goal: menu with 4 titles with separate menu for one of them?

[spiritgumm]

Using TDA 1.6, I'm trying to put 3 episodes on one dvd (each a separate "track"), with a 4th "track" that is a compilation of clips from other eps. When I added the clips together, the audio was getting out of sync in the compilation track, so someone suggested I just add the clips separately instead of merging them into one track. However, this makes the Main menu page look very busy and doesn't indicate what's a clip or a whole episode.
Is there a way to have the 4 tracks showing on the Main menu, but when you click on the compilation track, it goes to a menu of all the clips? It seems to be all-or-nothing in TDA.
I'm wondering if I could make each project separately to be combined later? A video with a menu of the separate clips compilation with TDA, and a video with menu of the 4-track version with TDA. Then somehow insert the clip compilation menu into the the 4-track compilation with Vobblanker or Pgcedit?
I've read DvdRemake Pro will merge 2 dvds with menus but that's not quite what I'd like to do.

[Midzuki]

If I understand you correctly, you want 3 simple titles plus
1 multi-PGC title, with the 4th link of the main menu leading to
the chapter menu for the multi-PGC title.
Easily doable in DVD-lab PRO, unless you really have no other
way to go than using several tools to do one single job.

============

[Alex_ander]

You can first make project with top+track menus (without editing unwanted track menus), then use DVDRemake for editing button commands to bypass those pages. Easier than to switch to a new authoring application with manual menu building. Join your clips for track 4 in VideoReDo before authoring to prevent sync problems.

[Midzuki]

Alex_ander wrote:

Easier than to switch to a new authoring application with manual menu building.

Thanks for well-informing the uninformed
(me, as the case seems to be)

============

[spiritgumm]

I'll try to explain again:
I want a menu with 4 selectable titles displayed. 3 of them are episodes, and selecting them just goes to the episode. The 4th title goes to another menu (essentially the same type as the first menu) with several selectable titles (not chapters) and hopefully a "Play all" button.
With TDA 1.6, you can't have this 2nd menu; all episodes and clips would show together.

If I joined the clips in VideoRedo, then I wouldn't need a menu that gave an extra menu for the clip compilation.

[tinker]

I think with all these template based softwares you are stuck to a simple menu.
If you want to do that you either invest in DVD Lab, or go with Ale_under suggestion, which will be cheaper.
From your posts, you posted on this forum I would suggest to get DVD Lab Pro, you will be happy at the end. You are beyond simple DVD authoring.
They have 30 day trial.

[Midzuki]

The f****** m***** of DVD-lab PRO is publicly available at no cost 8)

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/Helppro/

++++++++++++++

[spiritgumm]

Funny you should mention Dvd Lab - I was tinkering with the Dvd-Lab Studio demo today. Looks like they've given up with it, and are only updating the Pro version. Do you know offhand if Studio will do what I want?
I also wonder if the freeware menu makers might do it - DvdauthorGui, Gui for Dvdauthor, and DvdStyler?
At some point I'd like to get VideoRedo; I'm thinking the sync problem with TDA might be from 3:2 pulldown video.

The f****** m***** ... is publicly available at no cost

I can read between the lines, of course, but those abbreviations suggest something obscene.

[tinker]

Yes Studio should do what you want.
Only thing is , you have to put everything in one VTS, it does not support multiple VTS. You can have 99 menus and use connections to go where you want.
I do not know about freeware to do this, but I think most of them work the same as TDA, Nero or any other quick DVD authoring software.
As for puldown, I ran into this myself. If you have to do that you have to recode video with TMPG Xpress, together with audio, than there is no problem with sync.

[spyhawk]

I want a menu with 4 selectable titles displayed. 3 of them are episodes, and selecting them just goes to the episode. The 4th title goes to another menu (essentially the same type as the first menu) with several selectable titles (not chapters) and hopefully a "Play all" button.
With TDA 1.6, you can't have this 2nd menu; all episodes and clips would show together.

You only need two tools to accomplish what you want: TDA and DvdRemake Pro using the Merge feature with some light modifications.

1. So in TDA, create only a Main Menu with 4 tracks or titles. Remember to choose "Display main menu" for 'Firstplay action' and 'Action to take after each track has been played' options. The 4th track can be anything you want as this will be blanked and not played in DvdReMake Pro. The main menu has a "Play all" button as well. Let's call this DVD1.

2. Repeat step 1 for another compilation of clips as separate tracks or titles with only a Main Menu in TDA. Let's call this DVD2.

3. Now use the Merge feature in DvdReMake Pro to merge the 2 DVDs. This is where the real fun begins. Only a few minor changes to some VM commands and the root menu pgc in the last VTS. At first play, you will not even see the default DvdReMake disk selection menu but the main menu of the 4 tracks.

