CVD/SVCD chapters: can I make a -play all- function?

[gonzalimator]

I'm making a CVD with VCDEasy. It's a collection of "behind the scenes" clips from a movie. I have one mpeg that is a bunch of short documentaries and I've already added entrypoints at the beginning of all of them.

Is there a way to set up the CVD menu to be able to play any one documentary and then return to the menu AND if I wanted, play all of them in a row?

I have assigned the interactivity for each chapter and set it to play once and on timeout return to the documentary menu. Will this even work or will the next chapter play automatically? Do I have to split each documentary to be its own mpeg? Any suggestions?

[vitualis]

It's quite simple really...

From the main menu, have a choice to go to each video clip (it doesn't sound to me like you are making chapters).

For the "play all" function, just create a playlist/selection for the first clip and have it next or timeout to the next clip and chain the whole lot together.

http://www.michaeltam.com

i.e.,

If you have clip A, clip B and clip C, then do the following:

Main Menu
1. --> goes to playlist/selection for clipA --> next/timeout to mainmenu
2. --> goes to playlist/selection for clipB --> next/timeout to mainmenu
3. --> goes to playlist/selection for clipC --> next/timeout to mainmenu
4. --> goes to playlist/selection for clipA (a different one from the above) --> next/timeout to playlist/selection fo clipB --> next/timeout to playlist/selection for clipC --> next/timeout to mainmenu

Remember, there is absolutely no reason why you can't use the SAME media clip (be it a still image or video sequence) as the play-item in different selection / playlists.

Regards.

[gonzalimator]

Thanks for the reply vitualis.

The documentaries are all together as one mpeg. I added entypoints for this mpeg at the beginning of each documentary. My first idea was to do this so that I could make a menu item that goes to the first entrypoint of this mpeg and plays all the docs in a row. I also would have seperate menu items that would play any one documentary and then return to the main menu. What I discovered is that after the chapter/documentary played, it would just continue playing to the next chapter/doc and not return to the main menu until the end of the whole mpeg of documentaries.

Are you saying that I should encode each of the docs as thier own mpeg in order for all this to work?

In VCDEasy, how do I assign a different timeout instruction for a clip that I've already defined to timeout to some other item? Say, if clip D was assigned to timeout to the main menu and I reuse it for another selection in my menu, won't I overwrite the original timeout instruction for clip D if I tell it to timeout to clip E? Can I do this in VCDEasy? Do I have to do this in XML?

Obviously I would like to reuse clips in different menu items if I can. I'm just not exactly clear how to do it. I'm re-encoding the documentaries so that they are all individual mpegs in order to try what you've suggested.

4. --> goes to playlist/selection for clipA (a different one from the above) -->

What does that mean when you said a different one from the above? I thought that we were trying to reuse clipA? Please, I would appreciate any help you can give me. Thanks again.

[gonzalimator]

Can anybody help?

Adam?

Sefy?

vitualis?

I just need some direction. I'm little confused...

[vitualis]

What you want to do is difficult if it is encode as ONE MPEG. The only reason you will need it as ONE MPEG is if you wanted to have SEAMLESS chapters. If there is no need for this, it is much more convenient to chop it up into separate MPEG files.

Actually, if it is in ONE MPEG, the difficultly is not so much in getting it to play all chapters (that's easy), but getting it to just PLAY ONE and then STOP.

One way of doing this is to use a <playlist> with the <play-item> being the beginning of the chapter. Then, set the <playtime> being equal to the length of the chapter in seconds.

Unfortunately, this is not foolproof as not all players understand the playtime command, and even if they do, not all of them correctly understand them with respect to entrypoints.

As stated before, the easiest way to do what you want is to have separate MPEGs for each "episode".

Use a playlist to play each episode.

And to do a "play-all" command, basically just chain a number of playlists together.

Regards.