selections at menu screen??!

[teambrown]

ok i was able to burn the menu screen onto the vcd. now when i play the vcd in the dvd player the menu comes up and stays there until a selection is made. however, the only way to navigate the vcd is to hit fast forward to the next chapter(in this case movie clip)i cant hit a number like 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 in order to go to that particular clip number. did i do somthing wrong when i burned it? as of now the menu was created from a bmp to a still frame mpg with tmpgenc then i used vcdeasy and burned it using the still frame bmp/mpg as the first clip and then i used the interactivity menu and selected play forever(or until a selection is made) but thats as far as i get. no # button takes me anywhere!

[maxxcorp]

Having the same problem on my Panasonic DVD Player, we can't cycle thru the menus but inputting a ## will allow us to jump to a particular picture (only from 0-10 tho).

On my brothers (forgive me, don't know which kind), we can cycle through the menus but that is it.

On my computer, using the DVD player, everything works fine.

Anxoius to try it on my other DVD player at my house at the beach, but that will have to wait...

[vitualis]

Either your clip was made incorrectly (which is certainly true if you used TMPGEnc) and/or your menu was authored incorrectly.

For a better understanding on how the underlying system works:
http://www.geocities.com/medinotes/vcd or the mirror
http://www.vcdimager.org/guides

If you post your XML, I can tell you if there is any specific problem in that.

Regards.

[gonz0]

I'm running to the same problems with VCDEasy 1.09 - trying to create menus with MPEG stills. I'm not able to go to a particular chapter from the main menu (only next, previous and return work). Once the movie starts playing then I can navigate chapters. Did you ever figure out what the problem was?

[gonz0]

After a bit more research, I found the answer on this page:
http://www.vcdimager.org/guides/chapters.html
First of all, it appears that VCDEasy doesn't support interactive menus (where you can enter chapter numbers) - at least not directly. I had to write out an XML and edit it to get what I needed (more details below). As far as I can tell, VCDEasy doesn't combine the chaptering for each MPEG segment in a cd image. So an "MPEG still" only has 1 selectable chapter, and you can't select chapters from a different mpeg segment. Thus, the chapters in the main movie aren't automatically "linked" to the menu.

Here's basically what I did to get working menus for an X(VCD) (i.e. "Mini-guide to creating interactive menus in VCDEasy"). I used MPEG stills, but you could probably create motion mpeg menus also.
1. Took some screen shots from the original DVD using WinDVD. (Main menu + the scene select menus). I also created an image using PowerPoint that says to "insert disk 2". These images should be around 704x480.
2. Created MPEG stills in VCDEasy
3. Loaded the MPEG stills and the movie MPEG into VCDEasy
4. added chapter entry points
5. In the interactivity page, I made several edits:
* changed the "Return" so that it goes to the main menu during any point of the movie or when in the other menus
* changed the "Return" on the main menu to go to the first chapter of the movie (i.e. to start playing the movie)
* changed the wait period on the main menu to something greater than 0 so it will "timeout" to play the movie
* changed the wait period of the scene select menus to "infinite"
* there's also an option to change the "Default"... not sure what that does since my DVD remote doesn't have a Default button
6. in the main menu, select "generate XML only" and press GO
7. Open the XML in a text editor and copy the <select ref...> lines to the menu segments corresponding to the MPEG still (got that?). Your original text for the main menu will looking something like this:
<selection id="Selection-000">
<bsn>1</bsn> } defines the # of the 1st chapter (change this for disk 2 of a movie)
<prev ref="Selection-end"/>
<next ref="Selection-001"/>
<return ref="Selection-005"/>
<timeout ref="Selection-005"/>
<wait>20</wait>
<loop jump-timing="immediate">1</loop>
<play-item ref="Segment-0001"/>
<select ref="Selection-000"/> } replace this line
</selection>

You'll want to make it look something like this:

<selection id="Selection-000">
<bsn>1</bsn>
<prev ref="Selection-end"/>
<next ref="Selection-001"/>
<return ref="Selection-005"/>
<timeout ref="Selection-005"/>
<wait>20</wait>
<loop jump-timing="immediate">1</loop>
<play-item ref="Segment-0001"/>
<select ref="Selection-005"/> \
<select ref="Selection-006"/> |
<select ref="Selection-007"/> |
<select ref="Selection-008"/> |
<select ref="Selection-009"/> |
<select ref="Selection-010"/> } copy and paste from your XML
<select ref="Selection-011"/> |
<select ref="Selection-012"/> |
<select ref="Selection-013"/> |
<select ref="Selection-014"/> |
<select ref="Selection-015"/> /
</selection>

You'll need to do this for each menu, and then save the file.

8. Under Tools / (S)VCD Build/Rip, load the XML, choose a BIN File and "Execute". This will create the image.
9. Under Tools / CDRDAO Tools, load the CUE and burn the CD.

There's a little more to it than that, but you get the gist (I hope). (Try it out on a CD-RW until you're comfortable.)

If there's an easier way to do this, I'd like to hear about it. It's a pain to edit these text files and very prone to errors.

[vitualis]

You could try the newest version (1.0.9) of VCD Easy (? it allows menu selections) or TSCV or perhaps even VCD Composer.

As for manual editing of the XML file, that is my preferred method (though it is not for the faint hearted). It allows for the greatest degree of flexibility in authoring.

To prevent errors, I strongly suggest that once you've written a few XML files to keep them around and then just use "cut and paste" and "replace" techniques. A good text editor (with line numbers) is very useful as well.

Regards.

[Keffie]

Oh God, that's why I use Ulead DVD Movie factory, having a ton of selection screens with my own backgrounds (just any damn .BMP or .JPG will do) and all works fine in any DVd player.

[gonz0]

As it turns out, there is a better way to do this within VCDEasy (without editing the xml). On the "Interactivity" page, simply check the option to "overwrite this default assignment" and propogate the chapters to ALL play items. Now all of your MPEGs (including stills) will have the chapter information, so you can navigate though your VCD via the number keys.

So the conclusion is that VCDEasy does fully support interactive menus. I've tried many of the other programs (Nero, TSCV, VCDComposer, Easy CD Creator), but I still prefer this one - mainly because of the way it does chaptering.

This methodology probably warrants a guide, so when I have some time, I'll put one together.