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View Full Version : 50+ music albums on a single DVD playable by nearly all DVD players???


Okar Gona
10th March 2003, 12:08
Because not a lot of DVD players can play MP3-files burned on a DVD my idea is use the AC3 encoding possibility to store a lot of music albums on one DVD. Via one or more menus the user should be able to select the music album he wants to listen. When selecting an album a still image should show which album is playing. Each track on an album should be a new chapter point so it will be possible to change tracks within an album. Also per chapter a subtilte should be shown with the song name of the track.

At the end of an album the following steps could be made:
1) Go back to menu
2) Start playing next album
3) Start playing an other randomly selected album

As source, to create such a DVD, the album and audio information could be supplied as follows:
* Per album a separate directory must be created where the directory name contains the artist name and album name (optional: MP3 ID information could be used to get the artist and album name)
* Each track is stored as a separate file (WAV, MP3 etc format). The file name contains the song name of the track, possibly preceded by a sequence number. (optional: MP3 ID information could be used to get song name)
* The directory could also contain an image (BMG, JPG etc) which will be shown when the album is playing. If no image is present the program should automatically create an image with artist and album name.

So the program should be able to perform the following tasks, or at least be able to invoke 3rd party software which can perform the task automatically:
* Encode the audio to AC3. Maybe all tracks, within a directory, are encoded to one AC3-file where the appropriate chapter points for every song are stored for later use. (optional: the user will be able to configure a silence period between two tracks)
* Create the appropriate sub-titles and time-code information per track.
* In case there is no still image present in the directory, create a still image based on artist and album name.
* Create menu stills based different artist and album names. Due to the number of music albums which can be stored on a DVD it is likely that serveral menu stills are needed to display all the albums.
* Create DVD structure which links all menu stills to the still image of the album and the corresponding AC3 file. (MY BIG QUESTION: Is it possbile to show a still image and at the same time playing an AC3-file which has one or more chapter points or must a still image created per chapter point?)

Who is also interested in such a program? And much better, who will be able to write such a program. The author of such a program could get as famous as the author of the legendary tool DVD2SVCD.

VidHack
11th March 2003, 16:09
Its already done.
http://staff.washington.edu/jmgasper/screenshots.htm

Your simply using the wrong OS. You could switch to Microsofts attempt at this, Windows Media Edition. All the things you ask for are already done by other apps, if you want to glue them together, simply learn Visual Basic, or a few cheasy ways to do this are AutoIt, or Automate.

I have to chuckle on your "Famous as DVD2SVCD", if he is so famous, whats his/hers real full name?

Good Luck,

VidHack

Okar Gona
11th March 2003, 17:59
Hi Vidhack,

That's not what I meant. I want to creat a DVD which can play compressed audio. Currently I have a PC in my living room which I'm using as a DIVX/XVID player ( and for playing old Commodore 64 games via an emulator) It takes to much time to start the PC just for playing an audio album that's why I'm looking for a DVD solution which can be played on my stand-alone DVD player (Harman Kardon DVD 21).

MovieNut
12th March 2003, 18:37
Check out SonicFoundry DVD Architect (it is part of vegas+dvd). There is even a demo & manual available for download at www.sonicfoundry.com

I have tested it and it does alot of what you want, I created a a dvd with multiple albums (using mp3s as source) with album pictures and song names. It is very easy to use but it takes some time to compile the dvd because it has to transcode all of the mp3s to ac3 audio for the dvd.

Hope this helps.

Okar Gona
12th March 2003, 20:28
Thanks, I'll give it a try.