Quote: I'd like to change the defaults so that menu music is turned off. I don't usually want music in my menus and it's a real PITA to have to visit each and every menu page to turn it off. Also if I subsequently edit a template it seems to get turned on again which makes me quite cross!

So is there any way to alter this stupid behaviour? I'm quite happy editing the registry if anyone can point me to the appropriate key(s).

Try this. Select the menu you want and then turn off the "Menu Opening Video" Do what editing you want. Create a silent mp3 file by recording "nothing" . Go to the background music to change the music to that silence. Select to apply it to all pages. Not quite as good as editing the registry but perhaps a lot easier since each template may need to be edited in the registry. .
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Steve, thanks for your response. I'm away for a week but will look into your suggestion when I return and report back. Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64

Fenman,
I'm not really aware of anything in the registry that controls the menu music. I'm assuming you are talking PD11, but really all PD versions are similar. This is one way to accomplish what you want.

First, create a wave file in like Audacity and create a short sound clip of silence and export it out and name it silence.wav.

The canned menus that are provided with PD are here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\CyberLink\PowerDirector11\Menus (instead of the (x86) folder they may be in just "Program Files". This appears to depend on what flavor and when you got the install files)

Now lets take Baby Room template for instance, inside folder "Baby Room" is a folder called "Audio", inside the "Audio" folder is a file called std_music.xml.

1) Make a backup copy of std_music.xml so you have the original. Since it's in a system folder, you will need Admin permission.
2) Edit the std_music.xml file and change the wma files in the file to silence.wav. The line to edit looks like this
<MUSICLIST><MUSIC ID="1" NAME="setting_music.wma"/><MUSIC ID="2" NAME="opening_music.wma"/><MUSIC ID="3" NAME="setting_music.wma"/></MUSICLIST>
new line would look like
<MUSICLIST><MUSIC ID="1" NAME="silence.wav"/><MUSIC ID="2" NAME="silence.wav"/><MUSIC ID="3"NAME="silence.wav"/></MUSICLIST>
3) Copy your silence.wav that you created above into this directory as well

Now, next time you use "Baby Room" template all menu pages, root and chapter will have silence.wav as the audio. You can do that to all default templates if you desire, or just the ones you typically use as a guide.

If you are talking about templates you've already designed, they are here:
%userprofile%\Documents\CyberLink\Custom Menus\

You can do the same for them. Once done, any new templates created from any of the canned or your custom templates will also get silence.wav for the audio.

If you edit the std_music.xml and don't reference any audio file, that won't work as you desire. If you simple change "Background music:" for your current template that won't work as you desire either. It will work for that one template while your working on it but if you change to a template that has audio, PD will retain the audio in the "Background music:" input area and if you then load your template menu you would have to manually go through all pages again and delete. By embedding a silence.wav file in all your templates you avoid this interface issue.

Jeff

Hi Jeff, thanks for the workaround. As soon as I get home I'll give that a try.

I do feel it's a pity that one has to resort to such tricks to get round this problem and I notice that Prefect, Ford 777 also raises this as one of the issues in his thread 'Powerdirector 11 shortcomings'. I'm sure we are not alone in thinking this is a very poorly thought out feature.

I'm using PD9. It's listed in my sig, although easy to miss Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64