how to make a bluray menu for 76 videos

ashaath wrote on 4/3/2025, 7:26 AM

I have a bluray disc project with 76 videos (chapter markers generated automatically) it comes to around 22 gig it burns fine but when I try to play it on my smart tv (via blu-ray player) only the intro clip plays and arrives at 1st page (with title and button to go to the other menu pages) but if I click the button to go to the next menu page (there are 5 menu pages of 16 videos each) the button highlights as if working but it doesn't move to next menu page.

While editing (in preview) all the buttons work fine and go from 1st menu page to the next etc using forward and back buttons(see attached menu example pages).

Does the "composition max" mean I can't ever have more than 16 per blu-ray disc? I can see all the videos in preview with the 1st 16 on the 1st page ,next 16 on 2nd page etc so I was hoping that multiples of 16 for 76 items would work.

Have I overlooked something, or am I up against limitations? Any advice gratefully received.

Comments

johnebaker wrote on 4/3/2025, 2:01 PM

@ashaath

Hi

. . . . Have I overlooked something, or am I up against limitations? . . . .

The simple answer to both questions is yes and no.

What you have is one movie (timeline) with 72 chapters, which as far as Blu-ray disc standards are concerned, are well within the limitations for the number of menus, both main and chapter and items per page.

Movie Edit Pro 2021 is limited in the number of player function features that can be encoded in BD discs, eg it has no 'end of chapter action' option to determine what happens at the end of a chapter eg you cannot set an action to return to calling menu when end of a chapter is reached, the player continues to the end of the movie.

Based on practical experience:

Menu items:

  • No menu item should be outside the TV safe are, you can turn the grid on in the disc menu creation section of the Burn dialogue.
     
  • Looking at the disc menu images above, it looks like you have overlapping menu buttons in image 3 and 4 of the top row. The other Chapter menus with the text buttons in a 2 col x 8 rows layout look fine.

    This is probably the cause of the navigation not working.

    Menu items should not overlap or butt up to each other, a 3 - 10 pixel separation is sufficient both horizontally and vertically. This also improves the on-screen display of active areas easier to see.
     
  • The large number of chapters and chapter pages makes for unwieldy management in the player.


Personally, bearing in mind that there is no 'end of chapter' action available, I would order the videos on the timeline in Alphabetical order of subject name or 'group type' and create a main menu with, for example, items A to B, Ca to Cy D to F etc linking to chapter pages with the appropriate subject chapter links, the Home/Main/Top menu button on the remote control then being used to giving faster access to the chapter menus.

If you want more control over playback features, you may want to consider using a 3rd party disc authoring software.

The one I use is DVD Architect, however this is no longer available. There are a few others disc authoring programs available. TMPGEnc Studio is one though it does have a bit of a learning curve.

HTH

John EB
Forum Moderator

Last changed by johnebaker on 4/3/2025, 2:05 PM, changed a total of 1 times.

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ashaath wrote on 4/5/2025, 12:27 AM

Many thanks John, really appreciated.