Configuring Initial Menu page

[Shelby68GT500]

Have recently started doing some video editing for home movies and my kids roller hockey team which I coach. I've been using Cyberlink PowerDirector 11 Ultra to just burn standard 4.7gb DVD's with AVCHD files and pictures, all at 1080i final resolution. My video is 1080i AVCHD from my camcorder. My question pertains to the page that comes up with the menu when you pop the DVD in the player. In my initial project, I had a total of 3 chapters and wanted the ability to have menu items on that first page to just play from the start, or to select to play from chapter 2 or select to play starting in chapter 3. No matter how I tried, I could not do it that way. I was limited to a Play item and a Scenes item on the first page. Play obviously started at the beginning or chapter 1. Selecting Scenes from the initial menu page would then take you to a 2nd menu page where Chapter 1 was (no different than just pushing play to begin with) and then you could arrow to the next "scene" or chapter which took you to the menu page for chapter 2. You could then play from there or arrow to scene 3 (or chapter 3) menu page and start from there. Just could not figure out how to put all of those selections on the very first menu page and have only that single menu page on the whole DVD... Am I brain-dead or is that just how things work with DVD authoring?

Thanks, Bob

[manono]

Am I brain-dead or is that just how things work with DVD authoring?

If those are the only two possibilities, then I guess you're brain-dead. It's the simplest thing in the world to have the three menu items on a single menu the way you described. But I don't (and won't) use PowerDirector for anything ... ever.

Ordinarily you encode the assets (video, audio) to something that's DVD compliant and then you author. If you're looking for an all-in-one program that will do both the conversion as well as the authoring along with allowing you to set up a simple menu as you describe, then maybe Avs2DVD will do the job for you.

The program is updated oiften and the author is frequently here to answer questions, preferably in the Avs2DVD support thread.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/277852-AVStoDVD-Support-Thread?highlight=avs2dvd

[Shelby68GT500]

Manono,

Thank you for responding... I was hoping you would say I was brain-dead... I thought that it was possible that it would be a function of PowerDirector. Other than that issue, I really don't have much bad to say about it. It worked pretty well for what I was doing... I am interested in this other authoring program you speak of, but after shelling out about $90 for PD, not sure I can justify additional expense with the spouse... I'll certainly take a look though, as I really would like more flexibility with the menus...

Bob

[manono]

It's free. And authoring means to assemble the assets into a DVD with the proper structure. Conversion and menu creation are separate things, although most authoring programs (not all, though) enable the creation of menus one way or another.

Oh, and if you decide to give Avs2DVD a go, make sure to choose HCEnc as the encoder.

[Shelby68GT500]

Thanks a bunch, I will be checking that out sometime tomorrow and will also ensure I look at the encoder as well..

Bob