Making a DVD that plays through and loops at the end?

[Dillinja]

Hi there

I'm new to the forum and to DVD Authoring but it's something I plan to get into. I've read your charter and did a lot of thread searching but haven't been able to find anything concrete on what I'm trying to do.

I'm trying to make a DVD with about 30 small movie-clip chapters that will play straight through and then loop over and start again. I recon I'll be OK with everything except getting the loop to work at the end. So essentially, once started the DVD will run Chapter 1 through 40 and start over. I won't need a menu with any options. So far the only loop info I've come across has been related to looping sound and graphics for menus.

If anyone has any tips or ideas on the best way to approach this I'd be very grateful

Many thanks,

Dillinja


My System:

Athlon 2000
Sony DRU510A
Ulead DVD Workshop
(MyDVD also but not installed)
Verbatim +RW's

[bugster]

I have never actually done this but from what I have seen, DVD-Lab should be able to do this. There is a 30-day free trial avaialble so you won't have to put down hard earned cash before finding out if it is what you need.

[spectroelectro]

Bugster is right, DVDLab is cheap and should do the jpb. THe way you do this in DVDLab is you encode each of your 40 chapters as a separate MPEG file. Then you feed 'em all into DVDLab. Inside DVDLab, you set up each of the 40 MPEG files as a chapter and then connect each chapter ot hte next one, and the 40th capter back to the first one. Set the first chapter as First Play, and you've got it.

[Dillinja]

Well thanks a lot for the speedy replies - I'll try DVD-Lab and let you know how it goes

Thanks again

D

[Nolonemo]

You should be able to do this with any authoring software that allows you to set a time-out for the main menu (eg Ulead's DVD Workshop). Set up your menu with a black background and set the transparency for your menu button at 100%, and set the meun time out to as short as possible (1 sec?). If you are rendering all your clips into one mpeg outside the program, then it will just go back to the menu at the end and after the black screen pause play will resume. If you are importing 40 short clips, set the end action for each clip to "play next chapter" (except for the last one, that you can't change, so it will always return to menu).

If you want to be fancy, capture the beginning of the first clip or end of the last clip for the menu background so you don't have the short black screen between loops.

[Dillinja]

Well I've been testing some DVDs the last couple of days using DVD Lab and I've got the whole thing working pretty much the way I want it to i.e. the DVD plays 40 clips through and then loops.

I'm having problems with the titles and chapters though. For example if I make a test DVD with just 3 small movie clips and burn it I end up with a root menu and a title menu. The DVD browser shows 3 titles with 2 chapters in each title (the first two movie clips). What I should have is just a title menu or one title with my 3 movie clip chapters inside it. Anyone know where I'm going wrong?

This is what I have done in DVD Lab

- 1 Menu with looping mpeg backgound and transparant button that links to Movie1
- 40 Movies with chapter markers at the beginning of each clip
- Each movie linked 1-40 in the connections view, Movie1 set to first play and Movie40 linked back to Movie1

I'm using 1.3Beta and burning with Nero 6.

Thanks a lot,

Dillinja