[CaughtYou]

Hey everyone,

Let me first describe our use of the EMC9.

I work for a state agency on illegal dumping and littering cases. We have recently went digital with our surveillance program and needed to transfer clips to DVD. So, we bought EMC9 thinking it would work for our project. In a nutshell...we catch people dumping and littering on hidden cameras and then turn it over to our investigators for prosecution.

The problem is, our investigators and the courtroom staff (judge, lawyers, etc.) are not always computer savvy (that is an understatement). We need to be able to hand them a DVD that they can place in a TV with a player and work it like their home DVDs.

I have been able to produce one DVD with 4 submenus and around 20 clips. This is great, but with all the frills EMC9 creators have place on the few templates they have given us with the program, the DVD soon becomes too much for a courtroom setting.

What I need is a Title screen (have it already) and one menu screen with a blank (or colored) background with 30 or so buttons to individual clips (clips are only 30 sec long so memory shouldn't be a problem).
That is it. No fancy stuff. But I can't seem to get there. The menus max out at 10 clips or so, right? Is there any way around this?

Thanks

[ggrussell]

30 on one menu? Ouch, that would be some tiny text to get all those. Plain background with text is simple. Getting 30 on one menu, I'll have to play around and see if there an 'easy' solution.

[CaughtYou]

ggrussell, on Jan 2 2007, 02:02 PM, said:

30 on one menu? Ouch, that would be some tiny text to get all those. Plain background with text is simple. Getting 30 on one menu, I'll have to play around and see if there an 'easy' solution.

Thanks ahead of time!

[ggrussell]

i'll try to make the short. LOL I think the easiest solution would be to edit ALL of the clips together as one large MPEG. Add that to MyDVD project on main menu. RIGHT click on that file and manually create chapter points for each individual case clip. This creates a submenu that is easily navigated. Edit the text on the main menu to say something like "Click here for Cases".

You can then edit the submenu text to reflect each case number.

For a simple background, use Photosuite to create a plain background. Maybe add the county seal or seal of justice/court. Once you have designed the menus, save it for future use.
In MyDVD, FILE > Save as Menu Style. Make sure you DO NOT move the JPG file once you have saved the style. Otherwise it won't be able to find it next time you use your custom style.

This post has been edited by ggrussell: 02 January 2007 - 04:47 PM

[CaughtYou]

ggrussell, on Jan 2 2007, 04:46 PM, said:

i'll try to make the short. LOL I think the easiest solution would be to edit ALL of the clips together as one large MPEG. Add that to MyDVD project on main menu. RIGHT click on that file and manually create chapter points for each individual case clip. This creates a submenu that is easily navigated. Edit the text on the main menu to say something like "Click here for Cases".

You can then edit the submenu text to reflect each case number.

For a simple background, use Photosuite to create a plain background. Maybe add the county seal or seal of justice/court. Once you have designed the menus, save it for future use.
In MyDVD, FILE > Save as Menu Style. Make sure you DO NOT move the JPG file once you have saved the style. Otherwise it won't be able to find it next time you use your custom style.

Thanks Again! I will give that a try.

[CaughtYou]

ggrussell, on Jan 2 2007, 04:46 PM, said:

i'll try to make the short. LOL I think the easiest solution would be to edit ALL of the clips together as one large MPEG. Add that to MyDVD project on main menu. RIGHT click on that file and manually create chapter points for each individual case clip. This creates a submenu that is easily navigated. Edit the text on the main menu to say something like "Click here for Cases".

You can then edit the submenu text to reflect each case number.

For a simple background, use Photosuite to create a plain background. Maybe add the county seal or seal of justice/court. Once you have designed the menus, save it for future use.
In MyDVD, FILE > Save as Menu Style. Make sure you DO NOT move the JPG file once you have saved the style. Otherwise it won't be able to find it next time you use your custom style.

Ok, I got the background thing figured out. Good stuff.

I then went into Video wave and made a production with chapter markers in it. The "help" database told me that if I put the markers in that I could bring the production into a MYDVD project and it would automatically make submenu's. When I attempted this it didn't work. My MYDVD project is a title page with all the legal mumbo jumbo and a button to the next page where I attempted to put my production. When I bring my production into that page it titles it with the file title and makes it a button to the full production without automatically creating submenu's where I placed the chapter markers.

