Real Support?

I'm very frustrated with apple's support of DVD Studio Pro (1.5).
- it list capabilities with no instructions on how to fulfill them with its scripting language.
- there are features that are visible on the screen with no references in the manual, help files or apple website.

Can anyone suggest some solid books / websites that provide actual solutions to my problems?

The two major problems I am having are...
1) deciphering / implenting the scripting language.
2) Avoiding the double loop issue when using the "Skip" button on the remote, when you have stories built into the DVD.

Hopefully someone out there already knows what I'm talking about, otherwise, I am happy to go into further details.

Chris

P.S. anyone know if DVDSP2 is going to solve any of these issues? I've seen a lot of advertising, and the interface looks nifty, but apple has (again) dodged revealing the technical improvements of the program. From what I can tell, it looks like it's just the same program with a new interface. Anyone have any links to the real inside scoop?

Sorry for the length.

C.

Watching the movies about DVDSp2 on the Apple web site makes DVDSP2 look a completely different and new app than the original.

There's a lack of DVD scripting info on the web. It seems to be one of the black arts of DVD authoring. I've experimented a fair bit with it, especially to do a "play all movies" option, and allow the movies viewed singularly.

If you explain 2) then I can think if my knowledge of the scripting may help.

Graeme

Okay, here's the looping problem.

Set up: The DVD is broken down into several separate chunks. This helped us with creating different bit-rates for different portions, thus maximizing overal visual performance.

Design: We have the "play all" set up so that at the end of each track, the DVD automatically jumps to the track afterwards.

Stories: We also have separate stories that are set up so that when the "chapters" are activated, only the "chunks" are played, and then the DVD automatically returns to the appropriate chapter menu.

Looping Side-effect: We burned a beta-DVD, and were pleased with the results, except for the following two problems...
1) pressing the "skip" button on the remote, not only went from marker to marker in order, by track (as it should), it also went through all the Story markers as well. This essentially means that the DVD looped back to the beginning of the "Chunk", and went through all the markers again, before proceeding on to the next "Chunk".
2) pressing the "skip" button also allowed the user to go to the hidden tracks, not making them very well hidden. We think we've solved that problem with making the track before the hidden tracks a "user operations: denied", forcing it to finish and go to a menu.

Possible solution for Problem 1 that I've thought of since I posted last:
Ditch all the Stories.
Create a script that sets a "StoryYN" variable to 1 (=yes), then launch the beginning of the chunk.
Create a marker 1 second before the end of each chunk.
Button attached to final marker that checks to see if Story is "yes", then sets story to "no" (2), and exits back to the chapter menu. Button auto-activates.

Does that sound reasonable? Do you have any other ideas?

Chris

P.S. thanks for the feedback on the DVDSP2, I'll check out the website again.