Playing only selected chapters - with one menu button ??

[zorrinn]

This is what I want to do. My menu will look like,

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1. Play Movie
2. Play all soundtracks

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So for a musical movie, when I press "2" all the soundtracks should be played, no matter if there are chapters (consisting of dialogues) inbetween them.

Can I do this with VCDEasy, if so how? If not, are there any other tools?

PS: I assume that each of the sound tracks are in seperate chapters

[pbhalerao]

Zorrin,

Let me state what I understood from your post.

• When you select option 1, you wish that the entire movie is played back, including the soundtracks (songs) in the movie
• When you select option 2, you wish that ALL the soundtracks (songs) are played, one after the other, without the normal scenes and dialogs. That is, play song 1, then jump to song 2 and so on.

I do not think that this can be achieved in one mpeg file within the VCD. What you can do is as follows:

1. The first mpeg can be the full movie inclusive of the soundtracks (songs).
2. The second mpeg should be of the soundtracks only.
3. Build the VCD using the above mpegs and aithor them using the chapters and menus.
4. The default interactivity will be - the 'sountracks only' mpeg will start playing after the movie is finished. You do not want that. So what you should do is, at the end of the movie (last chapter), the next item could be 'VCD End' or the MPEG still of the menu.
5. This will make your VCD longer and it may not fit into one CD but if your movie in itself does not fit on one CD, then you can't play all soundtracks in one shot (without changing disks) anyway.

Regards,

[zorrinn]

Thanks. But I think that is not what I had in mind.

I jus want to use VCDEasy to do this, with a single MPG file. I am sure there is some way to alter the XML file to skip chapters and play only those I need (soundtracks alone).

I have seen this being done in some Indian movies, where almost all movies are musicals.

Is there someone else who can help me with the XML structure ?? Please!

[satish]

Even i do have the same requiement

[Znooky]

Hi!
I think this can be done, but I haven't tried it myself.

1. Create all the chapters in the mpg file (dialog and music included)
2. Create a menu selection for 1 (Whole movie) and 2 (Music only)
3. Make the chapters the default one for both menuselection 1 and 2 (i.e. Play all the chapters in the movie, except that for menuselection 2 you will start with the first chapter that is music)
4. Create only the XML-file

Open the XML-file in an editor

For menuselection 2 check the Next chapter in the XML-file. I think you either can change this to point out the next music chapter, or you have to make a copy of the XML-code for menuselection 1 and change the chapter order for menuselection 2.

Like I said I havent tried this myself so I'm not sure if it will work.

To save time for you I would recommed doing a test of this on a short mpg file (10 min). Create only 4 chapters (2 for dialog and 2 for music). You can then experiement with the XML-file and the author of the VCD won't take long time. Also use a CD-RW as you problary won't get it to work in the first time.

Use the modified XML-file to author you VCD in VCDEasy.

//Znooky