Thankfully, the majority of my projects require no DVD authoring. Recently though, I needed to make a simple DVD menu and sub-menu with scene selection buttons. I ran into a peculiar DVD Studio Pro quirk that irked my skirt. In brief, this problem had to do with restarting a DVD after hitting stop twice. After hours of combing the web, and heading down dead-end rabbit trails, I finally came up with a solution. Figured Id pay-it-forward to any bleary-eyed editors out there whove been pulling their hair out over this.
First the problem: When you hit stop on a DVD and then play, normal behavior for a DVD is to resume playback from the stopped point. If you hit stop, and then stop again, this should reset the disc as if youd just inserted it into the DVD player. The problem with my disc is that, after hitting stop twice and then play, the disc would start on track 1 and not the first play menu. (My log read, User action: System initialization. Jumping to Track: Track 1) How annoying is that? I still dont know why this was happening. But its likely an issue with the way DVD Studio Pro writes its GRPM and SPRM values. Now you could buy expensive software and learn how to program DVD discs from the ground up, or you could try this
My Solution: No matter what I tried, I could not get DVDSP to return to the menu after a double-stop. I tried scripting it, I tried rebuilding the project, I even tried some demo versions of that expensive software I mentioned but it quickly got over my head. Since DVDSP was being stubborn, and completely set on restarting at track 1, I finally gave up and said, fine you can have track 1, stupid software, but I get to tell you whats going to be on track 1. And thats the solution: put 2 seconds of black on track 1 and then tell the DVD to end-jump to the main menu. Hey, its not perfect, but it works.
If anyone has another way to solve this problem, please let me know.
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Jesse Rosten is a filmmaker and photographer currently based out of Northern California. He's a fan of creativity in all its forms.
March 26th, 2010
