Have purchased and am in the middle of viewing the new dvd.
“Introduction to Zbrush 3” by Meats Meier.
Will take a long time to fully grasp all the new information.
As was the case with his other dvds, well worth the purchase.
There is, however, one problem and it is with the way Gnomon packages
the information.
If you are not familiar with their products ,they break their dvds into chapters
and discuss topics for about 10 to 15 minutes, nonstop.
There are no controls for stopping and pausing.
So if you are in the middle of viewing a subject and wish to try and do the action described you have to start and view the whole section from scratch.
If you are a slow learner, which I am, or learn by doing, which I am, this is
an enormous pain in the ass.
There is however a workaround which I would like to share.
The lessons, themselves are stored on the disc in the form of Quicktime movies ( stored in the folder bin).
If you take these movies and copy them to the hard drive as quicktime movies you may then pause them at leisure. ( Quicktime player may be downloaded free)
Works well.
But if you don’t know about how to do it, it is extremely discouraging not
to have viewing controls built in.
The quality of the information makes the effort worthwhile
Yes, I agree. The lack of a pause button makes is annoying - so I only watch the quicktimes, too.
I just hope they come to their senses and start releasing the Gnomon DVDs as DVD VIDEO Discs. This way I can pop it into my DVD Player if I wanna watch it on the couch - or still play it on my pc with a software dvd player. I really don’t get it. Who would want to watch those Ryan Church Movies in front of their computer ???
Cheers,
Jens
Yes, Meats especially.
There is a lot of new salient information in each chapter.
A few are long with important points, either take notes as you
go, or play and replay.
The inconvenience lllustrates how valuable ( and how much) information
is there.
I have an ancient iMac [350Mhz] Blueberry and its 15’’ screen and built in Bose speakers that I use for training dvd playback. That way I can have the software running on my workstation as I follow along with the tutorial.
But the above mentioned problems with Gnomon’s ‘‘packging’’ of the QuickTime videos on their products also makes it impossible when playing back on a small screen.
I make back ups of my dvd’s so that I don’t have to risk scratching the original. So while I’m at it I just strip out all the non-essential stuff and copy the movies only.
This allows playback using the QuickTime player which has plenty of controls for speed, sound and screen size.
I use Toast 8 for back up copies. but I’m sure older versions or any dvd backup/copy software will do.
You can also just copy the movies over to your hard drive if you have plenty of room. Just turn on visibility and drag them out of the bin folder.
In addition to making the video fit the screen, I can slow down the playback speed, especially for tutors who’s native language is not English. 
It’s also generally a good idea to back up ones dvd’s if one is as clumsy as I am. Scratching a back up is no big deal.
Gnomon’s “analog” titles (painting, sculpting, no computers) are all DVD video.
They’re also shorter (usually 2 hours per disc), lower resolution, and with MPEG-2 compression rather than Techsmith. Which is all fine when you don’t need to follow what buttons the artist is pushing, but those compromises to meet the DVD standard could really suck if what they’re trying to teach you is a complicated piece of software. Don’t you think?
I’ve always copied the quicktime files to my hard drive simply because it loads faster, and who needs that kind of wear and tear on their optical drive anyway?
But, yes. If Blu-Ray or HD-DVD ever take off, maybe Gnomon will be able to combine the ease-of-use of a traditional DVD with the hi-def quality we all require. Best of both worlds…
Strange. My copy has a pause button. I was using it last night. I watched both DVDs once, now I’m rewatching them, pausing as needed.
Scott
every gnomon DVD I’ve ever seen has your typical scroll bar and pause/play button… something’s odd here
If you play the dvd’s on a 1024x768 monitor, (the maximum size on older laptops and iMacs) then the playback controls are cutoff below the bottom of the screen.
Quicktime gives you more controls; playback speed, sound equalizer, etc., and of course, fits to any size screen.
Also just look in the BIN folder on the actual dvd, there should be a breakdown of each chapter which you can play in your own player like quicktime.
All the Gnomon DVD’s I own are cut off (top and bottom) as you say. Maybe becaue I have a widescreen monitor? It is a minor irritation to go several folder levels into the DVD and play each tutorial individually to avoid this, but it does make the DVD’s seem that bit less professional. I really would like to see them fix this.
I agree and as my kids watch videos
I sometimes wish I could take tutorials troutfishing[as in a portable quicktime player]
but do agree the quality of the imfomation is worth the effort
I never autoplay the cd.
I always use the quicktimes, whether its gnomon or digital tutor 
Thank god they cant lock it because they using flash for presentation.
If it was director it would have been locked.
I recommend useing vlc media player with the gnomon training because it will play chapters with out stopping or minimizing well it plays the next it is all continuous in full screen least thats what i do when im watching it on my projector 82 inch display so i get the full picture instead of the gnomon player where its partly minimized plus it has pause and play it can also do half speed and other various speed settings highly recomend it for watching meats dvd.
heres the link: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
i hope it helps you a little!!
well for most training DVDs i have I use VLC to watch the videos. most discs have a resolution (with interface) thats to large for my screen so when i view it in their native player the controls are cut off anyway. when you use VLC you can stretch the window just like any other video file. it works on several diffrent formats including some proprietary ,for lack of a better word, “hacked” formats some people use to squeeze the most information into a video.
similarly to the user who commented on backing up the discs you just have to find the media on the volume and create a playlist which you will have full playback controls on.