Creating Personal DVDs (one or many clips?)

Whether you do it as you are now or you make it all one file, you will need to work with commands in order to control your navigation. Since the clips are all different, they don't really "flow" from one to another well. You could do some fades but that is done in the video editing process before the DVD authoring step. It all boils down to the exact effect you are going for to determine how you want to get there. A familiar saying comes to mind that holds true of any given project: "Begin with the end in mind." If you don't know where you're going then getting there will be twice as hard. Decide what it is you want your project to do and then I'll give you an idea of how to get there. ;)

Trilight, I see what you're saying. The first version of my DVD that I offered flowed just the way I wanted it. Each video clip has it's own title which I tacked on during the editing stage. The DVD moves from one clip to another just the way I want it to. The reason I'm asking is because I has just finished reading Doom9's guide to Maestro. In there, the ripped DVD video file is imported and then the chapter points are added afterwards. That makes sense. The question is: is that the way the DVD was originally created? Are they created as 1 large video file and chapter points applied afterwards? Will this change anything when the video files are being compiled for DVD burning? Also, will this allow me to rewind past chapter points (because the video is one continuous file)? Thanks, Mike

I prefer SpruceUp when making my own DVD's. It's easy to use but it also has limited functionality. If I want it to play continously I only make one video clip with chapters. I can menu buttons that points to chapters, but it will continue the playback to the end of the clip from that chapter point. If I want it to return to the menu after each clip then I encode them separately. I can add chapters in each clip also. So when I put 2 movies on one DVD I encode them as two clips with chapters. It will return to the menu after each movie has completed. If you encode with multipass VBR then it is more effecient to have one large clip, then the encoder can allocate the bitrate on the complete disc.

Ronny, Thanks for the replies; very helpful. If I could pick your brain further: The DVD I'm working on has 1 hour 50 minutes of various video projects I've completed. I realize that's a lot to fit on a disc, and the first trial disc I burned I used an avg. bitrate of 5032. When viewed on the TV, I saw no quality loss from the original DV footage (none that I could percieve). I'm having problems with the end of this disc (see my other post called "HELP: DVD Authoring Woes. Media Issue??") and now I'm wondering if it's because it's too close to the edge of the disc. I'm really really close to the limit of the disc. Just wondering if you'd suggest splitting the disc up into 2 DVD-Rs? Ack. I just want to get a flawless DVD of this silly project and be done with it! :) Thanks for your time, Mike

I did also have problems at the end of my first discs. But it appeared that this was caused by bad compatibility of the cheap DVD-R media I used. I changed to another brand (I now use the Datasafe Classic 3rd gen 1x media from ) and now I can play to the end of the disc without any problems. Try another DVD-R brand and test it with your player!