'Checklist' chapter selection?

[onetwo]

Hi there!

Basically I've created a number of short promotional animations to be played on the screens in a local bar. The problem I'm seeing is that they don't want to play all of the videos all of the time... some of the videos refer to promotions that only run on certain days.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to pop the dvd in and the menu would consist of a chapter list (with each video being one chapter). The user could then look through the list and somehow put a tick (or whatever) next to the ones he wanted to display and hit play and it would work fantastically.

The videos are only little (the entire iso comes out at about 200mb), so I *suppose* a workaround would be to join certain combinations of the videos together (before re-encoding) as chapters (I think I would need 6 different sets to cover all the bases) and then just play whichever chapter relates to the content required.

Now, I'm one for easy ways out but the latter just seems like such an unnecessarily duplicative (if that's not a word it should be) way of doing it.

Any helpful suggestions are appreciated, TIA! :)

[laserfan]

I would be inclined to try to sell them a media player and then put the videos on a PC w/playlists for each day of the week. But barring that (!)

How about authoring a DVD w/menu selections "Monday", "Tuesday", etc.

Or another way (given the vids are small) would be to "simply" make one menu selection for every available/conceivable variation. Oops I guess you figured that out already. I don't think that 6 different sets is a lot.

Certainly you want to keep it simple--the bartenders have higher priorities than to learn a complicated system, you know! ;)

[onetwo]

Believe me, the PC idea has crossed my mind - but they have no other use for a computer in the DJ console so it would be pretty redundant. :(

I think I'm going with the 'days of the week' idea - thanks for the input. :)

You're quite right about the 'keeping it simple' bit too... the manager's knowledge of electrical things is sadly lacking but I think he should be capable of associating the chapter entries with the days of the week.

[Corion]

This thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101279) over in the advanced forum covers this exact topic. However you'll need to be fairly well tooled-up authoring-wise and immune to headaches!

[onetwo]

Excellent Corion, thanks. I wasn't sure how advanced a topic it was. ;)

However, I'm not getting paid enough for this job to invest that amount of time and concentration in the project (and they certainly wouldn't appreciate the level of difficulty - if I was to do something like this, I'd want people to know how bastard hard it was), so I think my original 'plan b' is looking quite attractive at the moment.

Just in case I wanted to pursue this later.... if I said:
- the videos have no audio,
- I don't care what order they play in,
- I don't care if the transitions aren't seamless,
would that make it less challenging?

[laserfan]

Hey onetwo, how about saying "to heck w/menus" altogether, and just burning as many discs as you need for the programs/sequences you want. Write on the front the programs/sequence therein, or just "Wednesday". Make them "first play" (no menus) discs.

ANY flippin' barkeep ought to be able to handle that, and the "auto-replay" or "loop" feature (sorry it's late) on the DVD player. Just plug & go...

Certainly this would be easiest of all. :p

[onetwo]

Why is 'with' the only word you abbreviate? :)

And yes, that would be the easiest option... but even more duplication required than before, and when I update them (one of the videos is a 'football fixtures in <month>' and it's one of the ones I'd need on all of the discs) I'd have to burn a whole new set, which would just plain suck.

I just wanted a clever way of doing it rather than a sort of forced, unintelligent way.

Oh well - forced and unintelligent it is I guess. :)

[laserfan]

...one of the videos is a 'football fixtures in <month>' You didn't 'splain that, or I missed it.

Best solution is probably a PC--failing that you have an authoring job to do every month then... Good Luck!