1001 Positively True Stories of An Indie Filmmaker

When authoring your DVD for Amazon/CreateSpace Video on Demand here’s something you should know.  If you have multiple films (like a short film collection), they don’t like it if you set your defaults to return to menu after each film concludes.  

Return to menu authoring is okay for the DVD proof, however, for the Video on Demand movie conversion, you must set up a new movie file that plays continuously, and flows through to the next title–from one film to the the next to the next. Amazon calls it “straight-through-playing.” Although I wish I’d known this sooner it did help me to create a bid of advertising for myself.

I spent the better part of Thursday re-authoring my DVD. I was hit with a bit of inspiration. I went with a Grindhouse strategy. I created one file with all the films and then I inserted trailers from my upcoming films between the films. The films and trailers have a total running time of 1:06, which is cool because it’s almost like a feature film.

Unfortunately I had problems soon after related to Compressor not working. iDVD and DVD Studio Pro were giving me writer errors, so I went with Roxio Toast instead. At some point very soon I must uninstall and reinstall Final Cut Studio.

So if you’re authoring a DVD for Amazon CreateSpace (and I assume this goes for Amazon Unbox as well) either, create one continuous file or author the DVD setting each track to default to the next asset or playlist item. Do not default back to menu or submenu.

If you know of a better way to do this please let me know