How do I include an entire hour-long performance on a DVD and also have menu buttons for playing isolated sections of the performance?

Question

How do I include an entire hour-long performance on a DVD and also have menu buttons for playing isolated sections of the performance?
So far, I've already done the individual menu buttons for sections of the performance. How do I set up some kind of "play" button that will play the video of the entire performance straight through? Will this be too much material for the DVD to hold? Does the program recognize and not replicate material to save space? If so, will it interfere with that if  I add edits to individual sections that will not be in the video of the entire performance?   

Answer 1

Hi
If You only need
• Play movie in full
• Start into the movie at specific places e.g. Chapters - then play to movie ends
Then this is fairly simple - Just add Chapters in Your Video-editor (iMovie or FinalCut)
(some quirks to keep in mind - No Chapter mark in any transition or within 2 sec from it - AND - only Lettera A to Z and 0 to 9 - no other letters/symbols at all)
BUT
If You want to
• Play full movie (with or without Chapters)
• Play an individual Chapter then return to Menu
This function is not standard in iDVD - but has to be faked one way or another.
Please read my notes on this and be aware of the 60 minutes / 12 minutes limit in iDVD (THIS is including the Menu and it can take 15 minutes or more from the movie time)
Play all resp one chapter at a time
Play All Button
1. There are NO - Play All - button in any version of iDVD
2. It can be faked in several ways
• Easiest and most fault proof way is to make a doublet movie containing All and with
Chapters set to match. It will take up x2 space but is easy to understand and produce.
Cons: Tried this in iMovie’11 by Exporting out each part as a full Quality QT.mov then Importing back into new events and putting these into a new project (Play All project). Resulting DVD had Audio that was OK (as parts) - BUT the picture was very bad and standing photo were cut of in hight. So the Play All movie has to be created from same material and exactly in the same way as the individual parts + then Chapters has to be set to match.
• It's said that one can put all movies into a Photo/SlideShow and this will also
give the function of a Play All button - Tested - and ONE HAS TO un-cheque - Scale pictures to TV-Safe area else it will be a black frame all around and a small picture !
Cons: BUT - When tested with music videos - the same video on main Menu played nicely with OK Audio. The Play All version in SlideShow had a signifcant Distortion - as on telephone or worse.
Mike Evangelist1
You might be able to get close to what you want by using a slideshow in iDVD. (It's not widely known, but you can put videos in a slideshow.) If you set the slide duration to manual, playback will pause after each movie/slide, and you can continue with the 'next' button.
3. Using another program to do this e.g.. Roxio Toast™ where there is a Play All button option.
Summary
a. Making a Play All movie with same care as the individual Part movies - gives a very Good Result
b. Using Roxio Toast™ - also an usable way to go
Yours Bengt W