Why won't it leave my custom menus alone!?

[bspisak Profile Private message]

Hi,

I'm a first time poster, so go easy on me, ok?

My problem is that after I create a custom menu, if I have to go back to edit or change it, Producer regenerates new menu pages (which I then have to delete) and disturbs the Prev/Next navigation on my custom pages (which I then have to fix). There are some other little things as well, and I list those towards the bottom of this post.

Basically, I have a single project with many shows and I have created custom menu pages which are setup in a 2-level hierarchy.

• The first level consists of a single page with 3 captions. Each of these jump to a subsequent 2nd level menu page. I also have captions for Play All and Loop All. Since this first level is a single page, there are no Prev or Next captions.
• The second level pages have my thumbs and are logically organized as 3 separate "categories" corresponding to each of the 3 captions on the first level. Each 2nd level page has a Main Menu caption that takes you back up to the first level. If the 2nd level category only needs a single page, I don't want either Prev or Next. However, if it needs more than one page, I want only Next on the first and only Prev on the last.

Here's a more visual representation:

Page 1: First level menu with 3 captions.

• Category 1: Jump to page 2
• Category 2: Jump to page 4
• Category 3: Jump to page 5

Page 2: Second level menu with thumbs for Category 1, page 1.

• Thumbs for Category 1
• Main Menu: Jump to page 1
• Next

Page 3: Second level menu with thumbs for Category 1, page 2.

• More Thumbs for Category 1
• Main Menu: Jump to page 1
• Prev

Page 4: Second level menu with thumbs for Category 2, single page

• Thumbs for Category 2
• Main Menu: Jump to page 1

Page 5: Second level menu with thumbs for Category 3, page 1.

• Thumbs for Category 3
• Main Menu: Jump to page 1
• Next

Page 6: Second level menu with thumbs for Category 3, page 2.

• More Thumbs for Category 3
• Main Menu: Jump to page 1
• Prev

With me so far?

The problem is not creating this menu organization nor getting it to work. The problem occurs if I have to go back to the Customize Menu again to edit or make changes.

Any time I do this, Producer will:

• Ignore the fact that I have thumbs for all my shows on custom pages and will create as many new pages as it needs to place thumbnails for all of my shows. I then have to delete these pages.
• It will also ignore existing Prev and Next on my pages and chain all the pages together assuming a single flat structure.
• It will "forget" that I have assigned my Main Menu caption to jump back to page 1. (This may be because it's adding a new page one?)
• It will randomly change some thumbnail captions back to the name of the show. Most of the time it leaves them alone, but the last time I did this, it changed 3 of them.

I will say that things were much worse before I updated to 3310. Prior to this, I was seeing just plain corruption.

My primary question is this: Is there a way to prevent Producer from creating these new pages every time I go to Customize Menu? Or, is there a different way to edit the menus once I've set them up that will prevent Producer from generating new pages? I tried adding a custom layout with nothing on it, but then it corrupts my existing pages.

This may not address all the issues I'm seeing, but it will certainly make my life much easier as I don't have to keep doing the same edits over and over. Today I burned a review copy for my client and find that I had missed a couple of places where the captions had reverted to the show names. *sigh*

Finally, in case someone from Photodex is reading this: it "would be nice" to have the ability to assign "Play All" and "Loop All" to only apply to a subset of shows. In my case, this would allow 2nd level Play/Loop All for each of the individual categories as well as a top-level Play/Loop All for everything.

Brian

[Luke_Miller Profile Private messageWebsite]

I feel your pain. I find that Producer menu authoring is the most problematic area of the application. And yes, I often find that after saving a menu and then going back to change or just reuse it, Producer has added pages to it. I don't think you are doing anything wrong, you are experiencing the "bugs" in the application.

Your menu structure sounds similar to what I have used on several long productions. But I long ago quit using Producer for my menus. I do my show creation in Producer and then export to Premiere Pro/Encore to finalize and do the menus.

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

The problems have been there right from ProShow's birth. When I was still burning shows to DVD, I purchased DVD Architect to do the menu work. I wasn't, however, overly impressed with it. It could do a wonderful job, but it was an unnecessarily convoluted piece of software.

You should write to Photodex with your complaints. They already know people aren't very happy with menu generation, but the more people complain, the more likely they are to finally fix it.

Barbara