Boy, this is hard to explain in typed words. I hope you "smell what I'm steppin in".

[Larry]

CaughtYou, on Jan 4 2007, 12:03 PM, said:

Ok, I got the background thing figured out. Good stuff.

I then went into Video wave and made a production with chapter markers in it. The "help" database told me that if I put the markers in that I could bring the production into a MYDVD project and it would automatically make submenu's. When I attempted this it didn't work. My MYDVD project is a title page with all the legal mumbo jumbo and a button to the next page where I attempted to put my production. When I bring my production into that page it titles it with the file title and makes it a button to the full production without automatically creating submenu's where I placed the chapter markers.

Boy, this is hard to explain in typed words. I hope you "smell what I'm steppin in".

If you right click on the movie (title) and select Edit Chapters, it should open the chapter edit window with the chapters defined by the marks you made in VW. Make sure the checkbox for creating a chapter menu (or sub menu; not sure of the exact verbiage; not in front of the program right this minute), then click ok, it should create the chapter sub menu(s) for you.

[ggrussell]

CaughtYou, on Jan 4 2007, 01:03 PM, said:

The "help" database told me that if I put the markers in that I could bring the production into a MYDVD project and it would automatically make submenu's.

Help has been know to be 'inaccurate'. As Larry points out, I don' think it will that automatic. When you bring up the 'edit chapter' dialog box, those marks should already be there. I haven't used that feature yet so I'm not that sure.

[CaughtYou]

ggrussell, on Jan 4 2007, 01:37 PM, said:

Help has been know to be 'inaccurate'. As Larry points out, I don' think it will that automatic. When you bring up the 'edit chapter' dialog box, those marks should already be there. I haven't used that feature yet so I'm not that sure.

Oh golly gee.....I have been working for four hours on this project. I went in and edited all the clips for a given day together and put chapter markers inbetween those clips. Then, I went into my MyDVD project and placed the clip in. Easy so far...a little too easy.
I right clicked on the production and did the submenu thing. It worked but only let me put 4 chapters per screen and it defaulted to a thumbnail for the button. Not the way I would prefer it to happen...but it will work. I had to redesign the menu pages one by one for the three pages it produced when I submenued it. Only one problem occured at this point:
The thumbnails kept switching to random points within the production insted of the first frame of the chapter. So I would attempt to switch them back to the correct frame...and that worked...until I moved to the next submenu. Then when I went back to the previous submenu page the thumbnails had switched again to a total different point within the production.
At this point I was getting a little frustrated so I decided to run the preview to see what would happen. Everything worked great until I navigated and clicked on the thumbnail. It would pull up the production in a totally random spot and would play through the whole production before it would revert back to the main menu.
Why didn't it go to the main menu when it reached the end of the chapter?
Also, why does it keep picking its own place in the production to start when the predeterminded chapter breaks were already set?
The last problem I had was when I attempted to burn a test DVD. I thought that all the little glitches might just work out when I went to burn...no such luck. I got some sort of error message that I forgot to write down (good move huh?). It wasn't the "blue screen of death" from windows, it was a Roxio error box with a number in it. The number started with an 88 and was followed by three more numbers.
After 4 straight hours of production and having nearly nothing to show from it... I am ready to throw my CPU out the window. PLEASE HELP ME! DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY ANTI ANEXITY MEDS?

[ggrussell]

We have seen some posta about the chapter markers not being accurate or moving, but personally, I haven't seen this problem. As for returning back to Main Menu, that is not the default for CHAPTER marks. Just like a commercial DVD, it assumes that you want to watch the rest of the movie from that point.

Seems like a lot users get terms confused and how they work. Buttons to play TITLES (or movies) are always on the Main Menu. This can be a Play All button or a button to play a particular movie. By default, MyDVD always returns to the Main Menu after this action. If you have place several short 'titles' on the Main Menu, this end action can be changed.

When you edit chapters and create a sub-menu, MyDVD defaults to playing the chapters one after another because after all they are one 'movie'. At the end of the last chapter, you should be returned to the SUB-MENU because that is the menu you from which you started. Haven't tried, but I'm sure that could probably be changed, too.

This post has been edited by ggrussell: 04 January 2007 - 05:13 PM