DVD menus and the number of items per menu page - an observation

johnebaker wrote on 12/5/2012, 4:42 PM

Several users have posted about how many items can they put on one DVD menu and problems they have found.

I have been experimenting with this (MEP 2013) and have found the following -

1. Most of the DVD templates will allow up to 6 movies/chapters on one page - any more than 6 and a second page is created.

2. The exceptions are the Clockwork and Red Smoke menus - these will allow more than 6 items.

In both cases though I have found that if there are more than 6 items to the movie menu page either added manually in the case of templates not described in 2, or automatically or manually, in the case of the Clockwork and Red Smoke - then the menus will not function correctly, if at all.

In the case of the Clockwork and Red Smoke templates - with a 7th menu item, the disc cannot be read or it crashes both my DVD playing software on my PC - Nero Player and PowerDVD and locks up my DVD and BD players so they do not respond at all.

It does not appear to damage the players as they work OK after powering them down to reset them.

I would appreciate it if someone can try this and see if they can replicate it.

John

Comments

terrypin wrote on 12/6/2012, 5:09 AM

Hi John,

I've not been able to reproduce this.

First, the first more general issue you reported:

Second, your special cases

To me this points to either a project-related issue (mine was about as simple as you can get), a hardware problem, or perhaps a faulty disc?

Perhaps you can double check by reproducing my simple example?

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

johnebaker wrote on 12/6/2012, 12:53 PM

Hi Terry

Hi Terry - thanks for trying that - however perhaps i was not clear enough in my explanation of the problem ie .

the bit where I said . . . . more than 6 items to the movie menu page . . . .

To clarify I mean 7 or more movies in the project, chapter menus I do not have a problem with.

This is the movie menu page using Red Smoke

As you can see there are seven movies of which only the last four have chapters

This is the navigation structure

The odd thing is I have tried the Clockwork menu again and now I only get 5 items on the first movie page and 2 on the second movie page as it should be ! ! ! !

Thanks again for testing this.

John

terrypin wrote on 12/6/2012, 2:16 PM

Hi John,

OK, understood.

I read this "Most of the DVD templates will allow up to 6 movies/chapters on one page - any more than 6 and a second page is created," as "...6 movies or chapters..." and just chose the latter as much easier to test!

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK