Anyone know if there is a way that if you are on the second movie (aka Title), you can rewind to the end of the first movie? How it's setup initially, it stops rewinding and plays as soon as it gets to the beginning of the current title. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
What do you mean by rewinding? All a DVD command can do is jump from one location to another. How do you have your menus and movies linked together? Just have a main menu with two buttons, one for the first title and one for the second title. Establish a loop back to the menu once the movie is finished. This would be a basic set-up, you could add more menus and titles as needed. DVD Lab can create lots of different connections, so there shouldn't be a problem getting your project to navigate exactly the way you want it to. I think what you might have is two titles linked back to back. In other words the connections window would show menu 1 button linked to movie 1, then the end of movie 1 linked to menu 2 and then that button linked to movie 2. Is that about right? Use the connections wizard to help you get all the required connections in place. Let me know if this helps. If you could explain what you want your project to do in terms of menu functions of a DVD player rather than VCR terms, I can probably figure out a connections scheme that will work for you.
I have three movies with two menu's because the there is a second disc involved... I have movie one jump to movie two and movie two jump to movie three... However once it is in movie two, it will not go back to movie one unless i go to menu... What i was hoping for is if the viewer is in movie two and presses search backwards it automatically goes back into movie one.. Right now it stops once it hits the movie start of movie two and begins playing again.
The search function is not going to allow you to leave the title set that is playing. That is just not something that can be done with any DVD as far as I know. I think I can see what you are trying to do though. If you want to be able to search back through both movies then they will have to play as one movie. They will need to be joined before placing them in DVD Lab. An easy way to join them is to just use Shrink to place both titles into a compilation and then burn to a location on your hard drive. Both titles will be combined and can now be placed into a "movie 1" box in DVD Lab's connections window. You won't be able to place a menu between the joined movies, so you may need to insert a filler clip of some sort to create a pause before the second movie starts to play. Do this using Shrink as well. Your Shrink compilation would consist of movie 1, the clip and then movie 2. This won't automatically send the search to movie 1 though. Because the two titles and clip are combined, you now have just one larger movie and the search function will see it that way. If a person started to search backward in the original second movie, they would have to go back through all of that and then continue backward until the beginning of the original movie 1 is reached. I'm curious as to how you have linked to a second disc though. Do you have a "play disc 2" screen appear at the end of movie 2?
I've joined them before trying that, I just hate how the chapters are off by a good two minutes when I try to do that.. I'd rather have the ability to jump to an exact point rather than worry about searching backwards... Why does Chapters not happen at the exact point you tell it to? Thanks for your help!
What I am making a menu for is a football game... I have two menus on each disc three movies on the first disc (1st Quarter, 2nd Quarter, 3rd Quarter) and on the second disc is (4th Quarter and Overtime). The First menu says First Quarter (links to Movie1) Second Quarter (links to Movie2) Third Quarter (links to Movie3) and both 4th Quarter and Overtime buttons link to Menu2 which is a graphic that just says (Please Flip Disc). Transition is End of Movie1 goes to Movie2, End of Movie2 goes to Movie3, End of Movie3 goes to Menu2. and the opposite occurs on disc 2 in the navigation menu except at the end of the last movie doesn't go to Menu2, but rather Menu1 since it is the complete end of the game.
That is very cool! Have you considered compressing things a bit and putting everything on one disc? I don't know how long the whole thing is with the O.T. and all but if it is reasonable it might make it a bit simpler to assemble. I think in this case I would take all four quarters and the overtime and combine them as one movie and then compress, leaving enough room for the menus, say 4364 Mb. Next I would create a main menu (menu 1) and a chapters menu (menu 2). Install the entire game plus overtime into "movie 1" and create chapter points for each quarter and the O.T. Create chapter buttons in Menu 2 and link as needed. Menu 1 can have a intro of some sort and set to link to chapter 1 after a few moments, also a button link to the chapter menu. If you still use a side 2 then just add the appropriate links and splash screen. Having the entire thing combined and divided by chapters rather than individual movies should make it a lot simpiler to navigate around in. I drew out your links and it all looks very logical and something that one might do if working with unrelated titles. In this case it is one game and it just seems to make better sense to divide it by chapters. Each quarter provides a natural location for a chapter point, heck, you could chapter it by downs if you really wanted to. The remote control on a DVD player allows a search past chapter points so your issue with the search function getting "stuck" at the beginning of a particular quarter should be resolved.
Not until I get a 9.4 dual layer recorder, can I do that.. There's too much action in football games that the quality is very poor when you combine it down to just 4.7. Do you use DVD Lab much? Have you noticed that chapter points after recorded to Disc never are exactly the same?
The chapter points have to be I frames in the particular GOP you are at so some offset is going to occur. Try right clicking the chapter point you need to adjust and select the Set Chapter Lag option. You can change it up or down by 1 second, which should get you in the ballpark. I like to use DVD Lab to assemble my various projects, usually camcorder stuff, into DVDs. It makes great menus. Lot's of fun as well. You can spend hours getting your button highlights just right. So how big is your project? If you could get it to around 75% compression, use deep analysis, it might be fine. The new Shrink has features I haven't used yet so I can't speak to them, it should be better than ever. Nothing wrong with splitting though. I do it all the time.
I love DVD Lab... Great to use.. Have you figured out how to round the corners on rectangles and such? My project is about 4 hours in length with, like i said, lots of action.
I actually use RealDraw Pro to make a lot of the buttons and other graphics. They import to DVD Lab very easily as it is designed to do so. You have a lot more options there. Thats where all the objects and menu backgrounds were created in the first place. I would rather make my own frames because when I re-size them they get skinny on the sides and fat on the top and bottom. A lot more text options too. For me, RealDraw and DVD Lab are like one big program. I rarely use Lab without it. I was gonna look at Lab to find the corner rounding tool but after having to replace the motherboard on this computer, It says my trial has expired! Anyhow try this: Go to menu propertys and there should be a "Shape Roundness" slider under the transparency section. This is right out of the help section so you are going to have to look for it 'cause I'm locked out. I e-mailed Oscar and hopefully he can help me get this sorted out. I'm actually ready to buy if he ever gets it out of beta.
I am wondering if that isn't a feature yet in the Pro version, that's what I am using currently.. It seems like it has a lot of effects for buttons, but not the round shape one. I'll have to take a look at that RealDraw, is it tough to learn?
That shape roundness tool should be there, under menu propertys. At least thats what the help section says. RealDraw is a lot like DVD Lab pro. The more you use it, the more you can do with it. I found a site called RealDraw Cafe that had some interesting guides. You can make text that looks chrome plated and similar stuff. http://realdrawcafe.com/ It's a great tool to use if you want more options for your menus or if you just like to play with a good graphics program. Cheers, Frank
