Menu2SVCD Guide (FINALLY)

[RadicalEd]

Many apologies for taking so long but you can blame half of that on the ridiculous people that suck up my time every day and the other half on the ridiculous people that suck up my internet connection every so often. Anyway, I finally got the 1.0 version of my DVD menu to SVCD guide out. There are some areas that could use improvement, and you can probably tell that I'm new to writing guides, but all in good fun (or some saying like that). Anywho, less babble, more guide.
Its all at my main page;
http://www.angelfire.com/anime3/airanime/index.html
I hereby pronounce this thread open for comments and criticism! Tell me if its not newbie-friendly enough, too newbie-friendly, in dire need of better organization, whatever. Anything to make it bigger and better. I'll start work on a 2.0 version as soon as I have enough changes and/or feel like it ;P

In addition, summer is almost apon us and with that comes free time galore. In other words, this thread can be used for comments and suggestions for the potential program Menu2SVCD as well.

-edit- for those of you who are new, easily confused, or otherwise have no idea whats going on (with this I mean, in life I can't help you too much), here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21939) is the original thread that bore the guide you see today.

[hoops10]

Is it possible for a transition not to have audio? I think I may have one, cause when I use besweet to convert vob -> mp3 or wav, I get nothing.

[RadicalEd]

sure, but it would be best to check the actual DVD first and see if when this transition is played there is no sound. In the case that there really isnt sound, just skip besweet for that particular file and mux only the .m2v into the final mpg file for that transition.

-edit-
Updated. The guide now explains how to mux audio-less transitions.

[hoops10]

Thanks for the quick update. As far as stills and transitions go, the movie I'm working on is The Rock. The transition is the chapter selection. Is that normally true or are stills usually the chapter select? I ask becuase in your guide it looks like the chapter(scene) selection is a still.

[RadicalEd]

double edged sword.. split by vob id or by cell id...? Both introduce possible mess-ups. Anyway the new ifoedit is out which usually means good things. Hoops' problem was solved and it was caused by a cluster of stills being in the same vob-id, solved by splitting by cell-id instead. Problem with this is that it can split motion menus in more places than needed in rare occasions. Just an update (oh alright I wont lie.. and a bump ;) (there were 2000 people that viewed the first menu2svcd thread.. so they should all get see this one too of course!)) Well anyway I have to update the guide about the cell-id thing, I'll post when I get it taken care of.

Ups.. forgot about this thread ^^; anyway, fixed the cell-id thing in the guide. Big updates coming soon (as soon as finals are over.. hopefully e.e)

[Aussie]

Going through it yesterday and got stuck on this little bit.
Create a new avisynth script in the Motion Menus folder named according to your first .d2v file. i.e. Main1.avs for editing Main1.d2v. I understand how name it, and where to put it and everything but I dont know how to create it. Can you, or someone, explain to me how to "create a new avisynth script"? I THINK it has something to do with using Notepad but other than that....Thank you.

[WarpEnterprises]

An "avisynth file" is just a plain textfile with the extension .avs
(and some meaningful script text inside :) )

[orbit-r]

hi
@radical ed i read your guide and found it very nice...but much,much work too much for me:p

so whats going on with the programm?? i know this will be a hell of work but very very rocking!!!

gruss
orbit-r

[int 21h]

I'm a big fan in hand written .xml files for vcdimager. Your guide is good, but it won't quite work right for motion menus, because you can't edit the picture to include the #'s that you edit in, in the guide.

And even though not many players support it, the hotspot capabilities of vcdimager are nice too. (AFAIK, software dvd players do support it)

Overall good start.

[RadicalEd]

@int21h not sure what you mean by "It won't work right for motion menus" you edit in the numbers through avisynth's subtitle plugin. Hotspots was a topic back in the old thread and it is interesting although the extra step in a lot of cases would take far too long (take your captured images, resize to 255 by 255, find the coordinates, script them into the xml.. with a lot of menus, that turns into a huge headache).

I haven't given much attention to the program idea lately because I've shifted interest over to the XCD menu project a bit, although I have a friend (a decent looking friend at that ;) ) who agreed to teach me some programming this summer if I teach her about all this multimedia junk and I'm going to take a class in it this year (tough choice though.. 2 electives, 3 interests- german, programming, multimedia.. tough tough choice)

Anyway I'm glad all these new suggestions are coming in finally although I'm going on a week's vacation in 2 days so it kinda is bad timing ^^; but when I get back I'll redo the guide - organize and split by section and give better explanations of things.

[adam]

I'm fairly certain that no hardware players support hotspot functions in svcds. The only hardware players that support hotspots are cdi players and those don't support svcds so unless you play your videos on your pc, you can forget about hotspots. The only way you can actually use hotspots on a hardware player is if you make a vcd or cdi disk.

