I had a feeling that would be the answer. Thanks for your help.

Dwuane

As it stands now in version one there are no end actions supported so you can't jump from one video to another. The way around it is make one long video in Vegas, then add chapter points where each movie would have started. Not the same thing, but at least workable.

The return to main menu verses return to menu of orgin topic has been beat to death in the past months.

Hint: Under Options/Preferences check enable go up button. If or not it works depends on your DVD set top player. For me my remote has two menu buttons. A main menu and top menu. The main takes me back to the first or main meaning topmost menu. The menu button takes me back to whatever is the first sub menu page created under the insert menu option. Your mileage may vary.

Okay. I'll give that a try. Thanks for your input.


Dwuane

Well, DVDA does have end actions, sort of.

You may have noticed DVDA does a lot of things for you without letting you take control, so the trick is to fool DVDA into doing what you want it to do. It would have been easier just to have an option to "return to selection menu", but DVDA seems to try to make things so easy that they end up being harder! As an example of that, here is how I discovered you can make a scene selection menu behave like, well, a scene selection menu!

First of all, in DVDA's defense, pop in most any Hollywood movie DVD into a set top player (not your computer), go to the scene selection menu and select a scene. Come on, try it. After it starts playing, press return or what ever button should take you back one menu. And behold, you go all the way back to the main menu! That is a limitation of the DVD spec. But some of you may say, I remember a DVD where I could go back to the scene selection menu, what gives? Well the DVD spec has 2 different modes of operation, you have to author your content into one or the other methods, you can't have both at the same time.

In one mode, I don't know what they are called but they do have names, the next and previous chapter buttons allow you to select titles and chapters and the dvd player may display their numbers on the screen or on the front of the player, but the "return" button returns you to the main menu or does nothing at all. In the other mode, the return button works by returning you to the last menu you were at, but in this mode, the title and chapter buttons do not work and it can't display the current title and chapter.

With DVDA 1.0c, they added an option on the preferences called "Enable go up button" or something to that effect. This puts it in the second mode. If you are willing to give up the ability to skip chapter to chapter using the remote, then you gain the ability of the return button.

But what about end actions? If you make a scene selection menu, as we all know, the clip will play all the way to the end rather then just to the end of the current scene. To force DVDA to insert the "return to last menu" end action, you have to first set the "enable go up buttons" setting. Then you have to tell DVDA that the button link is restricted to the specified scene using the "set in point" and "set out point" feature. To do this, either drag the yellow flag at the start of the clip to the green start marker, or click on the green start marker, then click the button for the in point. You may need to zoom in (press and hold the up arrow) to adjust the in point to just the right frame. Then set the out point to the marker of the next scene. Click on the marker and click the set out button, or drag the yellow marker at the end of the clip over. Again, zoom in to set it to just the right frame. You don't have to actually set it to the scene marker, you can overlap if you want to, or even cut it short. If you do that, you can actually have a scene or portion of a scene that is only viewable if you provide a play all link.

When ever I make a scene selection menu like this, I like to provide a "play all" button, just drag the clip to the scene selection menu and drop it, I set it to text only and change the text to "Play All". Now they can click this button to play the whole clip or use the scene buttons, and the scene buttons will play just the one scene and then return to the scene selection menu! And if they decide they don't want to watch the scene all the way to the scene's end, they can press the return button and go back to the scene selection menu. This is ideal for lengthy slideshows and for training videos and the like.

Now I have explained two different features here, the "enable go up button" and the method of forcing a scene to end and not play through to the end of the clip. You do not have to do both if you don't want to. You can just turn on the go up button option, this enables the return button or what ever it may be called on your remote. Scenes will still play to the end, but with this button enabled, you can watch to the end if you want, or press the button at any point and go back to the scene selection menu.

Likewise you can make scenes end at the end of a scene and not play through by using just the set in and set out functions, without enabling the go up button feature. But then you have to play the whole scene through. I have not made a DVD this way so I do not know if the scene will return to the scene selection menu or if it will go to the main menu (my guess is it will go to the main menu, but don't know)

Before you gripe about not being able to have the best of both worlds, pop in another Hollywood movie into your set top player and do the scene selection thing again, yep, goes back to the main menu every time! There may be some movie out there that was done in the "return button enabled" mode, but try selecting titles and chapters and you won't be able to do it, that is a limitation of the DVD spec that we all have to live with.

I wonder why with all the complaining, why hasn't SOFO spoke up more about these abilities, as many people have been wanting to be able to do this. And it turns out you can, you just have to figure out how.

If you use the set in and set out points, you will get a lot of those warning messages that say you have markers too close together. Well of course you do, the set in or out marker is right on top of a chapter marker where you put it, just ignore the messages and it will work fine.

Thanks, Jeff. I'll give it a try.


Dwuane

That sounds like a lot to give up for end actions. The new Adobe Encore simply has a drop down combo at the end of each clip where you can elect to do several things. Why can we have something like that?

Tom