Well, I'm not gonna delve into details unless you're interested in this approach. Or you'd like to use the Studio approach. Just in case, with my approach, first I need to know how many tracks or titles are you compiling the clips so I can duplicate. And I just wanna confirm how many VMG PGCs there are after the merge.

[guns1inger]

GUIForDVDAuthor can also do all of this for free.

[spiritgumm]

Only thing is, you have to put everything in one VTS, it does not support multiple VTS.

Do I need to worry about this? That is, what are the implications?
I've tried copying a dvd (which played fine) with 'Shrink but it looked like a mess - the movie was broken into clips which weren't in any order. Is that a Dvd Lab consequence?
Does it also mean you can't return to the top menu? Reason I ask is I just tried DvdRemake demo, merging 2 dvds (which actually merged the entire 2nd dvd, not 15 second clips). For some reason I can't return to the top menu (probably my mistake). Ran it thru Pgcedit, and can see the top menu got added to the end rather than the top. Nevertheless, I'm thinking it might be easier to do this, and then replace the clipped video with the original video (using Pgcedit or Vobblanker). What do you think about that, Spyhawk? Inre to my project, the 4th title will contain 13 separate clips. Does the Pro version have it's own demo, and would I need that instead?

[tinker]

DVD Lab Pro has its own trial version-no restrictions.
One VTS is OK a long as you have all the assets the same, that is same audio type and same video (4:3 or 16:9).
Going back to your first post, doing it in DVD Lab. I would make one Master menu with 4 buttons. 3 buttons, each connected to one episode, 4th button connected to next menu with buttons connected to each clip.
In case of 34 clips it may need 2 or 3 menus with total of 32 buttons connected to each clip.
In your connection window you will have 37 movies (3 episodes, 34 clips).

As for joining DVD with Remake, you can change navigation of DVD after joining is done to way you like it to behave.

[spiritgumm]

All the A/V has the same specs, though the 3 episodes have subtitles, the clips don't. Thanks for the Dvd Lab help, tinker, I'll give it a shot. For the record, it's 13 clips, not 34 (I'm only clarifying for anyone else following this thread).
The appealing aspect of Dvdremake is I can make menus in TDA (which I already own and know how to do), and merge them somehow, depending on Spyhawk's advice. I haven't decided about which ware to buy yet.
Then there's the 3rd possibility - Gui for Dvdauthor.

[tinker]

Sorry for mistake, I do not know where I got 34.
Subtitles are no problem, I guess if you can see them they are burned into the file, uless you have to initilize them before viewing.

[spiritgumm]

The subs are sup files for each episode, which I'd like to keep. Is it not possible? This is an interesting point because I have another project where I'd like to add deleted scenes back into a movie. The scenes don't have sup files, but the movie does. I can leave them out of the movie, but it would be good to know ahead of time.

[tinker]

DVD Lab likes to work with elementary streams. When it demax the file, subs are not there, but if you have separate sub file, you can open it in lab and insert into the movie. It does support this type:
*.sub;*.srt;*.ssa;*.son;*.sst
To introduce deleted streams, you have to be careful because they usually have different audio file.
I usually use Remake for that, but there may be others with different software, I do not know much about free once.

[spyhawk]

The demo lets you merge the entire dvd. Only when you export does it cut to 15 sec clip per block. You must use the Pro demo in order to customize the merge DVD.

To get to the top menu, just select Title menu. This will direct you to the default disk selection menu, which is located in the last VTS.

The following steps are really simple. Hopefully this will be easy enough for you to follow.

1. Have your TDA files ready. One is the main menu with the 4 tracks selection. The 4th track can be any small clip you want as this will be blanked. Let's call this DVD1. Another is the main menu of compilation of 13 clips, where each clip is a track or title. Let's call this DVD2. I believe there's a Play All button for each main menu as well.

2. Import the 2 DVDs as 2 projects.

3. Hide/blank the last VTS for DVD1. This is the 4th title that will not be played.

4. Merge the 2 projects with DVD1 as project1 and DVD2 as project2.

5. Go to the last VTS, root menu PGC, Preview window, right-click on Button 1 (disk 1) and select "Bypass menu (auto select button)". This will hide the menu, auto select disk 1, and go to the main menu of DVD1.

6. Now, go to the VMG PGC of the main menu of DVD1, Preview window, right-click on Button 5 (4th track button) and choose "Edit button command". Change the button command to "Jump VMG PGC X", where X = the last VMG PGC - 1. Note that the last VMG PGC is the Title menu PGC.

