DVD Studio Pro 3: In the Studio

Multistory Movies

A similar but quite separate notion in movie presentation is that of multiple stories. Where you can use multiple angles to show different versions of a particular scene, you can use multiple stories to rearrange the order—or even the existence—of the scenes. Want your disc to include the theatrical release alongside the director's cut version? A multistory disc is in your future.

Multistory discs might or might not have multiple angles. Consider the idea of a single disc with both the theatrical cut and the director's cut. Unless we're talking about a short film, you couldn't fit both versions as separate tracks on the same disc. Instead, you can use stories to create two separate arrangements of the various chapters in your movie. Figure 6-23 illustrates the concept of multiple stories.

Figure 6-23. The basic concept of a multistory project

Indeed, you can take this to the clever extreme used in the movie Memento. The original release of the film was presented as a series of scenes shown in reverse chronological order. On the DVD, you can watch the film as it was released originally, or you can watch the scenes in chronological order, all without duplicating any of the video content.

Multistory restrictions

Now, multistory discs do have some limitations. The biggest limitation is the "distance" between clips. You want each story to run as a smooth, continuous ...