TmpgEnc DVD Author 3 - Question About Menu Music

[heyjjjaded]

I have created a home DVD with 12 chapters/tracks. My menu shows chapters 1 through 6 on menu page 1 and chapters 7 through 12 on menu page 2. I have the same background music selected for both menu pages. Is there a way to make the music play from the beginning on menu page 1 and then continue to play in sequence when page 2 is selected. I'd like the music to just keep playing ... have it pick up on page 2 right where it left off on page 1 (instead of having the music start over from the beginning on menu page 2). Is this possible? Thank you!

[Alex_ander]

If you author it in TDA3 it is only possible to play from the beginning the background music of currently selected page. The thing you want is similar to multi-angled video, maybe it's possible to do it in DLP.

[guns1inger]

The DVD Spec does not allow for continuous playback of video or audio across menus. Even using cell-based switched menus doesn't allow for it. It cannot be done for DVD. I believe that it can be done with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, however you have spend thousands to get an authoring tool capable of even beginning to exploit the possibilities of these formats. Everything at the consumer level is basically a DVD authoring tool re-badged.

[Alex_ander]

Is it impossible to combine 2 angles of looped video (for 2 pages) having the same audio track, and buttons over video (different button sets for each angle)?

[guns1inger]

You can't have multi-angle menus. You could use BOV I guess, but you would only have one set of buttons (I believe), and no sane way of controlling the shift. You would also have to code for the end of the video because it isn't a menu, and doesn't have the same controls as a menu for looping/timeouts etc.

I have watched a lot of discs, and any menu that is different/interesting/clever gets special attention. To date I have not seen anything that gets over this restriction.

[heyjjjaded]

Thanks for the replies. I'm new to the program, so I'm a little confused on the differences between adding movie clips as "files" or "tracks." I figured this is where the answer to my question is. Doesn't sound like it though. Thank you again.

[guns1inger]

It is, but that isn't the question you asked.

[heyjjjaded]

But isn't the answer to the question I originally asked "no, this program won't allow the background music to play continuously from 1 menu page to another." Sorry, I'm not good at learning new programs ... it takes me way too long to figure them out. I always get there, but it takes a while.

[Alex_ander]

I'm new to the program, so I'm a little confused on the differences between adding movie clips as "files" or "tracks."

In TDA there are two different types of imported videos: files (like .mpg, .mpv + audio, etc.) or DVD video sources. In case of DVD source (wizard should bring you to DVD folder) the imported unit is called a track (=one of the DVD titles in case of multi-titled DVD). In most cases (when source videos have different properties) you have to create a new track (the same name is used in TDA projects) in your project to add next item (otherwise you can add videos to the same track).
At menu creation buttons for videos belonging to the same track are grouped in track menu page(s).

[heyjjjaded]

At menu creation buttons for videos belonging to the same track are grouped in track menu page(s).

Thank you. If my DVD has 12 video clips, and I prefer to have a simple 2 page menu with buttons for videos 1 to 6 on page 1 and buttons for videos 7 to 12 on page 2, then am I correct that I should add each of my video clips as 12 separate tracks? Thank you again.

[Alex_ander]

You can always do so and then select 'top menu only' before menu creation. But this is only necessary in case your videos are encoded differently (e.g. have different audio, aspect ratio etc.) and you don't want to re-encode them so that they could be used in the same track. More often a DVD is organized into 1-5 tracks and has menu pages for each level.
There are mainly two type of menu pages created by TDA:
- top menu listing tracks if there's more than one track;
- track menu (for each track) listing chapters as parts of that track
There are options to force 'top menu only' (as mentioned above) and 'track menu only'.
If a track is created from a single MPEG file (or from an imported DVD track) you can set chapters on timeline and in corresponding track menu buttons linking to those chapters will be created. If you add more imported videos (with compliant encoding) to the same track, extra chapter points are automatically created in the beginning of each one added. When you have differently encoded set of files you can put them to another track with its own menu page, etc.
As for number of items in menu page, it comes from the template used and you can't adjust it.