Program works great on grand scale but would be nice to allow multiple menu for each track allowing multiple depth.

For Example:

Main Menu - Normal (First Play)
Track Menu - Normal (Allow you to select Play or goto another menu.)
Each Track should be allowed to goto Main Menu, Track Menu or another track menu.

Would benefit program greatly is being able to select what happens after each clip is play in the track. You are allowed to add as many clips as you want into each track but you cannot select whether to return to the main menu or track menu or any place else for each clip.

You can make these as enhancements and leave the program as is on default.

I totally agree.
I have been trying to customise my main menu to select two track menus and have a third option to start playing a track.
Other than that - Great software!

When a selection of # of Track Menus are made. The only background that is cloned for each additional track is Track 1.

Would like a template that allows different background pictures for each track. The only way to create that is to save it in the project file and keep changing the files.
For Example:

Main Menu : Background Picture - Mov or Jpeg for Main Menu is ok
Track 1 : Background Picture - Family Pictures
Track 2 : Background Picture is repeated in Theme from Track 1 due to Theme setting -- Want Background Picture to remain Picture of Family Member.

It would be great if Theme would tie a brackground picture to each track as seleted by Theme Menu. If 24 track menus are selected. You can select 24 background pictures 1 for each track. If no background picture was ever selected defaults to track 1 background

Need a setting to enable/diable Autotext formatting for Title in main & Track Menu. When using a background Picture with Title already there. There is no need for the Title Box or the autoformat for the size font. Made a template for the associated theme but am unable to shut off the autoformat.

Create Menu windows-> Etid bouton -> set font for all page
or
Set font color for all page
Haha, autoformat!

I recorded a DVD-R on my Panasonic HS-2. I imported the dvd into TDA. I now have a single track DVD on which I used TDA to insert chapters. I would like to be able to create a menu that would go directly from the main menu to the track menu to select scenes, as there is only the one track on the DVD. Is this at all possible to do with TDA?

Yes, it is. Just click on the Button "Menu display settings" and choose what you want.

Thanks

That does it, but I already burned by christmas gift discs. :-(. They'll have to navigate through the gack.

Dennis

I installed DVD author on my laptop to add chapter points to a dvd-r during my breaks at work. It is a 1.1ghz p3 running XP. I transfered the VOB files from the DVD to my hard drive. Scrolling and playback are very slow. Also the audio is greyed out. The thumbnails, when enabled, update very slowly.

Also when in the menu editor, it seems that onscreen text and graphics are updated as they are being changed in the dialog box. This tends to slow things down as well. Maybe not change them on screen until ok is entered.

I plan on using TMPGEnc DVD Author and would like to know if there is an option to create a continuous play DVD.

There are some other programs that do this, listed in this thread...

http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=174260&highlight=continuous+play

but I am really hoping TMPGEnc DVD Author has this option as well.

Menu Display Settings -> General -> Action to take after all tracks have been played

What will you find there? Yeah, a Loop Mode! ;)

Great! Thanks for the reply B_Racer

First I want to say for the price this is a pretty good authoring program. Cheers to Pegasys! As a designer with a small budget I appreciate the flexibility TDA offers in menu creation and customization. There are a few problems but I expect these will be fixed over time...

Currently I am having trouble implementing what I assume is the "rollover" state for buttons created in photoshop.

the help file says:

"PSD file can be used for button images
When a "Highlight" layer is included in the PSD file, the highlight image will be generated in the opaque part of the layer.
If emboss or effects that make the image invisible are used for the highlight layer, they will be ignored.
Then the original transparency level used before processing will be chosen."

So am I supposed to name a layer "highlight" in photoshop?
If I do TDA will use this to create the yellow highlight?
When the instructions say "opaque" - what RGB value constititutes "opaque"

thank you for your consideration.

Exactly that ... create a top layer in Photoshop called "Highlight" and then fix it up so that when the highlight layer is active (i.e. not invisible) then this is how the button should look when selected ... basically, fill the highlight layer with a color and then make it 80% opaque or so.

When you save the PSD file make sure the highlight layer is not visible but all other layers are ... DVD Author will use the visible layers when the button is not selected, and add the highlight layer when it is selected ...

