How to return to menu after episode (Sopranos) in DVDMaestro

[Roveer]

I've been transcoding and authoring the Soporanos and just realized that I forgot to include an operation.

I ripped the animated menu and sound for the episode index, assigned the buttons, set the chapter points and it all works great.

BUT. I forgot to have the DVD return to the menu AFTER each episode ends. Instead it just keeps playing through the next episodes.

How do I do this in DVDMaestro?

[Jestorius]

Connections->Your Movie Timeout-> in the Target window choose your MainMenu.

[Roveer]

I think I may have left out a few important details.

The material I'm working with has 3-4 episodes in the main M2V file. They are all contained in a single file. What I need to do is to have some sort of chapter point that will send control back to the main menu. I tried your suggestion and couldn't find a thing called 'movie timeout' only 'menu timeout'.

So I need to have the DVD go back to the main menu at the end of episode one (around 57 minutes in), then at the end of episode 2 (140 minutes in), etc...

How would I accomplish this?

Thanks.

[bex]

you have the chapters at the start of each part, yes ?


on the movie connections on the last chapter of the part when you want it to go back to the menu on "end action" of that chapter you point it back to the menu , sorted

Bex

[Roveer]

I tried the 'end action' on the chapter that I wanted to return to the menu from and it did not appear to work. Any other suggestions?

[Jestorius]

Can you take a "print screen " of the Connections window and post the picture somewhere.


Your project should work with end action connection. Are you using the "show Advanced Sources" of Connections? Can you see all chapterpoints there?

[Roveer]

I tried a few more things, and still can't get it to return to the menu on a 'end action'. Here's the link for a word document that contains 3 screen shots of the connection window which is in 'advanced' mode.

http://users.rcn.com/roveer/mae2.doc

Let me know if you see my problem. Many thanks.

BTW, I'm previewing my finised project using PowerDVD. I haven't yet written it to an actual disk, if that makes any difference.

Roveer

[Jestorius]

Use of Playlist can be more comfortable for this project. Make as many playlist as you button links are and use them as target for you menu buttons.

[Roveer]

I'll give playlists a try. Can anyone give me a simple how to. I looked at it quickly, and it didn't seem to straight forward. Any help with playlists is appreciated.

Roveer

[Jestorius]

You should use playlist because if you put any end action into a chapterpoints-end-action than it gonna jump to the target even if you wanna play the hole movie.

Add chapters to the movie. In the corner to the right there is a "yellow/green" icon. This is the button to the playlist editor.

Open the playlist editor and you can see all your chapterpoints in the right 1/3 part and an "add playlist" button in the midle and your playlist below.

Select the chapterpoint(s) and drag to the MoviePlaylist. If you are finished and wanna make a new one just hit the "add Playlist" button.

You can see all the playlists below your movie and in the Connections window. Each playlist has a Menu and an End Action target. Make your navigation. The target of the menu button is a playlist. The EndAction target of your playlist is your main Menu.

You have a button which is playing the hole movie. This button can have the movie as the target. You don't have to make a playlist for it.

It works as it has to be , tested and used several times.

[Roveer]

I set up play lists per your suggestion and it worked just great. Was able to finish two soprano's projects both working fine.

Thanks for the help. I wish I knew why the 'end action' didn't work when set on the specific chapters, but did work when used with the playlists? Oh well, I've gotten it to work and that's what matters.

Thanks for all your help.

Roveer