Chaptering a video

[allenz]

Hi again
Okay. Will download a trial version. I've got a test project that will convince me to purchase the Pro version or stay with what I'm using (gee i hope not).

Say I have created my project. 2 pages, a menu page and a video player page. My video is MPEG-1 and about 45 minutes. I need to create chapter points. Say I need 10 chapters. (How many could I have? Any limits?)

User put's the CD in, autostarts, up comes my menu page. They click on a chapter 'link' and go to that part of the video.

Now it would be nice if I could offer 2 choices for viewing that video. 1st choice would be to loop the chapter, 2nd choice (via button click) would be to continue to the end of the video.

If I can do this then I'd purchase the program. Anything else I'd want to do is documentated on the videos and in the manual.

Thanks
Allen

[Intrigued]

allenz, here is a good link to anther thread that discusses this concept.

http://www.indigorose.com/forums/sho...chapters+video

I hope this thread has the answers you seek.

ps. I believe many folks using AMS forget about or do not realize they can also query for data via the Search link available at the top of each windows here in the forums. I use it all the time myself and I hope it proves to be most beneficial for you allenz!

Sincerely,

[allenz]

Search[/URL] link available at the top of each windows here in the forums. I use it all the time myself and I hope it proves to be most beneficial for you allenz!

Sincerely,

Oops! Sorry but thank you very much. In my excitement about this program I completely forgot to look for a "search" function. Yes, I believe that post has most of what I was looking for. I am printing the complete post.

However I'll have to read it to see how I can give the end user a choice of looping the video chapter or playing the video to the end. From what I skimmed over, that post involves setting up a play once from/to the time points specified and that's not my original question.

On a training CD I would want to set up the timer to play once then return to the menu page. Unless I've got the idea wrong. I'll have to get the trial version and try it out.

But it looks like I want to purchase the deluxe version because if I buy the pro version and then buy the training CD's it's almost the cost of the deluxe and the extra stuff included with the deluxe version makes it a real bargin.

Thanks again
Allen

[Intrigued]

Oops! Sorry but thank you very much. In my excitement about this program I completely forgot to look for a "search" function. Yes, I believe that post has most of what I was looking for. I am printing the complete post.

However I'll have to read it to see how I can give the end user a choice of looping the video chapter or playing the video to the end. From what I skimmed over, that post involves setting up a play once from/to the time points specified and that's not my original question.

On a training CD I would want to set up the timer to play once then return to the menu page. Unless I've got the idea wrong. I'll have to get the trial version and try it out.

But it looks like I want to purchase the deluxe version because if I buy the pro version and then buy the training CD's it's almost the cost of the deluxe and the extra stuff included with the deluxe version makes it a real bargin.

Thanks again
Allen

Don't take it the wrong way please... the Search comment was for anyone else they may read the thread... it will hopefully help someone that wants an answer quickly when, at times, one is not as forth coming as we would like.

How I work my training CD-ROM (singular for now) is that I have a listbox on the main page with about 40 'text' (viewable part, 'data' is the hidden part) items listed in such. When a user double clicks on one of the text items they are taken to the video player page (Video Object). There each video is in 'bit sized' chuncks to be easily consumed. Say 1 minute all the way to 12 minutes. Most average a two to five minutes. Then at the end of the video I give them an option via way of a Dialog.Message("Notice", "Watch again?"); function. Then I check if they clicked the OK or Cancel buttons. OK = watch again as you can guess and Cancel = goes back to the main menu.

Have you created your videos yet?

Sincerely,

[allenz]

Oh yea. I've been doing this for a few years now. First using Roxio's Video Pack 5 (no longer available), Movie Works (required QT), Opus Pro and M2CD. A friend of mine who I work with uses Macromedia's Authorware. Expensive program and steep learning curve. I even have the Launch Card software which does miniCD business cards. It's flash based with templates. Just insert your text, photos and music and publish to the CD. Most of the Opus Pro users seem to be doing programming and games. Developing tests was another of Opus's features.

I think that APMS ofers much more. My menus didn't seem too stable with Opus. Nice thing about Video Pack was you have 1 video and set chapter points very much like authoring a DVD, but no menu choices. Just a "stock" menu. Opus and M2CD required the video to be split into each chapter segment, and run as seperate videos. That's okay because I got an MPEG splitter software so was easy to do. M2CD was good but you could have only 50 chapters. Video Pack was also limited to chapters.

Found APMS quite by accident in the Creative Cow Sony Vegas forum. Vegas is my video editor of choice. Originally by Sonic Foundry and now sold to Sony. We all call it the FCP for Windows but it does much more than FCP. ;-)

In reading and looking at APMS I like the templates. This program may be approaching the quality of Authorware so I want to try it. But I need the CD to be entirely self contained with nothing installed on the end user's computer. And nothing to do with QT. The company I do lot or work for does not have QT installed on the network.

And I also do some work I send to China, so I hope I can enter Chinese characters into APMS. That's another important prerequisite. Then everything on the CD has to be in Chinese. If APMS will do Hebrew, then it should do Chinese. Both chatacter based languages. I have a Chinese system in my computer.

Take look at my web site.

Now I'm trying to find out how long the trial version is good for. One part says 15 days and below that says 30 days. Don't know which it is. Credit card is maxed out for this month anyway. ha ha.

Allen

[yosik]

Allen,
First of all, as a hebrew user, I can tell you that AMS handles "foreign" (read non latin fonts) languages pretty well. It just depends on your OS being enabled.
What you are looking for is so very easy.
Follow the guidelines:
1. Note the time of your chapters in your video
2. use the video.seek action to trigger what you want (pause video, show dialog, show text or images...anything)
3. If you want this check to be self timed, put it in a onTimer window and launch the onTimer action when video plays.
4. You can actually even have a table of content with your chapters and jump to whatever chapter you want during play or at pause time.

Good luck

Yossi

[allenz]

Shalome Yossi

Thanks much. That's one of the most important things for me in this program is the ability to do Chinse. My other programs I was using didn't do them too well. In fact if I remember right in Opus I had to make them a GIF files and import the picture. No good.

I got some current video work to finish, then I'll hae time to try the Pro Demo.

Regards
Allen