Want to make chapters for svcd

[hoops10]

I know dvd2svcd can do this using vcdxbuild (i think that is the name of the proggie). My question is how can I do this manually? What proggies do I need to do this? Thanks.

[Bubba]

These links should tell you how to do it:

http://www.doom9.org/mpg/vcdeasy.htm
http://www.doom9.org/mpg/tscv.htm


Cheers,

[hoops10]

Thanks for the links. I've read them over and fouund them very useful. Couple of questions though: I really love CCE and the quality it gives to svcds so am I right when I say that I can not use TSCV? Also if I want animated menus, am I right in saying that I can not use VCD Easy? Thanks for any help.

[Doom9]

your first question isn't very clear to me.. if you refer to the main movie you can of course encode it in cce.. if you mean the menus.. it may still be possible, but you need to figure out the internal workings of how tscv does the menus and try to duplicate it manually and load the input for the menu generation procedure into cce and encode.. but just for some lousy menus it's really not worth the effort.
as for the 2nd.. not true. vcdeasy allows for complicated menu authoring and any kind of menus.. but it has no animated menu generator.

and here's the short version (not technically correct but practically correct for most people not willing to make a considerable extra effort).
1) no
2) yes

[Pko]

I have a method to make animated menus using only avisynth (with some plugins) and VCDImager...

It is a comparatively complex procedure (compared to making a (S)VCD without menu), and you must have:

1) a clear idea of what you want to do, and how
2) some knowledge of avisynth
3) some knowledge of VCDImager's XML format of describing a (S)VCD structure
4) some ability to draw the menus and such (not much, I am pleased with my results and I have absolutely no artistic capabilities...)

I talked with some people about that in the avisynth forum and it seems to be some interest, so I am preparing a guide (I gave there some quick impressions of what I do, but preparing a guide takes much much more time and effort, as Doom9 for sure knows). I will send it to Doom9 (if he is interested) and/or post here a link to some free web site (geocities or something like that) where I will post it (the BMPs take more than 500K compressed, and that is without the screen shots)

Is a little weird for me, some things that I think are easy, result in very complex explanations when I try to tell other people how to do them...

[hoops10]

@pko

Thanks for the reply. What I'm wanting to do now, is to put still menus into my svcds so that when I choose the menu, it will take me to a certain chapter. Would I use VCD Easy for that in combination with the menus from the .ifo file from the DVD? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Pko]

Well, I don't know about extracting menus with ifoedit, but once you have a BMP, is simple to make a menu...

Simply convert the BMP to a static MPG (use the tools in VCDEasy), then drop the MPG file created in VCDEasy's SVCD creation list and make the navigation. I think there is a guide to do that.

[hoops10]

@pko

That is what I want to do, create or import thumbnails to act as clickable icons to send me to a certain chapter, just like a DVD. So how would I get the BMP to create the menus?

[Pko]

Originally posted by hoops10
@pko

That is what I want to do, create or import thumbnails to act as clickable icons to send me to a certain chapter, just like a DVD. So how would I get the BMP to create the menus?

It depends on what you want to do...

I suppose you want to show a screen with some text and a little thumbnail of different video streams (or chapters in the same video stream); you can prepare an avisynth script that does it but probably it is overkill for this, so some easier solutions:

1) If your DVD player allows it, capture a screen shot (WinDVD allows it, for example)
2) Or export the movie with DVD2AVI, prepare a simple avisynth stream like:
loadplugin(mpeg2dec.dll)
mpeg2source(movie.d2v)
and then open it in tmpgenc, in Setting/Advanced/Source Range, select just one frame, the one you want for your thumbnail, and then in File/Output To File, select "sequence of BMP/TGA/PPM/JPG Files" and save just that BMP
3) Open the stream in Virtual Dub (using Avisynth if necessary) and use Video/Copy Source Fram to Clipboard and then save it with paint or other program

After that, you will have a BMP with the image you want to use for your menu; using any drawing program (even MS Paint serves, but other tools like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop or The Gimp are much more powerfull) you make your menu, including the BMPs conveniently reduced and adding the text you want, and save it as a BMP. I suggest using resolutions for your BMP menu of 640x480 (for NTSC) or 768x576 (for PAL)

After that, you will have a BMP; convert it to a MPEG Still with VCDEasy (look for "MPEG Stills" in "tools" section) and then make the SVCD and the "navigation" with the same tool. It will NOT be clickable, but will work with the numeric buttons and with "prev", "next", "select" and "return"... to be clickable, you must save the XML you made in VCDEasy, edit it manually and then generate and burn the (S)VCD from the XML; you can do that again with VCDEasy.

The changes to do to the XML are not easy and the "clickable menus" only work with one player, PowerDVD AFAIK. You must understand pretty well how the structure of the SVCD is expressed in the XML file, something not easy at first glance... I will give you some directions, but better read VCDImager docs (and the XML samples at VCDImager.org):

Select the sections in your BMP that are "clickable"; they must be rectangles. Get the coordinates translated into a scale of 0-255 both in horizontal and vertical axis. For example, if your BMP is of 720x480 and the section you want clickable goes from coordinates (100,100) to (220,180), translating the coordinates is simple:

(100,100) -> (100/720*256,100/480*256) -> (36,53)
(220,180) -> (220/720*256,180/480*256) -> (78,96)

so, your (x1,y1) point is (36,53) and the (x2,y2) is (78,96); in your menu in XML you will have something like

<select ref="Vid-01"/>

that is the option you want to select when pressing in the above mentioned rectangle; simply change it to

<select ref="Vid-01" x1="36" y1="53" x2="78" y2="96"/>

and do the same for the rest of the options. It is something a bit boring and as I said, it works only in PowerDVD as far as I know... But it is in the spec, so it could be implemented in more players, and even in stand alones (something difficult since selecting with the remote imposes overlaying some kind of "mark" on the screen, and it is complicated and not very clear for the user).

[hoops10]

@pko

Ok, I'm following you so far. I've created mpeg stills on my BMPs and have a fully muxed mpg file. So now I go to the (S)VCD tab am going to put them into VCD Easy (Along with the chapters but I can do the chapters). Does it matter the order I put the stuff in (cause I'm dragging and dropping the main movie and the mpeg stills? Also I can only fit about 4 mpeg stills on a screen at once, can I set it up so that when I hit NEXT on the remote, it goes to the next menu of thumbs? IF so, how?