Digital Workshop

I'm building my first DVD project for a client using OPUS XE 5.14. I have a single menu (which must be either created or set as a "Menu" by OPUS) with 6 Buttons. Four Buttons are single Page Videos (again OPUS wants to help you by making it a full page -- automatically); one Button goes to a single Page with photos - multiple Image Objects (no Slideshows or MultiFrames allowed in DVD) with a 10 minute song; and the main Button goes to 30 Pages which were hand converted from an old PowerPoint presentation, each about 10 seconds long.

My question: When you Publish, you MUST tell OPUS how long the total Publication is. Is there an "easy" way to get this calculation? Otherwise, I'll have to add the Page length of every Page, the song Page length, all of the Video Pages, plus 15 seconds for the Main Menu Page. There MUST be a quick way to do this rather than manually, right?

As long as you put Exit actions on each of the non-video chapters and everything should be worked out for you.

This is not true you simple create a normal page, and then when you
publish, this page is rendered to video. This is one of the major
advantages of using Opus to create DVD’s; the flexibility this gives you is
tremendous.

Note you can also use these features on Menu pages as these are also
rendered to video when published.

Regards

Brenden Knifton

Brenden --

I wanted to have one Page with a WAV file song playing, then used MultiFrame and a Timeline to progress through multiple Image Objects appearing at different times. When I did a DVD Publish, the song played, but none of the MultiFrames appeared. It worked in Preview, but not DVD Publish. I believe I then tried Slideshow with the same results. I worked around by having multiple Pages which timed out and progressed Forward. That worked fine.

Duncan --

I'm not clear about what you mean saying "Exit." Like Internet Publications, there is no Exit in a DVD. You can press the STOP button on the DVD player, but that's a hardware end, not software.

Please let me know what you meant with "Exit." TIA

I mean an Exit action in Opus itself. Adding an Exit action will cause the video export to terminate at that point.

Fred,

I have tried it here and it seems to work fine, please take a look at the attached example and let me know if this works for you. You will need to put 5 images in the slideshow I left them out to save a bit of space on the upload.


Regards

Brenden Knifton

Brenden --

I downloaded your imp file and removed the missing image names in the Slideshow. I replaced them with four Images and changed the viewing time to 5 seconds with a Fade Transition on all 4 slides. I set the Image to Fixed.

It works in Preview. I Published using NTSC instead of your European PAL format. It created DVD sub directories on my hard drive. When OPUS finishes Publishing, a DVD viewer is shown. The opening dialog screen is shown, then your single Button. When I clicked the Button the Pub immediately ended.

I have now tried the DVD files on my hard drive with PowerDVD from CyberLink. It plays as you expected with this DVD player. So the Slideshow does work with the correct player. I haven't burned a DVD yet to test this on a stand alone DVD player. I'll let you know the results.

What about MultiFrames? That's where I originally got a view of my Master Page background, but no Image Objects when I Published. The Timeline and MultiFrames worked in Preview...

If you want to foward your publication to support@digitalworkshop.com I will take a look at it and see if we can't get to the bottom of it.

Regards

Brenden Knifton

After Opus Publishes it then starts rendering the dvd so there is no need to press the button as it only shows for 1 second and is not interactive when in previews-renders mode.

Regards

Brenden

Thanks Fred, we have your publication and will investigate further.

Regards

Brenden Knifton