Animated Thumbnails

Jimco wrote on 8/3/2004, 9:49 AM

I think I know the answer to this, but I wanted to post here to see if someone can give me ideas on the easiest method to accomplish this.

I have been fooling around with DVDA2 at a friends house to fully evaluate it prior to upgrading my Vegas 4 to 5+DVD. Over the weekend, I created a menu with an audio background. The audio lasted 1.5 mins. I then used an animated thumbnail for one of my chapters. That chapter only lasted 1 minute. Therefore, the animated thumbnail showed the full chapter and then 30 seconds of the next chapter.

In DVD Workshop, an animated thumbnail will only play the chapter it is linked to. If the length of the menu exceeds the length of the chapter, it loops the chapters instead of moving into the next chapter.

Is there an easy way (without using a separate MPG file for the thumbnail) to do that in DVDA2?

Thanks!

Jim

Comments

JaysonHolovacs wrote on 8/3/2004, 1:08 PM

Hmm... Interesting request. Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to do this... unless its possible to set in and out points on a thumbnail video, which I don't think is possible. You might just have to re-render a small segment of chapter for the thumbnail. The good news is I don't think this will impact your output DVD size at all as all this stuff is rendered into one menu video anyway.

Note: I would NOT use an MPEG; I'd use an AVI, because the menu will re-render the video anyone to endcode the chapter clip onto the menu video, so why create double loss in the video. Of course, the clip is tiny, so it may not matter.

-Jayson

clearvu wrote on 8/4/2004, 4:28 AM

If I'm understanding things correctly, you probably have the "Menu Page Properties - Menu Length" set to "auto-calculate". Just set it to "specify" and then set the video clip time to what you want it limited to and that should correct your problem.

Jimco wrote on 8/4/2004, 4:54 AM

Thanks. Unfortunately, that's not what I'm talking about. :)

The menu length is set to the length of the audio segment I was using. It's the length of the chapter that the thumbnail links to that is causing the issue. The solution is to have the video that is displayed in the thumbnail loop on the chapter instead of playing on into the next chapter.

Jim

clearvu wrote on 8/4/2004, 5:28 AM

Oh, I see. So the chapter point is quite small. Hmm. I've had that happen to me, but never worried about it since I figure one would have moved on to the video before the thumbnail ever started getting into the next chapter.

In any event, I don't know of a way of getting DVDA to start looping the video portion while letting the audio go on. I sure you do realise though, that if the video DID loop as you want, it would look a bit odd if you actually paid close attention because you would get the following pattern of looping video: 1 minute, then 30 seconds and then 1 minute again, then another 30 seconds, etc...

I personally don't know if I prefer such a result or not.

Perhaps just cutting the audio down to one minute might be another option?

Jimco wrote on 8/4/2004, 1:42 PM

Thanks. Actually I needed the audio to be exactly that long. It was exactly one verse of a song.

It's no big deal. DVDA still wins over DVD Workshop in many other areas of usability. Most specifically, the alignment features of DVDA2 are awesome compared to DVD Workshop.

Jim

JaysonHolovacs wrote on 8/4/2004, 3:09 PM

I think just render it in Vegas... it won't be bad. If you want, you could even slow down the video of the thumbnail so it exactly matches the loop time of the audio instead of looping it back to the beginning. Or you could speed it up so repeats exactly twice in the time slot instead of 1.5 times for a similar approach.

-Jayson

Jimco wrote on 8/4/2004, 6:09 PM

Good suggestions! Thanks.

Jim