Hi Dave,

Do you definitely want to show each volume in two separate menus (8 and 7), rather than showing all 15 videos (which could be chapters?) in one menu as shown below:

If I understand your question, the answer is YES.
Think of it as 1 over-all menu (as the graphic immediately below) and if Volume 1, 2, or 3 is selected, the next thing the users see is that volume's pair of screens with 8 and 7 respectively.....and a button of some kind to return to the "over-all" menu.

Thanks for asking, Terry.

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

OK. That does complicate it somewhat. Out of curiosity, why? IOW, why do you want to split the 15 videos into two chapter menus? Is it because you want larger buttons than those in my 15-video menu screenshot? Or perhaps there is some other distinction between those respective sets of 8 and 7?

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

OK. That does complicate it somewhat. Out of curiosity, why? IOW, why do you want to split the 15 videos into two chapter menus? Is it because you want larger buttons than those in my 15-video menu screenshot? Or perhaps there is some other distinction between those respective sets of 8 and 7?

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

 

The content is karaoke videos. Each "volume" could be a discrete style or even genre...i.e. slow ballads, jazz and country.

Thanks.

Bear with me, as I've never made a karaoke video so there's probably some basic aspect I haven't grasped. I get why each volume might be distinct, but I was asking why you want to split a volume's contents (15 videos) into two menus?

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Bear with me, as I've never made a karaoke video so there's probably some basic aspect I haven't grasped. I get why each volume might be distinct, but I was asking why you want to split a volume's contents (15 videos) into two menus?

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Not two menus, but one menu with two or more pages.
Sorry for the inexactness of the original post!

And I was being inexact in my last post! should have said "...into two pages".

So, I'm still not clear why you want to get a display of your 15 videos spread over two pages of each volume's chapter menu? What's wrong with the neater/simpler option of having all 15 on one page, as I showed in my first post?

P.S: Obviously, in that screenshot I've used images for simplicity. For 'Photo' read 'Video' to see the structure I used.

And I was being inexact in my last post! should have said "...into two pages".

So, I'm still not clear why you want to get a display of your 15 videos spread over two pages of each volume's chapter menu? What's wrong with the neater/simpler option of having all 15 on one page, as I showed in my first post?

Probably nothing wrong, except the menu that I have been using allows up to 8 on a single screen but if your project has more, then it automatically generates secondary pages and navigation forwards/backwards.

What menu template are you using?

I used the default

to create this DVD

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5zuy70bn4b0xsv1/Dave3Vols.zip?dl=0

To test it I selected a volume in the top level menu, opened its chapter menu and played a chapter. That, as usual, played and continued to the end of the volume, and then returned to the chapter menu, which is what I understood you want.

Unzip it and let us know if it meets your requirement. (I played it both from that folder, using VLC, and from a burned RW disc.)

The key setting I used was this:

My timeline looked like this:

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi

Here is a quick basic guide to what I think you are after - a main menu with sub menus which contain individual movies rather than using chapters.

When editing the disc menus, to enter the properties of any menu item double click it.

It is very important to remove all the movies from the main page otherwise you may get issues if you use the main (home) page as one of the volume pages and create a new home page.

There are several other options you can add to the menus such as chapters background images/movie, animated buttons and links from one sub pages to another other.

As you add more movies it will become a little unwieldy.

I will create a more polished tutorial with more detail and additions.

HTH

John EB

Hi

Here is a quick basic guide to what I think you are after - a main menu with sub menus which contain individual movies rather than using chapters.

Dear JohnEB:
You have "nailed it" and I've been able to create a demo project that will become a model for my usage of MEPP! THANKS a million for taking the time to create the tutorial.

YOU SAID:
There are several other options you can add to the menus such as chapters background images/movie, animated buttons and links from one sub pages to another other.

I WAS able to figure out how to add buttons back to the main page or to either of the secondary pages (i.e. page 2 or 3 if on page 1 and page 1 or page 3 if on page 2, etc).