The guide is good. I've basically been using this exact method for years. Except when there are numbers already on the menu's, like with the chapter selection, I prefer to use those. Instead of overlaying a number over the selection I overlay a button (basically a cool looking box)on top of the number. Then I just use next and previous buttons to jump to the next chapter selection menu. I guess this might not work with your particular source but with most dvds it does cause each chapter selection screen is different or the animation in the backgroud just starts over. I do think this method looks much more professional.

[int 21h]

Oh right Avisynth subtitling. Sorry, wasn't pondering clearly.

[Aussie]

well....I got the avs scripting to work but with a bit of difficulty. I used Notepad and somehow it would add the extension .txt at the end. I went into Command Prompt and renamed the files (main.avs.txt to main.avs). That fixed it and all avs scripts now work. Thank you Radical Ed for your email :) Enjoy your time mate.

[evilhomer]

I think I asked this in the DVD2SVCD forum, but I can't find the thread. Any chance of this being automated and integrated into DVD2SVCD? I'm going to try it, but it seems like a lot of work to do every time.

(it's tough working and going to school full-time!)

[RadicalEd]

Heheh.. (just replied to the other post about that) I just had a funny idea. Someone should set up webspace where people could post the menus they've already done to save all the troubles of doing it for every movie. Now if only I had $25 a month and encoded more than anime movies... ::sigh:: if time were made of jellybeans...

[Aussie]

Someone should set up webspace where people could post the menus they've already done to save all the troubles of doing it for every movie. Great idea, but how big are menus you are creating? I think the download limit would be exceeded the first day.....lol. :D

[RadicalEd]

Ah.. well I like to keep em (and I said this in another thread) at a max of 60 MB so that I can just make like I'm using 74 min cds with the main movie but yea guess you're right. Owell.. just host em on some IRC or like eDonkey or Kazaa or something I guess

[RadicalEd]

Speaking of webspace troubles -- Does anybody, ANYBODY out there have my main page and/or updates page still in their browser cache? Angelfire has dumped my webpage out of the blue (probably bandwidth limits ¬_¬ ) anyway, all I need is the html and any of it would help me a great deal. Hmm.. I guess I haven't lost a whole lot.. but in any case, if you've been to the site recently then dont go back! But check your history and see if you can send me my own html (how ridiculous --) email of course is missingno0@aol.com. A huge thanks to anyone that can help. Now off to find some new free host e.e

[RadicalEd]

eheh.. anyone? ^^; really really sorry for this, but it'll help alot... bump? ^^;;;

[Aussie]

I checked my cache on all three machines. Sorry mate. The only thing I DO have is the actual tutorial. If you want that email me. :)

[RadicalEd]

clap your hands min'na, because I just found a severely old and outdated version of my main page stuffed somewhere within the recesses of my several 'waiting to go someplace useful when I get the time' folders. Whats that min'na? Did I hear an overtly heavy 45 year old man shout "You're crazy Ed! Angelfire put your site in a flaming bag and left it on your porch, where the hell are you gonna put this?". Well min'na, we're low-bandwidth web services a hoppin cuz we now have an account with *drumroll* Geoshitties! ::cheers and shouts contest with an equal amount of boo-ing::
I don't have it up quite yet but I think the site will be
http://www.geocities.com/radicaled0/index.html
So break out the sparkling cider and walk the dog, cuz we're gonna rock geocities till they inevitably shut us down due to overuse of free bandwidth.

[RadicalEd]

Hello,

Thank you for contacting the Lycos Network Abuse Department.

It seems as though your account was removed in error and has been
reinstated. I apologize for any problems this may have caused you.



Sincerely,

Fred


I was sitting around and I decided to go to my site and see if by some miraculous event it had returned, not actually expecting it to be there. Instead of those stupid angelfire 404 messages, my site came up (much to my surprise). I logged on the sn I had emailed angelfire from to find that thing up there. Dunno who fred is, but w/e, guess we won't have to invade geocities after all. My site is now officially re-opened.

[Latexxx]

Your guide looks pretty good.

btw. I don't personally like anime.

[RadicalEd]

1. Thanks :) and
2. You don't want to like anime. Its a deadly curse, it becomes an obsessive and controlling addiction which leeches away your brain cells until you're shelling out $150 a week for new DVDs and spending the rest of your time updating some stupid fansite dedicated to an animated girl you're obsessed with, and wandering around AOL chat rooms RPing until your keyboard beggs for mercy from all the stupidness. On saturdays you go to an End of Evangelion support group and on thursdays you meet at Borders to discuss more anime with other poor troubled victims like yourself. Your social life outside of borders revolves around the latest Tenchi Muyo series and the greasy 45 year olds who visit your Naru fansite, and your religion is based around a fictional goddess which is 'okay' because its just a stylized dirivitive of shintoism as far as you're concerned. Eventually you watch far too many episodes of Lain and decide to become part of the wired, which you realize isn't a good idea 3 minutes too late. Dont let otaku happen to you.

Fortunately, there are cool otaku out there like me who keep anime in good namesake despite all the incriminating evidence against it. But beware.. or some day, you too could be.. an otaku