Mydvd Menu Layout Question

[gcsheph]

I have a menu with 2 columns of slide shows on it created in MyDVD. When I play a burned DVD on a TV, the arrow buttons used to move around the menu don't move consistently, and one button (a "play all movies" button) can't be reached at all. For example, I would expect that the down arrow when leaving the bottom of the first column would go to the top of the 2nd- but it doesn't.

 

Of course on a PC you can mouse click on "all play" button and it works fine. I thought this might have something to do with the order of the files under the project menu list, but it doesn't seem to follow that either. As an aside, there doesn't seem to be any way to move around items in the menu project view that I can find, though I don't know if this is related to what I am seeing. I had to recreate some of my slide shows in Videowave for a variety of reasons so the order on the menus list doesn't reflect the order on the project view menu itself, as each "add new movie" goes at the bottom of the list. But I really don't understand why arrow moves (on the TV) won't get to that one button no matter what I do. Each menu item changes color when the focus is on it so I would know if I ever hit the missing button.

 

If this explanation isn't too confusing, maybe someone will have an idea. Thanks again.

[Jim_Hardin]

I'm not a big fan of complex menus... My feeling is that no one ever bought/rented a movie to Watch the Menu

 

Button order can be tricky in Roxio or downright hair ripping

 

And some items, unlinked buttons, just seem to defy any attempt to control!

 

Otherwise, Drag & Drop works pretty well for setting up the order of things...

 

I create a stock menu but decide I want to move 00066 to the first page:

 

 

I drag and drop it on the first page but now the order of the buttons is wacky!

 

 

To get them in the order I want'64' - '63' - '65' & '66', I must drag them in the inverse order of play...

 

 

 

It helps to have a notepad to keep track

 

I suggest that you keep a disc of RW on hand to test out menu experiments. I usually just use a single Picture to represent a Movie when trying these things out.

[gcsheph]

ok. I understand that you can move items between menus, i.e., from the 2nd to the first, as I have done that. I'm guessing that you must have moved everything off menu 1 to menu 2, and then dragged them all back to menu 1 in the desired order, since you can't drag and drop within a given menu. MyDVD seems to have a myriad of issues. But many thanks for the detailed explanation. I'll experiment further. What I wanted to do was have a separate movie/port and then a button to play the whole trip sequentially, which I seem finally to have accomplished. Now if I can just get the menu to work in some fashion when the dvd is played on a tv, I'll be done. R/W disk is certainly essential here!

 

PS to others new to the system, DON'T use MyDVD to create slide shows! Take the extra time to learn Videowave, as the forum experts here advised me to do. There seem to be fewer issues when these movies are loaded into menus. Roxio certainly needs to do some extensive work in shoring up MyDVD. The concept is great, but the execution seems to be lacking.

[Jim_Hardin]

No...

 

You drag and drop Within a menu page to sort order by dropping on 'Your Title Here'

[gcsheph]

Well, I finally got a DVD burned that works the way I need it to when played on a TV. Here is what I did: I created a temporary menu at the bottom and then dragged all of the items off of the main menu onto the temporary one, leaving my "play all movies" button on the first menu. (I also discovered that if you move everything off of a menu, then MyDVD throws away the menu, so you have to leave one thing on it.) Then I proceeded to drag the items from the temporary menu back onto the main menu in the correct order. I then burned the DVD to test on the TV.

 

While it may be tied up in the functionality of the particular DVD player, the first item on the menu (the play all movies) proceeded to play as soon as the DVD was loaded into the machine (rather than the menu), but this was ok. I was able to use the top menu button on the remote and get back to the menu. Further, I was able to reach the "play all movies" button individually, which is what I set out to do. I did notice that using the DVD player remote arrow keys to move around the menu still seems to produce somewhat erratic behavior, but I could still get to each item via some combination of arrows. So I finally have my objective achieved.

 

A couple of things: note that the movies in the "play all movies" button follow the order on the edit/movies menu. So if you go back later and correct something in one of the movies and then re-add it to the project, it goes at the bottom of the movie list and you have to use the move up/down buttons to get it back into the right place, that is, if the sequence of playing all the movies is important. I was also careful not to have any other programs running in background when I burned the DVD, and also to have the disc defragmented as was suggested in a previous post. I don't know if this is still vital once the movies were created in VW rather than MyDVD, but, trusting no-one, I still ensured this state of the environment. Following all of these rather obscure rules, I did get everything to work out OK and I now know what to do in the future.

 

Once again, a big THANK YOU to everyone who helped me through this learning process.

[gcsheph]

Oops, I had already posted the last thing when I saw the note from DG. Turns out that when I had the "your title here" still in the project beneath the menu, it created 'missing movie' errors. When I finally tracked it down to the "your title here" item, I just deleted it so it wasn't there to use as suggested. But at least by my circuituous route I still got it done.

[Jim_Hardin]

You learn to use software the way it was written, not the way you think it should be

 

Type of Media can be an issue too when it comes to Players... If you are not using Quality Media like, Verbatim (Singapore) and Taiyo Yuden (JVC), you may see glitches on some Players.