Miner Willy said:
I'm currently using DVD Studio Pro 3 and have a question I can't seem to find an easy answer to (there might not be an easy fix), I have read the manual and it's as clear as mud... I've also been looking at the Visual quickpro guide on DVSP. My question is, if I have 10 pieces of video that all have seperate buttons for navigation, how do I create a play all putton that will go from one clip to another?
I know that I can drag them all into a new video track and get it to work ilke that but it takes up valuable disc space. I guess what I'm asking is is there a scripting solution that will prevent this.
TIA
I do this with virtually all our productions and it doesn't require scripting. I'll tell you how I do it, with as many note explaining why and what options you may have...
First, I import all the assets and arrange them on Track 1 in the order they are to play as a "Play All" feature. I do this because I believe it provides the most seamless playback. You could arrange on individual tracks, but I think you'd end up with more work/confusion.
After I'm satisfied with the Track 1 layout, I chapter mark for two things: The beginning of each track and to break up any long periods within the clips. This gives the "Play All" some increments if you're going "chapter forward" during playback. I name the beginning of each clip for easy reference later and let the "increment" markers be numbered by DVDSP. Pay attention to the positioning of the markers at the beginning of the clips so you don't get any "slop over" from the adjacent clips - you'll be calling the chapter marks, not the actual clips.
I make a story for each of the individual play buttons I plan to use. You can make the buttons before or after the stories are made, whichever makes more sense to you.
All references to buttons here assumes that you have a submenu for your individual plays. I just use the first menu for the "Play All" and maybe a special feature that's not in the "Play All" line-up, plus a "Chapters" button that goes to the sub menu. If you have a large number of individual plays, you can make more menus.
It is possible to use a single story, but I recently had a problem doing this in DVDSP4: the clips would freeze about a half second before the end, then return to the menu as planned. If You had a couple of seconds of black film at the end of the clip this would be a non-problem, but making multiple stories is just as easy and allows you to set a second or so wait at the end of each play if you like. It also displays with the correct level of info in Graphical View.
Going into the stories, just drag all the relevant chapter mark for the first individual play segment to the right side of the story editor. The chapters will appear on the left side. Each named chapter corresponds to a clip, any numbered chapters following are the "increment" chapters. Move on to the second story and do the same thing for the second individual play, and so on.
Now the fun part: Linking...
If you made both the stories and the buttons in the "Play All" order of play and named them the same, then button one should reference story one, button two links to story two, etc. Selecting button one puts it in the Inspector, where you can point it to the correct story using the Target drop-down.
After setting all the button targets, go back to the stories (starting with story one) and click in an unused area of the right side of the editor. This loads the story into the Inspector so you can set the Return Jump from that drop-down. Do each story in turn, it should be just like doing the menu buttons.
To check your work, open the graphical view tab and all the stories (as well as the "Play All" track) should have double-ended arrows to/from their respective menu(s).
As a final check, I open the Outline and Connection tabs and verify in the Inspector that each track and story points where it ought to.
You're ready to simulate!
Note: I've found that it's easy to get 10-12 buttons in the chapter menu by simply making text-only buttons. I recommend using a bold sans-sarif font and keeping titles short.
Hope this helps.
