Tutorial 6.D. – Add Play Chapter Actions

What you will learn in this section:

How to add a Play Chapter action
How to use the Clear Menu Blocks from Screen action

We want our viewers to be able to jump directly to any chapter on the disc using the Chapters menu. In our demo project we have ten short chapters spaced evenly apart in our Main Video. This is intended to stand in for Scenes in a feature film or other type of main content on a Blu-ray Disc that is usually divided into multiple chapters.

In this tutorial we will add Play Chapter Actions to each of the chapter buttons.

Expand the menu elements view for the button “Chapter 1″ using the grey arrow. This displays the five remote control events for this button and the On Show event.
Click the Enter Key event for the button to display the action Editor window in the Control Panel.
Right-click in the Action Editor window to display the Actions list. Select Title Playback Actions > Play Chapter.

The Play Chapter Action has two parameters to set.

Select “Main Video” from the “Playlist Name” pulldown list.
“Main Video” is the only segment in the playlist, so leave the segment set to “Main Video”.
Select “Chapter 1″ from the Chapter pulldown list.
Right-click in the Action Editor window to display the Actions list. Select Display Actions > Menu Actions > Clear Menu Blocks from screen.

The Clear Menu Blocks from Screen action hides all menus that are on screen with one single action. There are no parameters to set. In this case, you have your Main Menu and the Chapters menu visible when the viewer makes their chapter selection. By adding these two actions, Chapter 1 will start playing and the Main Menu and the Chapters submenu will hide automatically.

Show me:

You need to add the Play Chapter Action and the Clear Menu Blocks from Screen action to all of your chapter buttons. You can add them individually to each button, or you can again use the copy and paste feature to save some time.

Right-click on the Enter key event for the button “Chapter 1″. Select Copy from the context menu.
Expand the menu elements view for the button “Chapter 2″ using the grey arrow.
Right-click on the Enter Key event for the button “Chapter 2″ and select Paste from the context menu. You will see the Play Chapter Action and the Clear menu Blocks from Screen action appear in the Action Editor window.
Click the Play Chapter Action in the Action editor window to display its parameters.
Change the Chapter setting from “Chapter 1″ to “Chapter 2″ using the Chapter pulldown list.

Repeat steps 7 – 11 to paste the Play Chapter Action and the Clear Menu Blocks from Screen Action to the rest of the buttons in the chapters submenu.The following video demonstrates this. When you have completed this, Quick compile and review your project.

Show me:

Congratulations! You are over half-way there! You have now authored a Blu-ray disc with a Main Menu and a fully-functional Chapters menu. Next, we’ll author the Bonus Videos menu.