And you're done!

You can even go even further by deleting unreferenced VTS and VMG PGCs. But let's leave it alone. Don't need to complicate things until you're comfortable with the program.

[Alex_ander]

I'll try to explain again:
I want a menu with 4 selectable titles displayed. 3 of them are episodes, and selecting them just goes to the episode. The 4th title goes to another menu (essentially the same type as the first menu) with several selectable titles (not chapters) and hopefully a "Play all" button.
With TDA 1.6, you can't have this 2nd menu; all episodes and clips would show together.

You can have this second menu if you author 4 tracks (with chapters in track 4) and select 'Top and track menu' before menu creating. But you'll also get an extra useless menu page for each 1-chapter track, those can be easily bypassed using DVDRemake (by changing 3 button commands).
Why do you want to make separate titles (not chapters) in place of track 4? If you join the clips in other application and make chapters at authoring, you will have a separate menu page with all buttons + 'play track' button. Even if you want to return to menu page after playing a selected chapter, this is editable with DVDRemake.

[cesarjuarez]

i am usin dvd workshop try it

If I understand you correctly, you want 3 simple titles plus
1 multi-PGC title, with the 4th link of the main menu leading to
the chapter menu for the multi-PGC title.
Easily doable in DVD-lab PRO, unless you really have no other
way to go than using several tools to do one single job.

============

[spiritgumm]

Thanks, guys, my cup runneth over with suggestions.
I will post later after I try some of them.

[spiritgumm]

I tested DvdRemake Pro demo with 2 samples, and it worked fine. Nice little program though I doubt it would have instructed me how to do this, so my hat's off to you, Spyhawk, for figuring it out! When I do the real thing, I can replace the 15 second bites with the full VOB's with Pgcedit.
I will re-try it with Dvd Lab to see how well that does the linking.

You can have this second menu if you author 4 tracks (with chapters in track 4) and select 'Top and track menu' before menu creating.

If you load more than one video in a track, TDA will merge them together as one track. Ordinarily this is fine, but as I said at the start, the audio was getting unsynced when I did this, so my goal was to see if I could group the clips under their own menu but not as one track. You can't do this in TDA 1.6.
An advantage to keeping the clips separate is I can add/subtract clips at a later date without reencoding them. A disadvantage is that I'll have to reauthor if I add/subtract clips. I'll see if VideoRedo can merge the clips without changing the sync.
Thanks for all the help!

[spiritgumm]

Spyhawk, I have a question about your DvdRemake method. If I want to return to the Clip menu while watching a clip, I have to skip to the end of the clip to be brought back. If I hit "Root" (I'm still testing this in the computer with Media Player Classic) nothing happens. If I hit "Title" I go to the main menu (episodes). Is there a way I can set it up so "Root" (or whatever corresponding remote button) will direct to the Clip menu?

[spyhawk]

The Root menu is not defined, that's why pushing the Root button has no effect. You need to to create one in the VTS where the clip resides.

So here's what you do:

1. Right-click on the clip VTS, and select 'Add Language Unit'. 'Menus' domain is created.
2. Right-click on 'Menus' and select 'Add PGC'.
3. Right-click on the new added PGC and select 'Set menu category' -> 'Root menu'.
4. Finally, on this new added PGC, add the pre-command 'Jump VMG PGC X', where X = the last VMG PGC - 1.

[spiritgumm]

I see the clips menu can't be designated as "Root", only "Title," so it looks like I need to designate each clip with that menu-pgc-command ? I tried it with the first clip, and it works, but other two clips don't react. If you click on the pic, you can see in my test case: Main menu has 4 titles where the 4th title goes to the Clip menu (which has 3 titles). The VTS 1-3 are first 3 titles in the main menu; the 4th VTS is blank. VTS 5-7 are the 3 clips.
http://img101.imageshack.us/my.php?image=remakexv3.jpg

[spyhawk]

Did you follow the same steps for VTS 5-7? It should work.

[spiritgumm]

I tried it with the first clip (VTS 5), which did work. I was asking if I should do this for all 3 clips. Your instruction wasn't plural so I thought you thought all clips were actually joined into one VTS. I'm sure your instruction will work with the other 2 clips. When I really do this, I'll have to adjust 13 clips.

[spyhawk]

You mentioned in your previous posts that each clip is in its own VTS, so yes, I meant to repeat the same steps for each clip.

Actually, you don't have to repeat the same steps. Since you created the root menu PGC in the first clip, you can just copy the menu PGC, go to the second clip VTS, add the Language Unit, and add the copied PGC on the created Menus domain. Then repeat the same steps (add Language Unit, add copied PGC) for the remaining clip VTS.