It took me some time to figure this out but it seems to work okay ... the instructions on the help file aren't that great, are they :-)

Couple of other points ... if you are making a button, I found that a size of about 138 x 33 pixels in 72 pixels per inch is about right for my needs ...

There's also another gotcha ... one of the buttons (I think its track select) seems to have a second image associated with it ... something to do with a movie file ... and sometimes this image blows right over the button image you selected for the thumbnail ... to fix this create a transparent, empty file the same size as the button in Photoshop and then load that first as the "movie file" (use the Edit menu option istead of the Image menu option)before you load the real button image ... I hope this makes sense, if you have come across the problem I did then you will probably know what I am talking about !!

kampar

hi, thanks for the reply. I'll try it out.

Eli

I must be missing something, (old age has its privledges), I have added several menu templates of my own to TMPGEnc Author. I now no longer need them and would like to remove them from the drop down list. Is there a way to do this? I have looked around to try to see where thr listing is kept, but to date have been unable to find it. Any help would be appreciated.

DayTrader

It is just easy thing. Goto the install fold of TMPGEnc DVD Author, then "TEMPLATE", remove the template file with ".tme",that correspond with your templete, So when you return to application, in the drop down menu, it will be disppear.

I'm seeing an issue with an AVI I've encoded (using Tmpegenc) and created a menu with chapters using DVD Author.

When burned (on a NEC 1300A firmware 1.08) and played on my standalone DVD player (Samsung DVD-S221), some chapters (when jumped to) slow to a very low framerate for 1 to 2 seconds. During this time, the screen gets blocky and the sound gets distorted.

I've tried burning the disc (both Verbatim DVD+RW and Memorex DVD-R) from both folders and ISO. Both show the same problem.

I believe this is an issue with Tmpegenc because I've burned the same AVI (with chapters at the same locations) using Ulead Moviemaker. Moviemaker produces a flawless disc.

I've also tried burning the ISO generated from DVD Author with Moviemaker, but, it still has the same chapter problem.

Any suggestions as to how to work around this issue would be appreciated.

What did you use for Encoding the Video?
Did you use open or closed GOPs?
What's the Bitrate-Settings of your Video?

There are many issues to produce problems while jumping to other Chapters, some of them are problems, the players have, some of them are produced by Authoring-Tools.

I used Tmpgenc Plus 2.520.54.163. I'm rather a novice at this, so, I let Tmpgenc make all the decisions.

I did choose DVD/CBR/MP2. Whereas, with the "auto" options selected, it chose a 7368 video bitrate with a 384 audio bitrate.

As for GOP, it chose a structure of: IBBPBBPBBPBBPBBP (standard) and it had Closed GOP selected and Detect scene change selected. Force picture type setting as not selected.

I see "Closed GOP" means that the MPG can be "reedited with other software at a later time". What does this mean exactly? Does it mean that it can be edited later, but, only with Tmpgenc, or, does it mean that it can never be edited?

Do some players have problems with certain GOP settings?

Thank you for your reply.

On open GOPs, the last B-Frames in a GOP do refer to the I-Frame of the following GOP. This makes it really hard (not impossible!) to do some Editing or to set exact Chapter-Points.

I, by myself, do use open GOPs, because you can spare some Bitrate with open GOPs. The disadvantage is a "weak" Chapterpoint setting.

OK, that's the Theory, the real world do provide other problems: The DVD-Players, there are big differences. Some will do a proper Jumping to Chapters, some will not. It depants on a lot of parameters, like GOP-Structure, Bitrates and so on. Some Players do have very small Buffers to spare Production-Costs, such Players are very sensitive to the settings. Maybe your Player is one of this kind.

Hint: Thre are DVD-Authoring-Programs with Frame-Indexing-Technics (like DVDLab), they are mor exact on setting Chapter-Points - but: that's not a guarantee!

IÃÎ definitely interested in supporting the lowest common denominator as far as DVD players. (My DVD player has never had a problem with chapters on movie DVDs.)

As I mentioned before, Ulead MovieMaker produced a DVD for me that didnÃÕ have any problems with chapters. Of course, they make it very difficult to know exactly what their MPEG encoder is doing.

In your opinion, what would be the best settings to support the widest breadth of DVD players on the market? (I.e. what are the ÅÔafestEsettings?)

Is Open GOP one of these settings?

