How To: Choose Your Own Adventure Film?

[morari]

Hello,

I'm looking to make something akin to a "choose your own adventure" book, but with film. Basically I have several video clips of varying lengths. I would like it so that these clips, when nearing their end, will prompt the watcher to choose (with their remote) between at least two options. Choosing the first option will take you on to one clip, while choosing the second option will take you to a different clip. I would also like to have the flexibility of forcing the film to move forward to a predetermined clip if nothing is selected in a certain amount of time.

What I've tried doing thus far was all within TMPGEnc. Basically, I created a structured menu with video backgrounds. The video background provided the actual film experience, with the menu taking you between the character choices. The problems I ran into were that the menu options were always visible and available, as opposed to merely be present toward the end of the clip. Furthermore, I can't help but feel that there must be a better way of doing this than misusing the video backgrounds. Any suggestions on alternative routes, or even better suited programs?

Thanks!

[guns1inger]

The fundamental flaw with what you are trying to do is that the DVD specification is pretty limited and won't really give you the flexibility needed for a full on interactive adventure. For example, a menu must exist wholly within a VOB, which means that it must be no larger than 1000MB is size. A few higher end tools support features like Button Over Video (BOV) or menu cells, which allow you to better time when menu items appear (cells) or add a control to a video (BOV), but these are at the more expensive end and have higher learning curves.

If you are willing to work within a simpler framework then you can create an interactive game with cheaper tools. Instead of using menus for everything, only use menus at decision points. Play a video up until a decision has to be made, then present a menu that has a short duration - say 10 seconds - and have that menu decide what happens next. It will either play a clip based on a button being pressed, or do something else because a button whasn't pressed in time. This will ultimately be far easier to build.

[Supreme2k]

Check out DVD-Lab pro. I think there are even tutorials on their site on how to do it.