Creating top level and sublevel DVD menues in PS 11+

[G16aByT3]

I am new to this games and have played a bit with PS so I have some understanding of how it works with the exception of building menus. What I am trying do is to have a main menu with 2 buttons on it. The first button to play my entire home movie to end and return back to the main menu. The second button is the scene selection button so I can pick what scenes to watch instead of watching the entire movie. So I have done this with PS

main menu -M1
Selections -M2
button 1 is chapter 1 and returns back to M1
button 2 is linked to M2

What happens when previewing the menuing, I noticed that when playing chapter 1 from the main menu goes back to M2 when it has found chapter 1

M2 has all my scenes and they return back to M2.

I would like to have my button 1 on main menu play the movie without breaking back to M2 and not playing the rest of the movie.

I am trying to do something what commercial DVDs do where they have a main menu and a scene selection menu.

Thanks

G16aByT3

[guns1inger]

How have you encoded your movie ? Is it one single title with chapter stops, or have you broken it down to separate titles for each chapter ?

DVDs are simple beasts, and most of the authoring tools hide the really complex tricks away from most users.

If you have a single title then when you start at the beginning it will play through to the end. However if you start at chapter two, it will begin there, and continue to play past chapter 3 etc to the end again.

To overcome this, some people break their title down into chapter sized chunks so when they chose chapter 2, that's all that plays. However, if you do this you cannot have a play movie function that goes from start to finish.

More professional level authoring tools have tricks like play lists that allow you to create a single title and have individual chapter play without having to break the title down into chunks. I doubt that PS can do this.

[G16aByT3]

Well, That really is unfortunate and creates a headache for me, becuase I am set in my mind to have it done this way. Is there a product that can allow me to do this easily without having to learn the dark arts?

Thanks

G16aByT3

[guns1inger]

You could do it in PS 11 if you have two versions of your movie - one full and one in chunks.

DVD Lab Pro supports chapter playlists, as does DVD Architect (part of the Vegas + DVD suite). I use DLP myself. What you would do is load in your full title, add the chapter points, then create a chapter play list for each chapter, and put just that chapter in it. Link your Play Movie to the start of the title, and each chapter to it's corresponding playlist. Unless you have 30 chapters it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to set up.