You can try dropping them into a Music / Video compilation, but then each file will become a chapter, and you won't be able to have additional chapters within it.

Otherwise, yeah, encode them all into one single file and then set up your chapters as needed.

Rob

Dear Dave T2 and Rob,

Thank you for the super quick reply!
Yes, they are indeed titles. I tried with Music/Video comp. but it won't work because of lack of menu and additional chapters.
My aim was a main menu with motion title buttons. The titles have chapters but I need no menu to those chapters.
I don't quite remember if original movie DVDs play seamlessly or not. How do they do?
Dave T2! What do you mean on "minimize the head move by ordering the titles on the disk"? This sounds exciting for me! If you could give some details! :))

Thank you: Attila

If you are using the Studio version of Architect, I don't think this is available. But in the full version, after you have created your DVD menus and timelines, go to FILE>ORDER DVD TITLES.

You can then place the titles in a PHYSICAL order on the disk. If you plan correctly, consecutive files will have minimal head movement thus allowing faster access times. This will also ensure that if you hit NEXT between titles, it will got to the NEXT physical title.

Dave T2

It's a bit more involved, but...

DVDs play Playlists. Each title video is made up of at least 1 cell, or can have many. A cell basically is just the in/out points of a chunk of video. You can determine [&/or control by design] what chunks of video play, & in what order. It's entirely possible to have a longer video made up of however many individual clips joined into one file, & play either sections or the complete file, & the sections [cells] can be in whatever order you'd like. Some [usually more expensive] software will even let you create playlists using separate files.

At any rate, the easiest way to do this sort of thing is probably to use something like DVD Studio Pro for the MAC, though there are some lower cost PC apps I think that can handle it [check videohelp.com & doom9.org]. TO do it with DVDA [or most any DVD authoring app], you'll need to create & render your DVD to hard drive, then edit it with PGCEdit. Oversimplified, you want to set it up with one *Play All* button plus one for each of your separate titles, but "as or if possible" have all the buttons pointing to the same file. Then for each individual title, edit those playlists in PGCEdit, removing all the extra before & after cells, so your individual title is all that remains. The end result is what acts like both individual titles & one joined file, without any lag between titles.

Most people I think prefer just to put up with whatever lag, making sure everything fades out between titles to make the transition less jarring, but if you're really interested I believe I posted full details at least once in these forums a while back.

Hi MPM!
This is really a very detaild answer and looks a bit scary. :)
Well, you are right. After I experienced the lags between titles I thought I sould have done with fade ins/outs. Your solution of course is the professional one and gave me a little hope. However I need to evaluate how much extra time I can spend with this DVD. Definitely I check out PCGEdit. This is gonna be experimental for me, but I'll give one more chance to it. If I need more help, I'll be back to forum. Tnx: Attila

Hi DaveT2,

I was away for a few days.
Yes, I have Studio version. I checked, but ORDER DVD TITLE is not available in it.
Meanwhile MPM jioned us and gave me a very detaild answer. For me too detailed already. I have willing to make nice DVDs without lags, but would be better to have the DVDAS to do it for me. :)
Anyway how can I find you, in case of more challenges coming up with DVD authoring?
Attila
P.s: consecutive titles displayed in menu are not consecutive phisically on disc? Even if I draged them one by one, following each other? Why is the very first bit of the eg. second title not following the very last bit of first title?

I don't know how DVDA Studio determines the physical order of the titles. The PRO version does allow title ordering.

If you have any other questions, I Iurk around here a lot so I will see it.

Dave T2

Thank you Dave T2!

Hi MPM,

I was playing with PGCEdit this weekend.
You know I love flying with sims, but PGCEdit is more difficult, then a cockpit.
No way anyone can learn using it just with clicking here or there and trying.
Imagine how many coasters would be made!
I think (whether I like it or not) I have to stay with fade ins/outs or make the last frame in a title as a special freeze effect in the movie.

Thanks: Attila

RE: "P.s: consecutive titles displayed in menu are not consecutive phisically on disc? Even if I draged them one by one, following each other? Why is the very first bit of the eg. second title not following the very last bit of first title?"</em>

Earlier versions of DVDA based the order of video files & buttons on 1st entered/imported, 1st rank. DVDA Pro can also change the physical layout depending on whether video titles are imported into the project tree on the left with the menus or by themselves (usually or often appearing below the menus. How you distribute or where you place your menus & videos in that tree, particularly in earlier versions, influenced the .VOB files in ways you could clearly see just looking in the VIDEO_TS folder DVDA prepared on your hard drive. DVDA likes to put all the menus in 1 VOB set, rather than distributed with the title VOBs, & that can make things seem more confusing.

RE: "PGCEdit is more difficult, then a cockpit."

Take baby steps. ;-)
Unlike the cockpit, put blinders on, focusing on just one aspect at a time. Also it's not really PGCEdit that's so complicated, but the nature of how DVDs work themselves.

Personally I think learning to ignore most of what you see in PGCEdit, and how to do 1 or two things are well worth it... The best example I can think of is setting the layer break for a dual layer DVD, since DVDA will not let you create just a cell for the break, but requires a chapter. Layer breaks are best when there's nothing happening -- or the least possible -- but chapters are best put when something's already beginning or ramping up. Say you have a very definite ending & beginning -- you don't want the chapter exactly at the split between the two, or you risk players catching the last bit of the ending. So you cure it by moving on 2 or 3 I frames, & jumping to the chapter works great -- now it's a bad spot for any delay when switching layers. And that's assuming a chapter at the 50% split even makes sense.

After adding an extra chapter as a very last step in DVDA to place the break, open the DVD in PGCEdit, select the title where the break's going to occur, double click it or click the edit button, go to the chapter you added last, & click the box next to it.. This causes the chapter to go away, & turns the Edit Chapter button red. Click it and then click the "Delete last chapter" button. Click OK to close everything up, go to PGCEdits File -> Burn DVD / Create ISO, & you'll get a chance to choose that cell for your layer break on your way to creating an ISO, & when you do you'll see how close you were to an actual 50%. And there's no reason you can't add a couple of extra chapters in DVDA, or a bunch, since once you remove the chapter from the cells, they don't matter -- you just have to delete the last chapter as many times as you removed chapters, so remove 3, remove the last chapter 3 times. You can easily add 3 or 4 good layer break candidates in DVDA, then see which fits best. Anyway, do that sort of thing a few times & PGCEdit starts to be less threatening. :-)

I like your "baby steps"! You are also absolutely right about the nature of how DVD works. Also it is sad, that if an earlier version had something working fine, why they took it out later. They probably want us to pay extra for this good things.

I tried the PGCEdit again tonight. I had to realize it is hopeless for me work with it.
Since I don't have deep knowledge of how DVDs work there is nothing I can do.
I don't know why e.g. there are so many dummies, what they are for, there are always new windows pop-up with questions again and again. Asking me if I want to scan, check, select, invert, create, remove, etc.....

Thank you MPM for your effort! I think I have a little rest on seamless playback until I have enough money to purchase a program that makes it for me.
It was a pleasure having you here!
Bye now!

Attila