Even before I heard back from anyone in my test group, a possible glitch popped up in my head, and sure enough it was there. The problem is that if one video file has more than one audio track, then all video files will have more than one audio track, albeit comprised of silence. For obvious reasons, I didn’t make audio selection menus for the sections that only had one audio track. So if you select that second audio track for that one file, then decide to watch some other video on the disc, you will hear silence unless you use your remote to change the audio on the fly or go back to the audio selection menu for that one file and select the first track. Whew!

The solution was simple: add a bit of code to the menus for the parts that have only one track so that the audio is automatically set to that first track and then prevent the user from switching the audio while those files are playing (I learned earlier the same thing had to be done for subtitles). I actually added the lockout the first time around, but didn’t realize that the one-audio-track videos would not play that track by default. Oops.

If this sounds confusing, don’t worry, the idea is that if everything is running smoothly, you won’t notice how much work it took to get it that way. Meanwhile, I wait for the reports to come in…

DVDs are… done?

I’m sending out a few to close friends for testing. If I hear no problems, we’ll start slipping them to cons.

I see light at the end of the tunnel. I’m learning more and more about DVD authoring as I go and am pretty happy with the results so far. ReDeath and FBBB are mostly done, I just keep finding little wrinkles to iron out every time I test a new disc. Nesca shouldn’t be too hard since it won’t have nearly as much stuff to arrange. Very close now…