PDF Files On DVDs

[zerohash]

Dear Friends,

Hi. I am making a DVD on Spruce DVD Maestro. I have seen few DVDS which have a PDF files with Audio / Video TS on It. My client is a making musical DVD and wants to add PDF Files which contains Musical Notes in PDF Format. How do i make a DVD in DVD Maestro which has a PDF Files also with Audio / Video TS.

Please Help And Advice.

Thanks.

Zerohash

[bigotti5]

Compile your project as usually.
Copy your PDF to the folder containing the created VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS.
Open the disc image creation tool by selecting DISC IMAGE CREATION from the toolbar, select properties, choose DVD-ROM in Layout Files Option (select Re-Order let you reorder files to your need).

[Arky]

I believe this depends on how you want the user to access the .pdf files. If you want the user to be able to access the .pdf files from within the DVD menu, this would obviously require using a software DVD player, not a standalone DVD player (although the rest of the DVD would play perfectly well on a standalone player).

Spruce originally designed the feature with the intention of users playing the finished DVDs using the 'Syzygy' player. However, this player was fraught with compatibility bugs so most professional studios abandoned the idea of incorporating the feature into their authoring projects.

That being said, the Syzygy player does work perfectly on some computers (must be PC, no Mac). I believe WinDVD and PowerDVD may have offered support for this in certain of their later ncarnations but I'm not up to date on this so you'd have to check this for yourself.

Note that Apple's port of the Maestro code-base to the Mac platform (to become DVD Studio Pro 2.x,3.x,4.x, the successors to Astarte's code which lay under the hood of DVD Studio Pro 1.x) did not dispense entirely with the .pdf-access authoring functionality - Apple call it 'DVD@ccess', so Apple's software DVD player offers limited support for playing back such titles but, again, you'd have to check compatibility.

Then there's Interactual's player...

There's more discussion on lots of this stuff in the threads I've linked to at the end of my post.


Personally, if I had a client who insisted on including ROM data on a DVD, I'd avoid authoring the disc such that the ROM data was accessible from within the DVD menus. I'd just state, either in a menu or in a paper inlay, that there is ROM data on the disc which users may manually browse the disc to find, using, for example, Windows Explorer or similar on other platforms. This way, you don't get into the very sticky minefield of compatibility issues with DVD-software accessibility of said files from within playback of the conventional-content portions of the disc.

Other related threads:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=565825#post565825

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=53510&highlight=syzygy

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=68736&highlight=syzygy


Well, I hope some of the above may help you in some way, however small.

Good luck with your authoring project.

All the best,


Arky ;o)