Title Button Weirdness

Question

Dear fellow DVDSPers,
I'm currently making a DVD that includes 4 episodes of a TV show on each disc and 5 chapters for each episode. I linked everything up correctly and set the Title button for the disc to be the Main Menu. Well after I made the first batch, the quality control guy here found some weird behavior with the Title button. If he navigates to one of the scene menus, and plays a chapter, then scans all the way through to get to the end, it end jumps him back to the scene selection menu, which is what it should be doing. If he then pushes Title, it starts playing the episode from the beginning. If he pushes the Title button before playing any of the scenes, it takes him back to the Main Menu, same goes for if he pushes it during the episode itself.
I can't explain it to him. I have no idea why a button would change it's operation based on playback. He's watching it off of a Toshiba CRT TV with built-in DVD and VHS player, so the other editor and I are inclined to say it's that particular DVD player since it works 100% fine in my MacBook Pro and in the Sony DVD player I have hooked up to my DSR-11 and thus my monitor. The other editor just suggested to me that I include a Default Button on the Main Menu, and that maybe that's the problem, so we shall see once I encode that and burn another copy, but outside of that, any other ideas?
-Brian

Answer 1

I think that's exactly how it is supposed to happen...
The Title button is a direct link to your top menu. In effect, it's a specialised menu call. The menu call works like a resume function, i.e. if you play a clip and press the menu button you go to the menu for that clip. If whilst in that menu you press the menu button a second time, you resume playback from where you were. At this point, different players may vary, but you see the same clip playing again. Others may see slightly differently, but in effect you've gone back to the track. Like a resume. The important factor here is that you've played a track and the resume information has been stored.
If you navigate to a sub menu anywhere in the structure and then press the Title button you'll go to the title menu - in your case, the main menu. In this situation you've not yet played a track, so no resume info is stored and so to the top menu you go.
I may have misunderstood what you've described, and I may not have got the explanation quite right, but in essence you are seeing what you should be seeing from the description you've given of the structure you've used