[Rob Strobbe]

Most likely a driver issue of some kind. Be sure that you have:

1. The latest update for your version of DVD Architect. (Also make sure it’s the update for the correct edition, Studio or Pro.) You can download updates from Sony’s website.
2. The latest driver for the drive you’re using to burn and the operating system you’re using. One note, I’ve heard that upgrading from one OS to another can sometimes result in driver conflicts ’cause not all files get replaced properly. Unfortunately, service packs can screw things up sometimes, too.

3. If applicable, the latest firmware for the drive you’re using to burn. This is software that is part of the drive itself and is not specific to the operating system.

Numbers 2 and 3 you should be able to download from the drive’s manufacturer’s website.

Alternatively, if you have more than one DVD burner, try the other one.

Rob

[Rob Strobbe]

You can disregard that part. DVD Architect Studio 3.0 didn’t accept AC3 files, and VMS didn’t encode them. I think that may have been added in DVDA Studio 4.0 or maybe even 5.0.

Just had a thought: You may need to check to make sure the DVD player being used supports PCM audio and is setup correctly for it. Not a lot of commercially made DVDs use PCM, so you (or your friend) probably wouldn’t have noticed before now. Did you try playing the disc on more than one player? Or on any computers?

Rob

[Rob Strobbe]

Alex, are you using DVD Architect Studio (and not DVD Architect Pro)? I can’t find any info on it now, but I seem to recall DVDA Studio having, at one time, a bug to do with PCM / wave audio. I don’t use the Studio apps on a regular basis, so I really can’t remember the details or how to fix it.

Whatever you’re using, just for kicks, try rendering an AC3 file out of Vegas and replacing the audio in your DVD Architect project. (Incidentally, is there a reason you want to use PCM / wave instead of AC3? AC3 is much more common.)

Rob

[Rob Strobbe]

> I have a 1 hr m2v/ac3 video clip. I want to author a DVD that
> will allow the viewer to either “PLAY ALL” or to skip to any
> one of 8 segments.

That, I get. But what do you want to happen after that segment finishes? If you want it to continue playing the movie (with the ability to use the skip buttons), then all you need is one movie with chapter markers. After you add the chapters, right-click your Play All button and choose Insert Scene Selection Menu. DVDA will add another menu with a button for each chapter. The main menu will have a button linking to the Scene Selection menu. If you’d rather have all buttons on the main menu, copy all of the Scene Selection Menu buttons and paste them back onto your main menu, then delete the Scene Selection menu.

> BTW, regardless of my setting the end action to the next chapter
> or the main menu, it really doesn’t matter because all I get is the
> illegal operation symbol (circle w/ slash) when I press the
> NEXT remote button.

Right. Because you’re pressing the CHAPTER skip buttons, and they’re not chapters anymore. You’ve changed the In and Out points so that each “chapter” is its own movie. When you hit the NEXT button, the player can’t find a chapter to skip to — because that movie doesn’t have any more chapters.

Now, if you want individual scene selection buttons that play a segment and then return to the menu UNLESS the viewer presses a chapter skip button, you’re out of luck. (Maybe through the use of scripts, but I really don’t know.)

> The 9 button menu DVD I burned has only 4 VOBs. One for the menu,
> and 3 others that break at 1GB like any other DVD file structure

Okay, change “VOB” to “movie.” The point is, each segment is limited to the In and Out points that you set. The player can’t go beyond the points you set, so if there’s not another chapter marker within that segment, the player has nowhere to go.

Rob

[Rob Strobbe]

Do you have any keyframes set? It sounds like one is changing the shape back to the default of circle. If you’re using keyframes to move the shape around, understand that each keyframe stores every setting in that window. Click each keyframe and verify that the correct shape is chosen at that point in time. Start with any that are at or near the moment where the shape changes.

Rob

[Rob Strobbe]

May I ask why you’re using that workflow? It seems to me you’re using two well-known workarounds, effectively canceling each other out.

Steps A through I is what someone would normally do if they want to have a “scene selection” menu where the player returns to the menu after playing the selected scene. The reason you add the movie multiple times and change the In / Out points is to turn that one movie into several smaller movies. This allows each scene to have its own end action. They want them all to play in order without returning to the menu (the default behavior for individual movies).

