Out of time, need help with DVDA 4

[Peter Wright]

File > New > Menu based.

Above the left hand panel there’s a + icon for Insert Object – the last item on the dropdown is Introduction Media – use this to insert the First Play Clip – should have a star on to confirm it’s first play. When Previewing to check this make sure you select Preview > Preview Disc.

Drag each of the other clips to the menu – position and size them.
To find an appropriate head shot on the thumbnail highlight that button, select Media in the righ hand panel, click on the drop down next to “Start Time” and drag the slider till you find the desired frame.

Hope that’s enough to help – feel free to ask more questions.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[John Frey]

Thanks, Peter. Rather than find a headshot from thumbnails, need to link the three stills taken with a digital still camera to each speaker, so that, on the main menu after first play, the viewer sees these 3 headshots and can click on whichever one they wish to see. Also, when I drag the three clips to the menu, the names of the clips appears under the first black frame of the clip. Can I prevent the name from showing up under the file. Instead, I would like to add a text name in DVDA, linked to the file and the picture so that: First play ends, the viewer sees three files with the associated headshot directly over the file and the person’s name down below. End action after playing a speaker is backk to the main menu. Whew! Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Edward Troxel]

You can change the button image to any still you wish. It does not have to be a frame of the video. Also, right-click the button and you can pick whether you want to see the image and text, image only, or text only.

Edward Troxel

[Peter Wright]

To change thumbnail to your still – Select the button – in the right Button Properties panel / Media, locate the Thumbnail Media Line. Drop your still from DVDA Explorer onto this line.

To change the default name of a button, select that button’s text, click “Edit Text” below the preview window, then type in the Person’s name.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au

[John Frey]

Thanks, guys, for the prompt info. I was able to muddle my way through this morning and finished the long renders and burns. Both discs look good. Now I will dig into DVDA for real.

[John Frey]

Peter – how well does the smart render feature in DVDA4 work. I changed one item, the 30 second first play intro. Went back to the DVDA project, clicked on smart render, and it only took a minute. Yesterday, with fit-to-disc of nearly 2.5 hrs. of Mpeg2 files, the prepared folder took about 3.5 hrs. Am burning a disc as we speak and will have a look, but, from your experience, does the smart render feature really solve small changes in really long projects? Are there any problems when using it?

[Peter Wright]

Smart Render is excellent – it recognises the minimum changes that are necessary and retainds the rest. When using Fit to Disk, it will need to re-render all the movie clips at a new bitrate to make them fit. If this is likely to be needed, it’s best to put avi files into DVDA so thay only get encoded to MPEG 2 once. Re-encoding MPEG2 to MPEG 2 can reduce quality.

The other way to go is to use a bitrate calculator when encoding in Vegas – this will workout your average and max bitrates to make a given duration of video fit on disc.

Peter Wright
Perth, Western Oz
http://www.allroundvision.com.au