Setting Up DVD menue to accompany live music

[Steve Wilson]

Hi, I'm working with PD9 and want to string series of video projects on a DVD to accompany live musical acts. Since I don't

know exactly how long each act will be, I want each accompanying video for each act to be somewhat longer than the estimated time for each act. What I would like to do is either of the following: 1) If a musical act ends before the accompanying video, be able to skip forward to the next video segment where I could hit pause until that next act is ready, or 2) Be able to return to a menue that lists all the video segments I have on the DVD so I can start the next video segment when the next act is ready. Neither of these is ideal but they are the only ways I can think of doing what I need to do and I can't figure out how to do either one. Can anyone tell me how to achieve either option #1 or #2 or, perhaps suggest another way to accomplish my goal?

Regards,

Steve Wilson
[Email]

[DB83]

I don't know if I understand you.

Video longer than act ? Do you mean that the longer time includes the part where the live act is either preparing for the next song or the stage is being got ready for another act ?

If you do not want that 'down' time then the simplest approach is to edit that out. Maybe add a fade in/fade out between the end of the live for one and the live for the next.

The only other way I see (if I read you correctly) is to set a chapter point at the down time and the next chapter point at the start of the next live. Then that down time can be skipped with the remote at playback without the need to go back to a menu.

[videobruger]

PD9?

I take it that by "want to string series of video projects" and "next video segment" you mean video. Q: Are these videos in DVD-compliant formats or do they need re-encoding?. How much is the total play time for all videos?

perhaps suggest another way to accomplish my goal?

You could use DVDStyler. Use DVD-> Add -> File.. for the first video and DVD-> Add -> File as chapter for the rest.

Then make a menu to select chapter as discussed here

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/375708-Need-to-create-thumbnail-chapters-on-DVD-cre...-with-AVStoDVD

Then you would have both the possibility to use a menu ( 2) ) and skip to the next chapter and pause ( 1) )

Before you start you should use Configuration -> Stettings -> Interface -> Default chapter length and set it to something larger than the playtime of any of your videos.

[Cornucopia]

You could author it to where:

It's like MainMenu -> CLIPA->MenuB->CLIPB->MenuC->CLIPC->MenuD->CLIPD...

And each clip's end (which might "fade to black") action goes into the next menu (which is all plain black?), but the menu holds, and has a single invisible full-screen button to take you to the next clip. The "next" button works as it should as well.
And you could integrate that with the Main menu still giving the option to go to each clip: best of both worlds.

Scott

[Steve Wilson]

Thanks for the replies. I think they all point to a way to set things up so I can skip from one video segment to another without going back to a menu which would be preferable. Although I've been making videos for some time I have never quite understood how the menu options for making DVDs work, so I will need to do some research and see if I can understand your specific suggestions. This will take some time and so I may return with some questions.
In the meantime let me try to describe my project more clearly, in case that matters. I will be providing video to go along with several musical acts ( and I am guessing there will be a total of about 1/2 hour of video for all the acts.) My plan was to piece together parts of videos that I have already produced using PD 9 (these are the video segments that I referred to in my first post). I would put them together on the DVD in the order of the musical acts. But since I don't know exactly how long each act will be, I thought I would make each video segment for each act, somewhat longer than the time I estimate the act will take. That means that when one act finishes, I would like to be able to stop the DVD (i.e. end the video for that act) and skip forward and pause on the next video segment for the next act (until that act is ready to start). And then, do the same for all the other acts.
Again, thanks for your help.
Steve Wilson