DVD ARCH and a menu with 14 clips of 3'lenght

[Marcus Martell]

Hola,
i'd like to know how u'd render(custom settings of compression) 14 clips of 3'45" that should be the chapters of a dvd. Any suggestions?
thx

MM

[Seth Bloombaum]

Do you want the player to return to the menu after each clip is played, or to go on to the next clip?

To return to menu, it is most straightforward to render out individual clips. A faster workflow is to set up each clip as its own region, then, use the batch rendering script included with Vegas and select "render by regions". The trick with this script is that it will see all the standard rendering templates and all templates you've saved, so, if you need a custom template you'd save it from the "render as" window, then run the batch script.

To go on to the next clip after a clip completes, it's easiest to render out one big clip and set up chapters in DVDA. You can also drop a marker at the beginning of each clip in Vegas, and check "Save project markers in media file" when rendering. DVDA can pick up these markers and use them to set up chapters.

As for compression, your total length is about 53 minutes - you can use 8Mbps as your max rate.

For some of the basics of compression and prep for DVDA, I highly recommend Edward Troxel's excellent newsletters. Try Vol. 4 #1.

[Don Bloom]

Doing it as Seth described would work great either way but you can also render each clip seperately and then bring into DVDA and set the END ACTION to go from chapter to chapter. This way is one chapter needs somesort of re-do you're not re-rending the whole thing only that one clip and when you bring it back into DVDA it uses 'smart rendering' so it only has to prepare and render that one clip.

[Marcus Martell]

Hi, thanks guys, every chapter is a city visited last summer.If i put a map, how could i set for every city a chapter?I know it's not that easy 4 a dvdarch rookye like me!
:=)

[Don Bloom]

If I was doing it I would 1st render each clip seperately and let it return to the scene selection menu after viewing, that way the viewer can decide which city they can look at and in what order.

For the menu, I would use a world map as the background and place the city names where they belong on the map if I could do that because of the size of text-14 buttons is a lot when trying to keep the text size so it can be seen.

THEN (and here's where it's going to take a few extra minutes to do in DVDA) when the button for a particular city is pressed a city map of that city comes up-stays for say 15 or 20 seconds maybe with some music related to that city plays and then the clip starts playing. YOu can set times in the properties menu and use an end action to make the clip auto play.
I'm not at my computer right now to give you exactly what to set where but if you need it I can do that tomorrow.
REMEMBER, to set an end action you have to open that particular clip up by dbl clicking on the button. (among other ways) That opens the clip on the timeline, now you can set the end action. Also you could use a still of a map of each city over the world map.
Have fun, if you need more info let me know.

[Marcus Martell]

Wow !What more can i say?I'm newbie with dvdarch and a lot of thing i used 2 do with other dvdmenus sw now i don't know how should i act with that!Since i bought Vegas i didn't get into DVDARCH too much so...i'm trying to get results right now but i'm starting right know with that.....Mr Bloom seems easy, but i can't wait to go back to my pc to test!Have a nice weekend fellas

[Mike Kujbida]

Marcus, see if my lengthy reply in the DVDA Menu Based helps you.

[Marcus Martell]

Mike i remember calling you the MJ of DVDARCH....lol

[Edward Troxel]

If you set the end actions correctly, when it returns to the menu, it can have the NEXT menu item selected. So after watching the link 1 city, when it returned, city 2 would be highlighted and ready for viewing. That doesn't mean they couldn't still navigate to a different city if desired. But it would make it easy to just press "Enter, enter, enter" and watch all cities in sequence.

[Marcus Martell]

cool ED!Where can i find all theese tricks?On your newsletter somewhere?

thx

[Bill Spearman]

That lengthy post Mike refers to is what saved me from losing my hair when I could not figure out how to get it done. That is a tremendous benefit of this great forum, the sharing of knowledge.

[Edward Troxel]

I actually haven't written that one up in the newsletter. It's a very cool feature, though.

[Mike Kujbida]

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

If you set the end actions correctly, when it returns to the menu, it can have the NEXT menu item selected.

Edward, would you care to expand on this option?
I vaguely remember reading about it but can't figure out how you're doing it.

[Edward Troxel]

Let's walk through a brief example:

Take 3 video clips. Drag them ALL to the menu.

Now double-click on the first video. Go to the "End Action" section. Change the end-action "Destination" to be "Menu 1" (unless you changed the name of the menu). Then change the "Destination Button" to be the second video.

Now go back to the menu and double-click on the second video. Once again, go to the "End Action" sections, change the "Destination" to be "Menu 1", and the "Destination Button" to be the third video.

Once again, go back to the menu and double-click on the third video. Go to the "End Action" section, change the "Destination" to be "Menu 1", and the "Destination Button" to be the first video.

That should do it!

[Mike Kujbida]

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

Then change the "Destination Button"...

Thanks Edward !!!
That's the piece of the puzzle I was missing.

Marcus, Edward is the real MJ of DVDARCH :-)
He's bailed me out more times then I can remember.