Creating a custom menu for a project is fairly straightforward, but I have a couple of questions that the knowledgeable folks in this forum could possibly help me with, using a quick reply:

1. when setting up a menu link to a scene, it would not let me if the selected scene in the project started with a black image (the set chapter button was not enabled); what I had to do was to select the scene before it (which I really didn't want to do); does anyone know why this happens and is there any way to solve it?

2. when playing the DVD after burning, will it automatically go back to the menu when the scene with the next link (i.e. chapter) is reached or will it play through the entire project? What I want is for the menu to appear at the end of each chapter so the viewer can choose the next one; is there a way to do this or is it automatic?

Thanks for any pointers/suggestions.

Well, maybe I'm doing something wrong, I don't know, but authoring DVDs with menus doesn't seem to work.

I created the project with a custom menu that had two chapters, one linking to the beginning of the project (scene 2) and one linking to the middle (scene 696 of 1394). The entire video content was 87 minutes.

When I play-tested the DVD after burning, this is what I got:

1. when choosing menu choice 1, it plays about 3 minutes of the 43 minutes of video content and then goes back to the menu,

2. when choosing menu choice 2, it plays about 2 seconds of the 43 minutes of video content and then goes back to the menu.

So, my first experience with the DVD authoring feature of Pinnacle Studio 9.4.3 is that it does not work reliably if at all.

Have others had similar experiences and are there ways to prevent this from happening?

...I don't like wasting DVD-Rs.

P.S. In response to my second question on my previous post, the answer is in the Pinnacle Studio manual which I did not get with the software. I downloaded it from Pinnacle's web site and found the answer in chapter 9: Disc menus, page 174 under Chapter-editing controls.

P.S.S. I found after burning, chapter 9 of the manual also explains how to use the DVD player control, on page 167. I opened the project and tested the menus with the DVD player control and got the same results as above, so I could have saved myself the render/compile/burn time if I had done this first. However, it still doesn't solve my problem.

Any pointers/suggestions to fix or prevent this are greatly appreciated.

I believe I found a clue to the problem: for some reason Pinnacle Studio is automatically setting the length of the chapters. I found this by clicking through the chapters in the edit menu window and it seems the entire video content was automatically split into umpteen chapters.

What I believe I need to do is to set the chapter length to half of the video content. How do you do this? I cannot find this explained anywhere in the manual.

Thanks for any tips/suggestions.

Well, I believe I solved all the problems in my previous posts. I was going in the wrong direction trying to find a way to change the chapter length. Since Pinnacle Studio automatically created 83 chapters for my video content, I scuttled that idea and instead decided to uncheck the "return after every chapter" checkbox in the edit menu window.

Afterward, in the timeline view (NOT in the storyboard view), I selected the scene where I wanted it to return to the menu (the last scene for that portion of the video content), and clicked the set return button, having highlighted the menu button on the menu I wanted to set this for. This looks like it fixed the problem.

I also solved the problem with not being able to set the link to a black image at the start of a scene by selecting it in the timeline view (NOT in the storyboard view which I had tried before). So, for what it's worth, use the timeline view for setting menu links and other similar operations.

To note, the example in the manual for setting menu links does specify using the timeline view, so I guess part of it is RTFM, although it doesn't explain everything (e.g. why does Pinnacle automatically set all the chapters seemingly arbitrarily?).

I haven't done the render/compile/burn yet to DVD, but I tested it in the DVD player control and it appears to work as I expected.

I hope this helps others with the learning curve on DVD authoring.

It's very much appreciated that you kept the thread updated. Well done you!

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