!

[Stephen Mann]

“I had thought about rendering it to video in vegas and then porting it over but didn’t want to have to go to that trouble if I didn’t need to.”

Actually, you get better results by doing as much in Vegas before building the DVD in DVDA. You have more encoding control and options, and you do not want DVDA to be recoding your media because that always compromises the video quality.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com