Tutorial 8.D. – Add 3 Conditions to start event of Main Video Playlist

What you will learn in this section:

Using Conditions
How to use the Set Audio Track action
Actions assigned to the Playlist start event will execute even if the Play Chapter action is used

In this tutorial, we will use Conditions to check the value of the APRM we created called “Audio” and set the language track based on that value.

Conditions are If/THEN statements. The “IF” part checks if a certain condition is being met. This could be an APRM value like the Audio APRM we created or it can be other system-related values such as which chapter is currently playing. For example, the IF statement could be “IF Current chapter = “Main Video: Chapter 2″. The “THEN” part of the Condition is where you assign an Action to occur if the condition stipulated in the “IF” part is met. You assign the Action the same way you do for button events or Playlist/chapter events.

Let’s try some. We’ll add three conditions to the Title Start event for the Main Video in our demo project. Each condition will check for a language setting in our “Audio” APRM and then use the Set Audio Track Action to play the correct audio track.

Display the Playlist tree by clicking the Playlist tab.
Right-click on the Start Event for the Playlist called “Main Video” (recall that in Tutorial #1 we added three audio tracks to the Main Video segment). Select “Add Condition” from the context menu.
Click the New Condition that appears under the Start event to display its properties in the Control Panel.
Name the condition “If English Audio” using the Name text box in the Control Panel.
Click the “Statement” tab.
Select the “Audio” APRM using the “Field” drop down list.
Select “=” (equals) in the “Operator” drop down list. (This will already be selected by default).
Type “English” in the “Value” text box.
Click “Save” to save the statement.
Click the Actions tab.
Right-click in the Actions window to display the Actions list. Select Primary Audio/Video Actions > Set Audio Track.

The Set Audio Track Action has three parameters.

Select Main Video from the Playlist Name pull down list and Select “Main Video” from the segment pull down list.
Select “English” from the Audio Track Number field.

Now when the Main Video Playlist plays, the disc will check the condition to see if the “Audio” value is “English”. If it is “English” then the English audio track will be set as the active audio track and the Playlist will play. The viewer will hear the English audio track.
We need to add two more conditions to the start event for the “Main Video” Playlist: one for French and one for German.

Repeat steps 2-12 to add a 2nd condition to the Main Video Playlist start event. Name this Condition “If French”.
Select “French” from the Audio Track Number field.
Repeat steps 2-12 to add a 3rd condition to the Main Video Playlist start event. Name this Condition “If German”.
Select “German” from the Audio Track Number field.

Show me:

Quick Compile and review.

Try selecting “French” from the audio setup menu and then click “Play film” on the Main Menu. You will see that the French audio track is now playing.

It is important to note that Actions (and Conditions) assigned to the Start event of a Playlist will execute any time the Playlist plays, even if you jump directly to a chapter in the Playlist that is not at the beginning of the Playlist.

This global audio setting is the first step towards completing the audio setup authoring. There is one other use-case that we need to account for, however. We will cover that in the next tutorial.