Command Sequences and Maestro Assistance?

[shorton]

Does anyone know of a good guide or example command sequence how-to for Maestro? I'm proficient at non-command sequence stuff in Maestro, but I finally have a project where I need more control. I've read my manual and I've read the technical details at:
http://www.dvd-replica.com/DVD/vmcommands.php
I have programming experience, I've even programmed a couple microprocessors in assembler, but I'm having a hard time getting my head around the command sequences. A lot to absorb, getting old I guess. I think I'm missing something fundamental, but I don't see what it is.

For example:

My project has 13 movies, 1 main and 4 sub-menus.

On the main menu 4 buttons invoke the 4 submenus, no problem there. One button (button #2) however is to invoke a 4-chapter movie, which I want to loop until someone presses "menu".

I want it so if the user presses next while on the last chapter, it will loop back to chapter 1 of the same movie. If they don't press anything at all, I want it to loop back to chapter 1 as well. I want it to exit this loop only if they press "menu".

I've tried:
A) I don't assign a "next" action, and if the user presses nothing, at the end of chapter 4 the palyback loops back to teh beginning of chapter 1. Good. But if the user presses "next" while on CH 4, they are taken to chapter 1 of the (different) movie associated with the next botton off the main menu. No loop. Bad. "next" apparantly defaults to the next thing in line onthe DVD this way.

B) If I set no "Next" action, and the user lets chapter 4 play to the end, it returns to the main menu, ditto for pressing next during CH 4. No looping as desired. Bad.

I want to learn the command sequences so I can lick this issue. Can anyone help me get going?

I have other "special" spots on this project I need similar controls for. But this one is typical, maybe if I can figure it out I can do the others too.

Thanks, Scott

[bigotti5]

just add a 15 frame black bitmap to the 4 chapter-movie and set an additional chapterpoint and do not set a next action

[shorton]

I tried that. This movie is movie#2. The 4 chapters each have patterns. Each pattern loops until the user presses next. So I have

Ch 1 -> end action Ch 1 Loops, OK.
....
Ch 4 -> end action Ch 4 Loops, OK

Ch5 (blank video) -> says it's end action is Ch 1 but it's ignored. When the user presses next, the vide moves to the next piece of video in the project, which happens to be movie #3, chapter 1.

[shorton]

I just double checked it. I even tried adding a Ch 6 where CH 5 is black video with an end action of CH 1. Ch 6 set with no end action. If you just let it run, it goes back to CH 1 as desired. But if you press next, while on CH 4, it terminates play, dosen't even go back to menu. And you can't place a chapter marker less than 45 frames from the end. Or I can't.

[shorton]

OK, I tried this and it seems to work. Maybe I was making it too hard:

I made a on line command sequence (CS) that said:
Jump to Movie 2 [#1]
(beginning of the movie I want to repeat)

I set the "next" to that CS. I also set "end action" to that CS.

Now it works. Don't touch it, it loops. Press next, it loops. Loops no matter what as far as I can tell. Menu and it exits.

So I went back and whacked off the dummy video at the end, moved chapter 5 to in on the timeline so now, my "tail" is a duplicate of the chapter4 I want to repeat. Now, while in ch4 and it's repeating, user presses "next". It goes to ch5, times out (or get's another next by user) adn poof, back to ch1 as it's supposed to.

Is it that easy? What am I missing, what's going to blow up I'm not thinking about?

[dvdboy]

I'm not sure I quite follow you:

You want a movie with chapters to loop at the end, correct?

As someone suggested, add a second of black on the end of your movie, and place an extra chapter point in this black.

Set the end action of your last TWO chapter points to MOVIE_X_Chapter_1 using the connection window. That way, if someone just watches it through, when the reach the end of CHAPTER 4 they will jump to th beginning. If they press next they jump to Chapter 5 which last for 15 frames or so and then jumps to the start of the movie.

The additional chapter point gives the next button somewhere to go whe you press it during the final chapter - if you don't have this, some DVD players will take the next button press as a chance to jump to the next title.

No command seqence req (except for Maestro's abstraction layer!)