Help request: "simple" DVD, just pictures, delay issues

Question

Hi, I admit I'm a newbie regarding DVD authoring, but I'm trying to help a friend who just got her DVD SP 4 and needs to do a simple dvd with some of her paintings and some info about her.
We've tried to follow the manual's instructions but now I think we need your help!
So basically we have a project with a menu with 4 buttons (works, bio, cv, contact). No videos involved, it's all pictures based.
We prepared the pictures in photoshop, and since I read about the slideshow problems in DVD SP, I created a track to show the slides.
On each subpage (works, bio, cv, contact) I have created also a "button over video", using the subtitle (it's a "menu" word which links back to the menu), it seemed to us the easiest way to create an interaction.
All the buttons in the project are text, no pics, no videos.
Everything seems to work fine in the simulator. But when I save it as .img and test in the Apple DVD player, there are some unexpected delays when I click on, for example, the bio, cv, contact menu voices, before these pages to appear.
It's strange also because these three pages are just made of one picture each at the moment, while the "works" consists of 6 pictures (and it has music also, while the other pages have no audio).
We have also tried two different methods to build the project: the first version had all the contents on separate tracks (so one for "works", one for "bio", and so on).
Then we tried with just one track, putting everything on it and using the marker/chapter/jump features to create a correct navigation.
In this second case the final results are a bit better, but the delay is still there especially on the 3rd and 4th menu voice/chapter of the track ("cv" and "contact").
Also, it's very annoying that the "button over video"/subtitle button appears before that delayed track/chapter appears, so if you have a tip about this issue too, we would appreciate it!
Thanks!

Answer 1

Whilst you are making a simple disc, you are using some advanced features, and for some folk they are just too glitchy to use.
Here's a suggestion... get all of your images into .pict format at the correct dimensions for your video standard (720x480 or whatever) and number them sequentially. OPen the sequence in Quicktime and allocate five or ten seconds to each image and then save the result out as a piece of dv footage. Bring that in to DVDSP and add chapter markers at the start of each new image, or encode it to MPEG2 and bring it in (If you don't encode, DVDSP will handle that for you, but you might get better results if you do it yourself).
Create some stories and place the relevant chapter markers into each (works, bio, cv and contact) so that only those markers play. Connect the menu buttons to the story containers (not the markers inside), and set the end jump and menu call for each story to go back to the relevant menu (and button).
Make sure that your menus are not layer based - use simple overlay style menus or create them from the built in templates and palette items.
You should then have avoided the slideshow settings in DVDSP and may get better playback performance. Keep in mind that there are always delays when you move from a menu to a track, and these differ according to the DVD player that you are using.