couple of quick DVD-lab newbie questions...

[msimon7]

hello,
since DVDWS trashed my mpeg video files when rendering my DVD, i'm trying DVD-lab. couple of quick questions, hopefully they are simple

1) i want an image to play for about 5 seconds and then jump to the main menu. don't see how to add a still image to the project, so i made it a button-less menu and want it to timeout after 5 seconds. I can't find the PCG tab (according to help) for the menu to set this timeout value. where is it?
figured this one out, had to have the "menu properties window" visible >> View/Menu Properties. looked everywhere for it, finally found it
update 2: still does not work like i would want it to. wanted to just display and still image for 5 seconds and then automatically go to the main menu. trying to use a menu to do this gives me the warning/error that there "are no active buttons on the canvas". so how would I do what i'm looking for?

2) I want to add an audio file as backgroung music to my menu(s), how does one do this. again searched in help and can't find it.
figured this one out, had to have the "menu properties window" visible >> View/Menu Properties. looked everywhere for it, finally found it

3) how do you set chapter points in a movie and link to them from a menu?
still could use a little help on this one and question below about aspect ratio
update 3: OK so I figured out how to add chapter marks. quite easy from the little preview window.
i do have a question about the preview window though, it does not play audio. my video is an m2v file and my audio is a matching mpa file. in the video window (the main movie window) I have associated both the video and audio files with it, but when i preview it only show the audio. any way to get both to play? makes it really hard to add chapter points.

I know these are basic questions, but reading help describes what i want but doesn't really clue me in on how to go about it.
this looks like a great app and i'm looking forward to using it more and learning. I have version 1.3beta1 installed.

also my m2v file is 352x240, do you think this will be an issue when creating the final DVD? i was able to import it, but it gave some warnings. Ulead supports this ratio, but also crapped out when creating the final DVD folder (hence the reason i'm trying dvd-lab)

thanks for any help
oh, and if you know of any good guides/tutorials online would love to read them so i can limit my dumb newbie questions.
thanks! marc

[andkiich]

OK, let me give it a shot.

1) You could also take your still image, make it an MPEG video file by using the slide show feature, then connect that movie to the first menu. Then the 5 second movie will play, then go to the menu.
I've done something similar, but I used Windows Movie Maker 2(this was before DVD-Lab had the slideshow function). I encoded the WMM2 AVI file in TMPGENc to MPEG2, then imported it into DVD-Lab.

2) To add an audio file to a menu, import the ausio into the VIDEO & AUDIO section, then just drag the audio file on top of the menu background you want it to play. At the bottom of the menu window, you will see 2 bars show up, MOTION and AUDIO. Motion wil be empty and AUDIO should have the name of the audio file listed. Motion is used for motion menus, so if you have a video clip you want to play in the background, you would drag that into the menu background area, and it's name would show in the MOTION bar.

3) Chapter points. Select the movie that you want to add chapters 2 and make it active(the last thing selected). In the lower right of the screen is a preview window for the video. Above that preview window,there are a bunch of icons. The ones with the film strip in them are chapter functions. One icon will place one chapter point, the other will bring up a dialog box for automated chapter points. You can also click on the movie box itself and place manual chapter points. One note, though. Chapters will only be set if you have demuxed the MPEG2 file into elementary streams. If you're trying to re-author a VOB file, it will look like it is setting chapter points, but it will not work.

4) 352x480. The warning it gave you was probably somthing about the project being set up by default as full D1, but the video is half D1. Some older DVD players had issues with the menus and movies being different resolutions. It probably won't make a difference, but if you want to, you can go into the PROJECT menu and change your project to half D1, then it will sync the menu to the video.

Guides, not too many. Most are from the help inside the program, but this forum is here to help us all, so if you have questions, ask away!

[msimon7]

thank you for the reply! I had figured out (2), but still stuck on (1). I will try your suggestion for a short "slide show". that would be good enough if it works!
for #3, my movie is split into 2 files, m2v and mpa. is m2v an elementary stream? it is de-muxed from the mpeg file. also do you know how i would get the audio track to play with the video in the preview window? that was kinda bugging me, but i do have a manual work around (play the audio track in a player and try to sync them for help making the chapter points. kinda lame, but the best i could think of)

i'll also try setting the project to hald D1 just to be safe
thanks again for the reply. very much appreciated! marc