Playlists

[sjj1805]

Computers and/or the internet can be strange bedfellows. Yesterday, I thought I had sent you a detailed question regarding DVD Workshop, but today, I cannot find the slightest trace of it in Sent or Trash in any of my email programs. So I have to assume that it never got through. So now I will try to reconstruct it.

I am sure it is a simple problem with DVDWS. I have watched the video tutorials and searched through the skimpy Help files, but can find no specific reference to it. But put basically, I am trying to find out how to get the videos on a DVD to play automatically and sequentially using a DVDWS menu. I know it has to do with Playlists, but I am b***ered if I can get it to work.

Essentially, I have a DVD with 6 titles on it. The main menu (labelled MENU by DVDWS) has six buttons. The first is ‘Dunedin’ (very Scottish little town in the south of New Zealand’s South Island), the next is ‘Te Anau’ (village on a lovely lake en route to the glorious Milford Sound). Each button has its own (sub-)menu of chapters: Dunedin’s is MENU-01 and Te Anau’s is MENU-02. The Playlist for the main MENU page I have set as ‘Dunedin’ in the top line, and then MENU-02 – Button 1 in the next line, as I want to play Dunedin then have it move automatically on to the Te Anau menu AND begin playing it. I have checked both the Link and (with Dunedin selected) the Default Highlight Button boxes on the MENU page.

Moving on to MENU-01, Link is checked and ‘Chapter 01’ is set to be Default Highlight Button. I set the Playlist to ‘Dunedin’, then ‘MENU-02 – Button1’. I have also tried listing all the individual chapters in this Playlist, followed by ‘MENU-02 – Button1’. However, either way, when I select ‘Dunedin’ from the main MENU, it plays right through, and happily moves to the MENU-02 page, with Button 1 (i.e. Chapter 01) selected/highlighted, BUT it requires me then to press the Play button. Ditto for all subsequent titles. I am of course trying to get it to automatically start playing Button 1 instead of it requiring me to press Play…

Any help you may be able to offer would be enormously appreciated.

Ken Berry
Tel/Fax: (61 2) 6258 0032
Mobile: 0429 99 88 67
Coast: (61 2) 4471 5782
e-mail: kberry@cyberone.com.au

[sjj1805]

Ken

Yes did get the original but due to my shift pattern (late shift - all work and no play) didn't get chance to reply. I didn’t want to just send a quick from the hip response.

Lets go through the theory bit and then you will see how it works in practice.
To make it easy to follow we will call our 6 videos as A, B, C, D, E, F
then any chapters can be numbered so we can have A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, B4 - F1, F2 - F25 etc.

Firstly on the EDIT tab place the videos in the sequence you wish them to play when doing a 'Play All'. This is the set of thumbnails across the bottom of the preview screen.

For any videos that you would like to have chapters you select its thumbnail at the bottom of the preview screen and either manually add chapters or use the Auto Add Chapters facility using the button to the left of the preview screen. this produces a set of thumbnails down the right hand side of the preview screen.

Repeat for each video that you would like to include chapters.
Now move onto the Menu Tab. Here you have 3 choices of menu.

1. The Menu Template button - that’s the one in the middle.
This creates one single menu page but does not place any of the thumbnails (Video or Chapter) into the pre-defined thumbnail placeholders. You have to drag them in manually.

2. The Menu Wizard - that’s the one on the right.
This creates as many menu pages as are required and also populates the thumbnail place holders with videos or chapters.

3. A blank Menu - That’s the one on the left. In fact you already have a blank menu already; the button is included to enable you to add extra pages.

Let us say that each of you 6 videos has been sub-divided into chapters.

Here you would most likely have a Main Menu where you can select the following options.

1. Play all titles. The entire contents of the DVD Disc are played in the sequence you set up on the Edit Tab. when video A has finished, Video B plays and so on.
When you use the Menu-Wizard it automatically creates a 'play all' button for you.

