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 Posted by Bob on 11/16/05 13:06 
On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:13:06 -0600, "Ken Maltby" 
<kmaltby@sbcglobal.net> wrote: 
 
>  A few startup hints for TDA. 
 
>1.  Make your own Menu Themes. 
 
>2.  Click on the Blue "Add new track..." to add separate clips/ 
>movies/episodes, if you want them to play and return to the main 
>menu.  Or if they have differing parameters.  (you can have them 
>play the next track, instead of returning to the menu, if you want) 
>   {This is what you should do with your "short movie clips".} 
 
I prefer to return to the menu since each title is uniquely different. 
 
>3.  Click on everything.  Right Click on everything also. 
 
>4.  RTFM/Help files. 
 
I am a manual freak - I actually enjoy reading manuals because they 
have so many neat little things tucked away in hidden corners of the 
presentation. I will generally read a manual at least three times - 
that is how long it takes to pick everything out. 
 
>5.  If you label the "Tracks", that text will automatically appear in 
>the "Create Menu" for that menu selection. 
 
>6.  Try a Text Only layout, instead of one with thumbnails. 
>        (layout 6#3 is the first one, in the listings.) 
 
>7.  Often a 'Main menu only" works best.  How often do you 
>want to select a chapter from a menu?  And if you did most 
>players will have a Chapter selection menu, anyway. 
 
>8.   Make chapter points even if you aren't using a chapter 
>menu; they also serve a navigation function. 
>  {If your "Short Movies" are small enough you might not 
>     need to set any.} 
 
My clips are too short for chapter marks. I have 16 clips in all and 
they take up less than a DVD disc in all, menu included. 
 
>9.  Motion Menus are a breeze with TDA, just click on the 
>existing background and open your own .mpg to be the 
>background image and music.  I use VideoReDo to cut out 
>the opening credits of the shows I'm collecting, and use that 
>as a background on a text only layout.  This also gives me the 
>show's theme song as the BGM (Background Music). 
 
I tried motion menus once but with 16 title icons it looked silly. I 
would much rather have the text showing statically. Motion menus are 
useful when you have only a few titles. 
 
>10.  Once you have a menu theme as you want it save it with 
>the background clip/image and most of it's settings, under an 
>appropriate name.  For my TV series I use the series name, 
>I also have some "standard" ones for a two movie DVD, or 
>mini-series.  Once you have your own theme, you can edit it 
>each time you use it , if you want. 
 
>  That should give you a start. 
 
Thank you for the big heads up - this will save me the agony of having 
to discover it the hard way. 
 
I rendered that troublesome video clip in TDA - and it plays just 
fine. Therefore, contrary to a stupid remark made by one of the 
posters, it is not my mpgs that are the problem - it is MF4. But then 
we knew that all along. 
 
I tried almost every possible thing to get it to render properly in 
MF4 - I even turned off that MF4 VRD switch - but nothing worked. 
There is a fundamental problem with MF4 that I was experiencing only 
parts of before I ran into this. Now this simple 3 minute music video 
clip - which is perfectly acceptable to VRD, WMP, DVDR, TDA et al, ad 
nauseam - brings MF4 to its knees. One of the attempts caused MF4 to 
claim it would take over 6 hours to render the clip. Obviously there 
is some kind of very serious problem with MF4. 
 
I still want to get this clip fixed in MF4 since I have already made 
the effort to render (export) 15 other clips and all I need is this 
one last one to complete my collection. I do not look forward to 
having to import and render those other 15 clips again in TDA. 
 
I have a few more things I can try - like turning off Two Pass 
rendering and fooling around with some other switches. Maybe one of 
them like "flicker free" is causing the problem. It usually is 
something like this - a minor function that the developer slapped 
together Q&D. 
 
Again, thanks for your considerable assistance in getting TDA running. 
I have already printed it and am eager to work down the list. But I 
have to read the manual first. 
 
--  
 
BOYCOTT SONY! 
 
SONY IS TRYING TO TAKE OVER YOUR COMPUTER! 
 
HOMELAND SECURITY TOLD SONY TO CEASE AND DESIST! 
 
YOU DO THE SAME - BOYCOTT SONY!
 
  
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