Multiple Movies on a Single DVD

[dhargrove1218]

Is there a way to burn multiple movies on a single DVD and have a master menu for the movies and have each movie have its own scene movie? There used to be a Steve's Tips on this subject but it is gone. I'm using PE12.

[Peru]

Welcome to muvipix!

I don't use Premiere Elements, but I think you can put the movies consecutively on the timeline and use chapter markers. Then just make a menu using those chapters.

The only concern would be how long the movies are. The quality of the video will decrease as you try to put more than about an hour on a DVD.

[Bob]

Premiere Elements can do this. Lay out all the movies on the timeline and place a Main Menu marker at the start of each movie and a Stop marker at the end of each. The start of the timeline is automatically a Main Menu location, so you don't need to add one there.

The Main Menu markers will automatically be associated with buttons on the main menu. The stop markers indicate the end of the movie and, when reached during playback, the movie will stop playing and return to the main menu.

[momoffduty]

I don't think PrEl 12 is capable of creating a menu for each movie AND scene menus for each movie.

Welcome to Muvipix!

[Chuck Engels]

Cheryl is right, you can have a main menu with a link to each movie but not a scene menu for each movie. You can have a scene menu that would cover all movies in order of the scene marker.

Sounds like you are needing to move up to a good authoring tool like DVD Architect or EncoreDVD
Encore can easily do what you are trying to do with Chapter and Playlists.

[dhargrove1218]

Thanks for the comments - How about something like this:

Treat all the scenes in the movies (plural) as chapters and add a stop marker and the end of the scenes that end each movie. Then in the main menu use an indented list where the first scene of each movie is the movie title followed by an indented list of the chapters for that movie. So the main menu would display, for example "chapter 3" under movie 2, when it is actually chapter 10 in the overall timeline.

Cheating is good!

[Bob]

Sorry, I missed the part about you wanting scene menus as well. You can create scene menus, but they won't be separate by movie. You'll get one set of scene menus for the entire dvd with scenes in the order the scene markers appear on the timeline.

Premiere Elements is very basic when it comes to menu construction. I'll second Chuck in recommending DVD Architect studio. It's very reasonably priced and it's very capable. Export the movie(s) to your computer using the mpeg-2 for DVD preset and they should work well in DVD Architect Studio.

The problem with placing a stop marker at the end of each scene like you propose is that you won't be able to play the entire movie at once. The viewer will need to select each "chapter" manually to continue.

[dhargrove1218]

The only scene with the stop marker would be the last one for each movie so only the last one returns to the main menu. You would only return to the when the one you selected was done but before going into the next movie.

[Chuck Engels]

I recommend trying out a test dvd and see if works the way you want it to. If not you can export for DVD Architect if you decide to go that route. Premiere Elements can do some basic things when it comes to menus but if you want to do anything slightly advanced you have to look elsewhere. I also recommend downloading a trial of DVD Architect and burn a DVD with the trial and create the menu of your dreams

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I recommend trying out a test dvd......

Use a re-writable - saves creating useless DVD coasters.