MARKERS

[Cope This 719]

I am having a few problems with Menu Markers.

What I am trying to do is divide a movie into 5 sections or chapters. For the start of each section I place a green marker at the beginning, then place a red marker at the end so that it will return back to the beginning of the movie. This works well when I use the individual scene icon on the Main page. My problem is that when I want to play the entire section I am stopped at the end of the first section and returned to the main page.

Any help most appreciated
John

[Steve Grisetti]

Unfortunately, you don't have a Play All option when you create your DVD in Premiere Elements, John. You either get individual clips or one continuous play -- not the option of one or the other.

This IS possible, however, with DVD Architect Studio, a $39 program that many Muvipixers use to supplement Premiere Elements. It's a dedicated disc authoring program with lots of these kinds of options.

If you go to our Products page and do a product search for DVD Architect, you'll see some free tutorials demonstrating this great little program. And with it, it's very easy to create a disc that plays individual clips or plays all continuously.

[Dave McElderry]

Actually there is a workaround using PRE, depending on the size of your project. If your video isn't too long, say roughly 35 minutes or less, you can put two copies of it on the timeline with no loss of quality. Anything more will result in more than 70 minutes on your DVD, which may or may not cause a noticeable loss of quality depending on your discerning eye, and the actual length up to 120 minutes.

Below I've posted a screen capture of a sample timeline. You'll notice that I put a little blank video at the beginning and end, and at the beginning of each scene - my preferred way to do this. First on the timeline is the whole video. You'll notice that there are no menu markers needed, but there's a stop marker at the end. After than on the timeline is the whole video again, but split into the individual scenes with the blank video inserted between each. At the beginning of each scene is a standard scene menu marker (green), and each ends with a stop marker except the last one (not needed).

The purpose of the blank video is to allow all video to start from black and return to black after. Cross dissolves make it smooth and pleasing, although I didn't include them here.

PRE 7 Screen.jpg

And here's a screen capture of the Scene Menu that was automatically generated from doing this. You can, of course, rename those as you wish.

PRE 7 Scene Menu.jpg