It turns out that I found an excellent article about how to configure Tmpgenc for best results (including DVD player compatibility). It is here:

http://dvd-hq.info/Compression.html

After following this article, not only does my video work flawlessly on my standalone DVD player, it looks better than it did before.

I still this is an issue that the authors of Tmpgenc need to address. The default settings to produce an DVD-compatible MPEG are incorrect. My DVD player is pretty mainstream and the settings simply don't work.

Thanks for your help.

I downloaded the trial version to test on vro files copied off my Hitachi DVD-RAM camcorder. The resulting project when played back with PowerDVD looked great with video and audio in the first scene, but the audio completely stopped for subsequent scenes. The Hitachi specs meet the requirements of the TMPGEnc DVD Author software - MPEG Audio Layer 2, 704 x 480.

Am I missing a setting, or has anyone else run into this?

I know that ezsp_px is a burnsoftware related program, used at startup, BUT...
most programs recognize it as a trojan or a virus (hijack program).
Just do a "google" search on ezsp_px!
The search results show that the use of this program in your software
will be damaging to sales. The bad thing is that even if your software is uninstalled, ezsp_px is still there and will be started on every boot, so again this leads to the idea that this is a virus or spyware.
I would recommend a very clear explanation on your website to prevent problems,
or removal of ezsp_px. I know i would have bought it without all the alarmbells going off at startup.

Eric van Dee

ezsp_px:
Background task installed by the Easy Systems Drag?n Drop CD & DVD writing software found on most Japanese laptop and desktop PCs.

Recommendation :
This task is essential for the good functioning of Drag?n Drop as it provides the common routines (functions) used by the various components of Drag?n Drop.


ezsp_px:
Engine that allows PrimoDVD from Veritas (was Prassi) and Drag'n Drop CD from Easy Systems (and maybe others) to record and protects against other software overwriting the settings.

So there's no hint to any Spyware-suspicion. If you like, you can simply Remove it from you System. Kill the Registry-Settings including this Filename and after rebooting delete it from the Systems-Directory. But you will have problems with the Burning-Module after that.

Well, i find these headers:

Le fichier ezSP_Px.exe est-il un trojan
SpywareInfo Support Forums -> GBG's log
Computing.Net - I-Connection Interrupted...Virus?
WinPatrol Most Un-Wanted List
Forum Virus/S£Äurity

That might scare the hell out off people, as stated before i
understand what it does, but most novices will avoid the authoring software.
But what is unforgivable is that the software can't be uninstalled,
and even when you don't use the authoring software it's alway's
running in the background. Just my $0.02, from a marketing point of view
the google comments are very undesirable, and might affect sales
of a very nice program.
That said the combination of TMPGEnc and DVD Author is a d*** good one, and i will order them both.
Thank's for the quick response,i'm toasting in Nero, so i'll kill the ezsp_px!

Eric.

I recently upgraded to the new Main Encoder 1.4. Sometimes I use it and sometimes I use tmpgenc depending on the needs. I have been using the tmpgenc authoring program and really like it. Since I have upgraded to 1.4 of the main encoder every movie that I encode and try to author in tmpgenc dvd author, I get an error message about the gop being too long. I did some testing and the problem lies with the tmpgenc dvd author program. I can convert a movie and author it in spruceup or dvd moviefactory and I never get that error message. I can use the same converted movie and try it in tmpgenc dvd author and the error is there. It only occurs when converting with main encoder 1.4 and trying to author with tmpgenc dvd author. The tmpgenc authoring program is version 1.5.15.49. I have gone to the main encoder website and confirmed that there isn't a problems with others when they use a different authoring program.

TMPGEnc DVD Author is very strikt to the standards. For PAL, Max-GOP-Lenght is 15, for NTSC 18.
You have to set these GOP-Lenghts in the Encoder. Try using closed GOPs.

I used the default settings for NTSC in the Main encoder. Tmpgenc dvdauthor is the only authoring program that gives that error. The max was set to 18 for my ntsc file. I created a dvd elementary stream that was NTSC. The default setting is 18 so I leave that alone but I get the error when using tmpgenc dvd authoring. I can read the exact same file into spruceup or dvd moviefactory and I don't get that error message. What is going on that is causing that message? It says that the dvd will be out of standard. The file I am converting is a divx 23.976 avi file.

Just ignore the error