Movie Factory 2 (MSPRO7) Menu

[fberger]

I am testing DVD Movie Factory 2 from the MSP7 trial. I have a problem with the menu creation process. The program seems to automatically create a "Main Menu" that then leads to my custom menu. It looks like you can't delete a Menu once it was created. I saw the same problem in VS7 trial.
Is there a hidden function or trick?

[Brian Ellis]

You have hit on a weakness of MF2. I agree it is not very intuitive.

The Main menu is derived automatically from the start of each clip. You can click on a thumbnail in the first window and add/edit chapter and that becomes the submenu of that clip. Repeat for other clips, as required. On the next window, if you have Add chapter menu checked, you can select the main or sub menus at the top of the page. If it is unchecked, you won't have submenus. If you go back to the first window, you can uncheck Create menu and there will be no menu on the project. You can still work on the submenus, and Remove all, if necessary. What you can't do, unfortunately, is to have a submenu without a Main menu, which I and other beta testers have complained about. This is not clever, because if you have a single mpg file as your input, you have only one item on the Main menu, but you have to go through it to reach the submenu. It may be sorted out in the future.

Congratulations on finding a significant weakness so quickly

[fberger]

All right then, I am going back to my DVD Workshop in a hurry! I hate the first menu with only one button.

I was hoping to use MF2 for 2 reasons:

1. The ability to include a DVD player right on the DVD
2. The ability to include original pictures together with a slide show (something that DVD PictureShow includes in v2, but I only own v1 and DVDWS doesn't have it either.)

I'll try to create DVD folders in DVDWS, add the player from MF2, and optionnally add my original pictures, then burn the DVD from another external program.

If Jack from Ulead is reading this, please see if you can add this function in a next release.

While you're at it, it would be _very_ useful to integrate the DVD chapter creation with the MSPRO timeline, either using a cue file or some other method. I find myself regenerating MPEGS quite often (dealing with PAL and NTSC formats), and the chapter/menu creation process has to be repeated every time from scratch. There's got to be a more efficient way. I can beta test if you want.
Thanks.

[wkulecz]

Yes it shouldn't be rocket science to take the old EDL export functions and use them for menu/chapter cues and have the authoring package read these to set menu/chapter points.

I get the distinct feeling that this stuff is being doled out in "least marketable units" and that the people writing the software can't possibly be trying to actually use it!

--wally.