Convert video to mp4/.264 but still maintain the menus?

[brokenmachine65]

I am looking for a simple conversion program / format / container to take a DVD (complete with menus) and convert the video to a mp4 / .264 / whatever to keep the size down but still maintain all the original menu's WITHOUT the need to hand re-make them. It must also not mess with the audio and support DTS and DD sound streams.

This will be run on a pc not a standalone so anything goes.

I have been searching for a few days kinda non-stop and I see quite a few option that are close, Nero Digital is ok but screws with the audio.. Divx Menu's are perfect but do not keep the original menus..

So anyone know of one, or one being worked on, or a programmer i can bribe to make one?

[joseph5]

RatDVD.

[Adub]

RatDVD is okay, but it isn't actually xvid or h.264, so playability and portability are sacrificed.

Otherwise, there is no way to do this currently. And certainly not in one step. Trust me, many others have tried.

[Doobie]

I am looking for a simple conversion program / format / container to take a DVD (complete with menus) and convert the video to a mp4 / .264 / whatever to keep the size down but still maintain all the original menu's WITHOUT the need to hand re-make them. It must also not mess with the audio and support DTS and DD sound streams.

I'd like like to find what you're looking for, too.

[bond]

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=117574

[brokenmachine65]

Ok don't know why i got a warning on this post.... Says I violated Rule #9 but I followed that rule.. even the mod that posted a reply didn't say anything about it... oh well....

Anyway Ratdvd kinda sounds cool I'll try it out. I wonder why it is so hard.. not being a programmer I have no idea how it all works.. perhaps i should attack this from the players point of view and not the encoder. Like hitting up the XBMC team (which is nearing completion on a Linux version). Hrm... or just get rich and pay someone to program it heheh

[celtic_druid]

Well matroska has DvdMenuXtractor. No idea how mkv menu playback support is these days though or how valid DvdMenuXtractor's output is.

[foxyshadis]

Ok don't know why i got a warning on this post.... Says I violated Rule #9 but I followed that rule.. even the mod that posted a reply didn't say anything about it... oh well....

Oh please, your original thread title was "Does this exist????" I'd be hard pressed to come up with something less descriptive than that. A different mod knocked you for this than posted (check the edit message of your first post).

[Shinigami-Sama]

Oh please, your original thread title was "Does this exist????" I'd be hard pressed to come up with something less descriptive than that. A difference mod knocked you for this than posted (check the edit message of your first post).

nah its easy to come up with less descriptive
heres an example: ????!!!one

anyways...

I too would love if we had a way to do this
chapters are nice and all, but... a full menu would rock socks

[Cyberace]

RatDVD and FluxDVD are proprietary and thus bad IMHO (there are no stand-alone players that support them for one).

Matroska (MKV) would be the best choise IMO if there was not for the fact that there do not seem to be a single player out there that support their menus.

MP4 is also suppose to support menus but I have not seen or heard about any tools or hardware/software players that supports them.

DivX and DMF (DivX Media Format) is also proprietary but they do provide a object library for integration into software players and any stand-alone marked to support the "DivX Ultra" profile supports menus for them. Plus there are tools which make it simpler to convert and author video menus for them:
http://www.divx.com/divx/windows/author/
http://www.divx.com/divx/advanced.php
http://www.divx.com/products/hw/browse.php?c=16

PS! As for XBMC, unfortunatly XBMC only support DVD-Video menus as of yet, but it is open source...

[joseph5]

MP4 is also suppose to support menus but I have not seen or heard about any tools or hardware/software players that supports them.There's MP4MenuGUI and the Osmo Player.

[karasu]

Menu in Matroska is a long time dream... the last step before disc-media were totally obsolete.