How do I add a PLAY button to a finished video?

[monna]

I have a finished video, that finally plays in my DVD player but I cannot figure out how to add a PLAY button so that a user can load the DVD and not have it just start playing and keep looping through. How do I add the PLAY button and how do I stop the looping?

[Nationalsolo]

Hi

 

The DVD generation part of videopad is somewhat weak and only writes the project to the disc in a single playable form. It will not add menus, play buttons or previews etc. or add more than one project to the disc.

 

Using VP the nearest to having multiple projects is to render all your efforts to your PC first and then add them one after the other to a new sequence line with bookmarks between them. (You can also keep "projects" separate using sequences and then adding the sequences together with bookmarks between them. (Individual projects in effect.) This is a bit like cracking an egg with a sledgehammer except the egg isn't really cracked!

 

The bookmarks will enable you to skip through the DVD from bookmark to bookmark (or, as it were project to project) using the skip buttons on your player, but the DVD will still only start with the first one. Not really very good.

 

The best way is to save your finished projects to your PC as separate avis (or similar files) and then use a third party dedicated DVD creator to produce your DVD. This way you can have previews, menus, background images and choice of play buttons.

If you have Windows movie maker then you will probably also have Windows DVD maker which will do the job reasonably OK.

 

However, I prefer DVDStyler which is a free DVD creator program and which gives you full control over nearly all aspects of the creation process. It's not difficult to use and you can add images, buttons etc.

 

http://www.dvdstyler.org/en/downloads

 

Another free program is the SoThink DVD maker. This does a similar job but, if you haven't bought the software it places a green advertscreen between each film (or at every bookmark if you have used these). This is not particularly annoying though as it gently fades these in and out between sections.....a sort of Pearl&Dean , otherwise it is free to use with no time restriction apparently and the results are good otherwise.

 

http://www.sothinkme...ovie-dvd-maker/

 

Nat