Sony pointed me to this from troubleshooting:..doing a test burn now:


DVD player's Next button goes to next title rather than chapter

The Next button is normally used to navigate to the next chapter. On many players, the Next button either jumps to the end of the title or does nothing when viewing the last chapter. However, on some DVD players, this button jumps to the next title when viewing the last chapter.

To prevent the next button from jumping to the next title, turn off Title play.

In the Project Overview window, double-click the title want to edit.

In the Properties window, click the Remote Buttons button.

Select Title play and choose Off from the shortcut menu.

DVD player's Previous button doesn't navigate to the previous title in a playlist
Some DVD players allow the Previous button to navigate to the previous title when viewing the first chapter in a title. However, the previous title is determined by the order of titles written to disc, not the playlist order.

To prevent the Previous button from jumping to the previous title, turn off Title play.

In the Project Overview window, double-click the title want to edit.

In the Properties window, click the Remote Buttons button.

Select Title play and choose Off from the shortcut menu.

Color set colors don't match background
Colors used by menu highlight and subtitles are interpreted differently by some DVD players. The color may match the background video or image when you preview your project, but not when the disc is played in a DVD player.

This is a limitation of the DVD player and cannot be resolved in the software.

Button highlights shifted slightly to the right

Well..turning title play offt did change the intro media: now next isn't accessible at all on that movie.
But the interior movies that I switched title play off on still behave the same..they go to what it thinks is the next movie, not the chapter point near the end of the playing movie.
Anyone know if chapter points have to be a certain distance from the end of the movie? Mine are on I frames so it shouldn't be that .

Moving the chapter point earlier did the trick.
Here are some words of wisdom from the authoring community at large.:

"The chapter point can be on the start of the last GOP of the movie, about half a second or less from the end."

"Spec issue, min. 0.4sec. between chapters."

"Don't make it less than one GOP, which is what a pro auhtoring software won't let you do anyway. But based on my own experience, don't let that GOP be less than 12 frames."

If it helps at all...

If you render your DVD to hdd, if/when the PUOPs (prohibited user operations) are set wrong, it can be easier to change them using IfoEdit or similar, rather than altering and re-rendering your project.

Bear in mind that DVDA uses a LOT of boiler-plate scripting, so some remote functions will just not work with menus... Turn off any remote functions you can and design your menus so your viewer doesn't need those functions on the remote anyway.

RE: Chapter points... It's actually legal to have the last mpg2 frame = a new cell &/or chapter -- many authoring apps do this automatically. OTOH there's little reason to jump to a chapter at the very end of the video -- or at least any closer to the end than the credits -- so really no reason to set one there manually. When talking about GOPs you might find that DVDA doesn't always treat the end of menu video that accurately -- it helps to trim the end of any menu mpg2 in DVDA.

RE: NEXT/PREV buttons... As has been posted many times by many folks, player behavior varies. If you want to control playback behavior for menus, disable them for the remote and provide menu buttons. If you want to control them between multiple titles, insert dummy videos that you can attach scripts &/or end actions to.

"Colors used by menu highlight and subtitles are interpreted differently by some DVD players. The color may match the background video or image when you preview your project, but not when the disc is played in a DVD player."

I think it's more complicated than that, but the end effect is yeah, in some cases you have to be careful picking colors and transparency. That said, if you're trying to hide something there are other methods that you can use, like a (near?) duplicate menu page, to get the same effect.

"Button highlights shifted slightly to the right"

That should not happen, especially if you import highlight masks. I'd guess either the player display settings are off (fit width. height, pan/scan etc...) or you're running into problems with automatic aspect ratio corrections.

Finally, glad you got your project working, but suggest there might be a better way to accomplish whatever you're trying to accomplish inserting a chapter point at the very end of a video. The only time I've seen chapters/cells used at the end is to trim the video &/or for internal scripting, and in both cases created by the authoring software itself.

I have 63 individula recipe movies/clips that the user may want to "skip" or "next" out of. The chapter at the end keeps it from going to the next movie.
This was my first use of DVDA..I wasn't familiar with all menu issues when I began building. I think I better make a list;)