2. 6 Further Thumbnail buttons - one for each of your videos.

Click a thumbnail button and it will take you to a scene selection menu for that selected video. So if you hit the thumbnail for Video A you go to the Video A scene selection menu. Hit thumbnail B and you go the Video B scene selection menu and so on.

If one or more of the 6 videos did not include chapters - it does not have a scene selection menu to go to and so instead it will play that chosen video.

Now here is the interesting bit - play lists.

You can program each and every button and thumbnail on each and every menu screen to play the thing you expect it to play

Example Chapter Menu A button 3 will play Chapter A3. Chapter menu C button 5 will play chapter C5.

Yes - no big deal so far, I can hear you saying that’s what I expected it to do.

It is what it does NEXT that counts. Left untouched - the normal behavior on the Main Menu(when you have a menu created by the menu wizard)

If you have a video that has NO chapters is that at the end of playing that video, it returns back to the main menu.

With a Scene Selection Menu (those automatically named Menu-01, Menu-02, and Menu-03 etc) is that when you select a chapter thumbnail; play starts at that chapter, continues to the end of THAT video and then returns to the same chapter menu. So if you are on Menu-02 and select button 3, at the end of that video you return to Menu-02.

Using the Play list function you can alter that, you can make it play any other video(s) you want and in whatever sequence you want.

You can even start the next video in your sequence from one of the chapter points rather than the start of that video. You can also dictate where you finish at the end of play - perhaps the main menu or one of the other chapter menus.

You simply drag the video, the video chapter or the menu onto the play list.

Hope this makes sense - if not I shall put together a few screen shots - problem at the moment is I was on a late shift today and yesterday and obviously when I get home my Wife needs a bit of company before I can get onto the computer - and then she moans about me waking her up at 3am when I drag myself away from the computer! I start night shift tomorrow night so I normally get ma couple of hours before setting off to work

[sjj1805]

Ken,

Just re-read you email and noticed I didn’t mention the automatic play feature.
On the Menu Tab you have tabs for Menu / Button / Text.

1. On the menu Tab set values for Menu duration and Loop count.

You will now see that the previously grayed out drop down box

[After loop/Time out button:] is now selectable. Normally you would accept the default setting [Default Highlight Button] if instead you choose [Custom Button] a smaller preview screen appears for you to choose which button should be activated.

2. As an alternative (or in addition to) the above, on the Button tab there is an option to Auto Activate. this is different from option 1 above. What occurs here is that when you select a button (or on a computer move the mouse over it) it acts as though you have also selected the button and it will start its play sequence.

[sjj1805]

Thanks for all that detail, Steve. Very much appreciated. Mind you, I am now quite baffled as to where my original message went to on my computer as I certainly had not deleted it (much less emptied the Trash) since writing it!!

Anyway, I have played with your instructions, and am very well pleased with the result. Certainly, I will be more than pleased to burn it to disc as it is.

But – and we always come up with a ‘but’, don’t we?! – one tangential question which arises is whether, while playing a particular title on a disc set up the way I outlined, one can access the chapter menu? I am assuming that one can’t in the circumstances I have set for my DVD i.e. one that plays continuously through. I suppose the option is to use the Play All button the way it is intended (i.e. to play from beginning to end, but interruptible by reverting to the Title or Root Menu), but then set up the playlist for each individual title so that the relevant sub-menu comes up at the outset. But if you did it that way, once one chapter is playing, how do you revert to that sub-menu? The Root Menu button takes me back to whichever of the two pages of the Main Menu I was on, and the Title Menu invariably takes me back to the first page of the Main Menu.

Mind you, I don’t particularly like separate chapter menus myself, though I like having chapters that one can jump quickly to, and I have inserted these. But the bottom line is likely to be in any case that I probably won’t need to give any direct access to sub-menus anyway. But I was just wondering if it could be done…

And please, don’t rush an answer on this one. Spend a little time with your wife instead!!

Cheers

Ken Berry