Authoring Property Page
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The authoring page is where the DVD navigation and chapter selection is specified. If a DVD navigation menu is desired, a menu theme should be chosen. RocketDVD Pro comes with a few basic menu themes and more can be created using the MenuMaker application.  
 
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·DVD Type - A DVD without menus is typically used for showing demo content. Such a DVD can be designed to play once through to the end and then stop or it can be made to start playing from the beginning every time the end is reached. A DVD with menus can be made much more useful and interesting, depending on how much time is put into creating the menus and extra features.  
 
·Chapter Selection Options  
·Arbitrary Number of Chapters – For this selection, the capture time specified on the previous page will be evenly divided up to obtain the length and hence the starting position of each chapter. If the capture is stopped for any reason before the specified capture length, there may be fewer chapters than specified if the capture was stopped before the last chapter was placed.  
·Arbitrary Chapter Length – For this selection, each chapter will be made to be the specified length with the actual number of chapters not being known until the capture has completed.  
·Smart Chapter Definition – This selection applies a proprietary algorithm in conjunction with natural scene detection to determine the optimum chapter selection. This option can include a combination of natural and forced chapter breaks. Forced chapter breaks may be used to if there are not as many scene breaks as the specified desired number of chapters. Forced chapter breaks are simply chapter points occurring at points that are not the start of a new video scene. These will usually occur within the context of long natural scene breaks. For example if a camera was set up on a tripod to video tape a lecture or party, etc… there would be few if any natural scene breaks but it would still be useful to be able to skip through or directly jump to sections of those long scenes by using DVD chapters. Finally, in the context of the thumbnails printed on the case wrap, it is a way of giving an overall picture of the video content even if there are few of no natural scene breaks.  
·Scene Detection Only – This option will place chapters at points determined to be new scenes by the automatic scene detection code. If the video has glitches, sync problems, or just rapid panning, spurious scene starts may be detected. These problems are usually minimized by the 'Smart Chapter Definition' selection.  
·No Chapters – This option will not create any chapters. There will also be no chapter thumbnails for a DVD menu or for the case wrap.  
·Custom Chapters – This option will allow the user to specify the time codes for the chapters, along with some text that will be associated with the chapter and optionally a bitmap to use in place of the first frame of the chapter. The chapter text will be rendered to the DVD menu if the menu theme so specifies. The chapter text will also be printed on the chapter insert. If bitmaps are supplied, they must be supplied for all chapters and will be used in the same way automatically captured bitmaps are used. If the custom chapter radio button is selected, a button will appear which will allow the following dialog box to be brought up. Chapter time must be specified in the hh:mm:ss:ff format where frames is the frame number 0-29 for NTSC or 0-24 for PAL. If the frame number is not known, zero may be specified for the frame number. Just because the chapter time is specified in this format, does not mean that the chapter will occur at that exact frame number. Chapter's must occur at the start of a GOP in the encoded video stream, so theoretically, the chapter should be within 15 frames or half a second of the desired chapter time. For optional custom chapter functionality, see Manual Chapter Insertion.  
 
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·Expand To Fit - will expand the columns equally to fit the width of the window.  
 
·Auto Width - will resize the columns to fit the content.  
 
·Add Row - adds a row to the end.  
 
·Import CSV... - will import a custom chapter list from a coma/tab separated text file.  
 
·Export CSV... - will export the custom chapter list to a coma/tab separated text file.  
 
·Time (hh:mm:ss) - This is the custom chapter point given in term of hours:minutes:seconds.  
 
·Thumbnail - this optional column is allows a bitmap to be supplied for use on the menu scene selection page as well as the case wrap. If thumbnails are needed but not supplied, bitmaps captured during the live capture or the pre-authoring chapter selection will be used. If a thumbnail is specified in the pre-encoded file list as well as in the custom chapter list, the custom chapter thumbnail will be used instead.  
 
·Chapter Title - this optional column is used to supply chapter titles. Chapter titles are used in a couple places: 1) If the menu theme shows chapter titles/text on the scene selection page, this is the text that will be displayed there. 2) If the chapter insert is printed, the chapter text will be printed there if specified.  
 
·Menu Theme - A default directory can be specified for menu theme files in the 'Directories' tab of the Preferences dialog. As mentioned above, menu themes can be created using the MenuMaker application. Menu themes are text readable files which have a *.menu file extension. The menu file defines the menus, and their layouts, the buttons, their interactions etc… The menu theme files contain links to graphics such as background bitmaps, or movies and audio. If these supporting files are in a subdirectory of the menu theme file, the path's to them will be relative paths, otherwise they will be absolute paths.  
 
·Desired Number of Chapters - The purpose of this field may vary depending on the chapter selection option chosen. In this particular case, when Smart Chapter Definition is chosen, more than the desired number of potential chapter points are chosen and then the desired number of chapters are chosen from among the potential chapter points. It is possible to end up with fewer than the desired number of chapters.  
 
·Scene Detection Sensetivity - when using one of the scene detection chapter selection options, this parameter influences how many potential scene changes are identified. Scene detection is not an exact science trying to decide whether a frame is the start of a new video sequence can be affected by the video content. The middle of the scale was found to work well for most video content. There are however cases where the sensetivity may need to be adjusted up or down.  
 
·Min. Chapter Length - this value is used to specify the minimum chapter length when using scene detection. If scene changes result in chapters shorter than the specified length in seconds, the scenes will be combined into a single chapter until the chapter length is greater than the minimum chapter length. Note how this is different from every scene shorter than the minimum length being combined with the previous chapter. In this case, if every scene were shorter than the minimum length, they would all be combined into a single chapter.  
 
·Menu Thumbnails Previews are provided simply to give a visual indicator of the menu theme chosen. It is not intended to show all menu bitmaps, or the placement of buttons and selection highlights.  
 
·Create DVD Image File – if this option is checked, an image of the specified type is created from the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders. This option should usually be checked since it speeds up the DVD writing and it allows another DVD to be authored to the DVD directory without losing the ability to write another DVD by using the image. The format of the image is ISO 9660/UDF 1.02 bridge file system. The drop down listbox allows the extension of the image to be changed, but the format of the image file remains the same.