Wow... thanks for the quick response.  I did go to edit mode but am trying to change the position of the video it has selected.  I can't get selection boxes but I can see the dvd menu video on a timeline.  I have tried using Object trrimmer to move the conent but it moves it frame by frame and was hoping to find a quicker way to type in where the frames should start and end.

Thanks for the help.

Hi you are in the wrong window. You should see the same windows as Carl if you follow his instructions.

To get to the second window you double click the thumbnail (football player) in the first window and the second window will appear. You then use the slider or spin boxes (top right - "Position") to navigate through the clip to the frame you want.

Ss

Thanks again for the response.  My issue is with template user footage, Easy (coloured).  I am able to select scenes for the DVD and adjust where the scene image should be pulled but I cannot change where the selected video footage is being pulled from when I use that standard template. Only in arranger can I make any modification to the frames and it takes FOREVER to move frame by frame to try and select another spot in the video.  If I could click on the box surrounding that selected video clip then I am sure I could move using the scroll wheel to another point in the video... but there is no seelction box.

Sorry to be a pain but do appreciate the help.

I've never understood how to do that either. On several occasions I've wanted to customise those DVD template menus that use frames or clips from my project, but I've had to resort to tedious editing in the Arranger, as you've been attempting.

Template names are confusing. Easy, Warm Pan, Coloured Pan, etc seem very similar to me. Your initial post woud have had less ambiguity if you'd shown us a screenshot or two. But taking Warm Pan Coloured as an example. It seems that you're supposed to click as shown, to select another 'Background project'. I don't really understand what that is supposed to mean. Anyone?

But anyway that opens a browse dialog which appears to prompt me for an .MMT template file, not a project file. Choosing a new template doesn't get me anywhere.

Black font on a dark grey box makes it almost impossible to read the default setting. Nor is that initially selected in the browse dialog, which would be helpful. Mine starts at \My Documents - a long way away! But when you do read it, it shows the current template's proper name. In this case _warmPan_wide_colored.MMT.

I'd also like to understand how the default frames and clips are chosen. If that information is stored in a file in the \Layout folder then maybe we can edit it if that proves faster than working in Arranger. I don't see it in the .TPL file for instance (in a text editor) or in the .MMT (in a hex editor). But I may have missed it because all comments are in German.

I thought perhaps they might be chosen randomly or semi-randomly but the following experiment seems to rule that out. In a test project with two 'movies' called X and Y I placed 1 solid red JPG in X and 1 blue JPG in Y. The animated menu above displayed a series of red and blue rectangles, 5 of each altogether. I got exactly the same result with 10 reds in X and 1 blue in Y. And all other combinations.

Also I noted that this was regardless of which track they were on and regardless of whether the tracks were assigned 'M', 'S' or locked. (I was looking for some way to 'force' the menu to select particular clips or sets of clips - e.g. all movies instead of stills. In vain.)

So the algorithm MEP uses appears to be to take a sample from each movie (if there's more than one) and include an equal number in the animation, with no weighting.

While I'm in gripe mode, some user documentation on this and related menu editing subjects would be useful. Questions about it crop up frequently here. I've been using MEP (which I'd hate to be without ) since MEP 11 and I still fumble around when I come to customising DVD menus. Despite many requests I've seen no significant improvement in those years.

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

I got some solid help from Magix Support on this and now know how to do it. It's relatively simple.

When in the Arranger, drag and drop your required substitute clips onto the existing ones to replace them. You'll find that you might need to move tracks around to make room, such as when you're dropping in a clip with audio. And you'll need to be careful about durations.

Magix confirmed that the Design page > Video button I described is one of the design flaws in the DVD menu section of the program. User Defined templates are not intended to be customised via this route. And realistically this is not going to get sorted as it's low priority.

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thank so much for the answer.  Yes it does seem a bit different in trying to apply a video.  I still cannot get it to replace the clipping that it has chosen but I guess I will keep trying at it.  Thakns Terry and others for helping me out.

Mark

Greetings,

Terry's suggestion made no sense to me until he explained (sent a message) what I was missing. Perhaps others need some guidance...

Terry's instruction are to drag and drop "...in the Arranger" which is accessed from this button:

This gets you back to the timeline/edit window but now with an additional movie tab with the menu animation bits:

It's here (not in the original movie as I'd so wrongly assumed) that you can drag in other videos to replace the default set. The highlighted clip 'SONS.avi' shown above is a really long one but it was auto cut to the correct length (and keyframes applied) when I dropped it on top of the existing object***. Its audio track is there which I then ungrouped and deleted, though having it play during the menu display might be an option.

Next question: How to select a play position? The 45 minute clip I dragged in is displaying the first few seconds. How can a different section be shown else without having to export a section of the original?

ADDED: I answer my own question! Fortunately the keyframe animations have been set to be linked to the object length so it's easy (though requiring patience) to adjust what part of a clip will be displayed in any given animated panel thus:

Remembering that MEP is 'non-destructive', a scene may be only a part of the source clip -- the rest is there and available if the ends are dragged out. The cursor becomes a double arrow with vertical lines like <||>, not the playtime stretch mode cursor with the little film like icon <[ ][ ]>. Probably easiser to do off to the side somewhere -- I've put each step on a new track for clarity. After step 2. the segment shows five seconds starting at about the 40 second mark, no longer starting a 00:00.

FURTHER***: Now I can't get the auto cut and apply the keyframe to work! :-( When I drag in a new clip it just gets added unaltered. More Magix Magic?

Regards,

Carl

More testing...

Method:

I Loaded a ~47 minute clip and applied and stretched out the 'timecode' display which does (in MEP 2013) get rendered with the film. For the tests I made three exports: 1.the full clip, 2.only the first half, and 3.the second half with an addition timecode so I had display of the original times as well as the new start at 00:00.

Test one using the full clip. Applied the 'warm pan' DVD menu to see just what sections of the clip would be used for the animated menu. For easy reporting here are the segments from the 'in arranger' view of the animations -- extra stuff deleted and tracks shifted for a more convenient screen shot:

It's fairly easy to see what's been selected. The ten animation segments have been selected about equally spaced 4:45 apart. Note the order they are used, with the top track getting the first 4 clips and the lower tracks getting three each. Thus when played the ten segments are show in the following order 1, 5, 8, 2, 6, 9, 3, 7, 10, 4. Probably seems rather random!

Test two as above but using the two halves instead of the intact original. The movie is identical; it just contains two clips not one.

Things are getting complicated! The first movie clip, representing almost exactly half of the film, has contributed only three animation segments (the same first three as above) while the second half of the film has supplied seven which are not equally spaced and incudes a duplicate.

Test three as above with two halves, but the second half of the original now move to be the start of the film.

As in test two the new first half of the film supplies only three animation segments and they are at the same time intervals as before. The second half again contributes seven segment but the time positions are not quite the same and in fact there are now three identical.

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All this is complicated by the fact that changing the movie content (eg swapping the halves) doesn't seem to immediately change the DVD menu animation as previewed. I didn't go so far so to burn a DVD, but the results reported above are all from a 'save as' copy of each project and a fresh start of the program.

Regards,

Carl