But then in Step J, you set the end action for each “chapter” (And understand, they are no longer chapters — each one is added to the disc as its own VOB because you’ve set it up that way) to lead to the next chapter. This is a workaround someone would use when they have several individual movies (files) that they want to act as a single movie divided into chapters. (See post script.)

In effect, you’re trying to make a single movie act like several shorter movies…and then trying to make those all act as a single movie.

What is it you want? If you want that one movie to have several chapters, and you want the chapter skip buttons to move between those movies, then just add the movie once and set chapter markers. The rest comes naturally to any and every DVD player.

Rob

PS: Note that the “several files acting as one movie” trick is very unpredictable. The DVD player manufacturers apparently do not agree on what should happen when chapter skip buttons are used when there’s no chapter to skip to. Personally, I think your player’s behavior makes the most sense, but behavior in the wild has varied from jumping to some seemingly random movie (probably the file that’s physically adjacent to the current one) to stopping playback an returning to the player’s default screen.

[Rob Strobbe]

No. The behavior of remote buttons is a function of the DVD player. Changing that through DVD, even temporarily, would require that a DVD be able to “reprogram” the buttons. Personally, I wouldn’t want a DVD to have that kind of power.

Stop means STOP. If your client doesn’t want that, you can disable the Stop button for any media item on its Properties page. Maybe eventually he’ll figure out that the Menu button will take him to the menu. 😉

Rob

[Rob Strobbe]

As far as playback is concerned, don’t worry about the chapter markers. By this point, they’re pretty much irrelevant since there aren’t any between the In and Out points. You screenshots look fine.

If it makes you feel better, after you’ve set your In and Out point, you can delete the chapter markers (right-click it, choose Delete Marker). Note that there will always be at least one — the one that “follows” your In point. Every movie has to have at least one chapter marker, even if it’s at the very beginning.

Rob

[Rob Strobbe]

After you’re done setting the In / Out points for “Chapter 1,” go back to the scene selection menu and double-click the button for “Chapter 2.” This opens the timeline for that movie, where you will follow Step #7 again.

(I kind of implied this by using the word “each” in step #6, but I should clarify that when I post this in the future. Thanks for beta testing my instructions. 😉

Remember, what you once had as chapters are now individual, autonomous media items. The timeline you see is for that movie. To edit anything, including the In / Out points, for a different movie, you have to navigate into that different movie’s timeline. You can do that by going to a menu that links to that movie and double-clicking its button or just double-clicking that movie in the Project Overview window.

Rob

[Rob Strobbe]

To clarify, when I said “online help,” I was referring to the help system available within the DVD Architect program. (You access it from within DVDA by hitting the F1 key or going to Help > Contents and Index. The text you’ve pasted, though accurate for creating a standard scene selection menu, is not from DVD Achitect’s online help or manual.

If you go there and search for “scene selection”, the first topic result will be Adding a Scene Selection Menu. Double-click that, and you will be presented with instructions for three options regarding scene selection menus. You want the second one titled Create a menu that returns to the scene selection menu… In the DVD Architect Pro 5.2 manual (not any of the Quick Start Guides), this is on page 43.

That said, here’s my version, which is slightly different but gives essentially the same result.

1. Add your movie to the project.
2. Double-click the menu button for that movie to bring up its timeline. There, add markers to indicate the chapters you’ll be needing. (It’s not absolutely necessary, but it will really help later on.) When you’re done, go back to the menu with the movie’s button.
3. Select the movie’s button and go to Edit > Copy or hit Ctrl+C on the keyboard.
4. Go to Edit > Paste or hit Ctrl+V on the keyboard until you have as many copies on your menu as you have “chapters” in your movie.
5. Tidy up these menu buttons to make this “scene selection menu” look the way you want. You could do this later, but I imagine the menu looks a bit messy by this point and will be easier to work with if you clean it up.
6. For each of these button, double-click it to navigate to its timeline.
7. Move the In and Out points (the yellow flags on the timeline) to indicate the start and end of that particular copy. This will be easier if you added chapter markers as mentioned above. Bonus tip: Do the Out point first. As you change the In point, the chapter numbers will change. (After all, if your movie starts “after” Chapter 1, how can that be Chapter 1 any longer?)

That should do it.

Rob