What might be helpful to others who are new to MEPP/menus, etc is any tips/tricks on ALIGNMENT of the elements for page consistency. It could well be that I have simply not explored the MEPP documentation sufficiently or I would know that a group of elements could be selected/sized and arranged so that visual jarring is reduced when paging back and forth thru the menus.

YOU SAID:
I will create a more polished tutorial with more detail and additions.

I will likely become a "student". I can live with the somewhat generic backgrounds as I develop my "products" but eventually I hope to have distinctive backgrounds. I have the Adobe Creative Suite 6 and can probably do some of the graphics or titling in the Adobe environment but migrating stills or motion/video into MEPP would be VERY interesting and valuable.

Thanks again and if you have a way of tickling my inbox, please feel free to do so when you create/post stuff about leveraging MEPP.

Dave

I will likely become a "student". I can live with the somewhat generic backgrounds as I develop my "products" but eventually I hope to have distinctive backgrounds. I have the Adobe Creative Suite 6 and can probably do some of the graphics or titling in the Adobe environment but migrating stills or motion/video into MEPP would be VERY interesting and valuable.

Hi,

I presume that you mean into the DVD menu part. This can be done. Take a look through this long thread and you will see some interesting possibilities. You can add in a video intro, change the background from static to video using the timeline, add in music, and much more. You need to read through the menu section of the manual carefully and try out everything. You will be quite surprised at all that you can do.

If you had Magix Video Pro X, you would have even more possibilities; you could export the menu to psd format, make modifications in Xara or Photoshop, and reimport the result. 

Hi

@Dave.N.

. . . . You have "nailed it" and I've been able to create a demo project that will become a model for my usage of MEPP! THANKS a million for taking the time to create the tutorial. . . .

May be not - did you create a test disc or burn using the Image recorder ?

I am having issues with burning.

If I remove the last video from the menu created by MEP, on clicking the Burn button I get a Call to CheckHDAndDiscSpaceForProject() failed error.

If I hide it the last video off the menu page the burn process renders the movies and menus however when trying to create the disc image I get a MDA reports error 67310497 - cannot find procedure ErrorToString in mdabase_x64.dll error This, I would suspect, relates to the file that tells the player what to do.

So far, after 2 hours of testing I cannot get around this without leaving at least one video on the default menu created by MEP. If I minimise the video so it cannot be seen on the menu it burns OK however when playing it is still available if the 1 button on the remote is pressed.

I will put in a support request.

Added: looks like I have found a different bug in editing the menu where two links on two separate menu pages become cross linked so editting one changes the other.

John EB

I will put in a support request.

Added: looks like I have found a different bug in editing the menu where two links on two separate menu pages become cross linked so editting one changes the other.

Any prospects of a fix or workaround, John?
Thanks for your efforts.
Dave

Hi

. . . . Any prospects of a fix or workaround, John? . . .

I have spent lot of time in trying to workaround the problems with the menu editing, discovering many bugs and gotchas in the process.

The big issue is getting video files to be exported that are linked to in sub menus and not checked in the navigation list.

The next big issue is MEP's insistence on rewriting the disc menus every time you reload the project after restarting MEP for a new session of working on the project.

When I get close to something that is workable, a bug or strange behaviour (Murphy's Law) raises another problem.

The work continues.

John EB

@johnebaker

I watched your video tutorial over and over and I have changed my video setup to be separate videos on the timeline. This may well be why the DVD's never read the 2nd, 3rd and 4th videos even though they were chapter marked (which is retarded btw Magix). However, when I come to burn a dvd the burn program doesn't read anything on the file. Your video does cover this. It's obviously something to do with the videos being absent from Navigation menu. However, when I add them back in the menu completely messes up. I end up with 83 menu pages when I re-introduce them to the Navigation menu.

@johncraighowells

There really is no need to post the identical content to two separate threads. Please do not do so.

I am sure John will respond to you when he sees your post to the other thread.

Jeff
Forum Moderator

@emmrecs

I posted it on the other one first and then realized it was on the wrong thread. Wasn't meant as a mailblast.

No problem. Thanks for the update.