From scratch DVD menu's

[RLLMoFP]

First off, hello all!

I must say this is an excellent site. I first found it in an article at TechTV and have since spent many hours reading the guides and posts. Keep up the good work it is much appreciated.

That said I have a question that may have been asked often in one form or another. I did a search using various key words and didn’t find quite what I was hoping to. (As a side note: is there a way to search for a phrase?)

Any way here’s how I create my DVD backups.

Step one: Check to see if it’s a DVD-5 or DVD-9 composition.
Step two: Open the DVD in ‘DVD Shrink’ using Full disk for a DVD-5 or Re-author for a DVD-9.
Step three: Backup the DVD to a directory on my hard drive. Example: G:\RUNDOWN
A: For Re-author I copy the main movie with as little compression as possible and add extras using high compression until the compilation is full. Generally I order the extras in the most logical manner.
Step four: Use ‘Nero Burning Rom 6’ to create a DVD-Video disk with the files from the VIDEO_TS folder. I do it manually because I want to burn at 2x, which seems to play back better on my home player.

Finally I get to the point of this post. ;)
Once I re-author a disk I would like to create a DVD menu to allow selecting the included extras rather then just using the remote to skip to them.

Ideally I would like to snag an image from the movie as the background of the menu (easily done with my PC DVD player program) and then add the selectable items to it. The ability to turn on and off director’s comments from a sub menu would be nice as well.

Is there any way to create such menus? Preferably in a manner not too much more complicated then using the DVD tools I mentioned above. I’ve seen DVDRemake and it’s predecessor MenuEdit, but they only seem to rework existing menus.

Thanks for you time!
Sign me: The new guy!

[Dimmer]

Welcome to the forum.

You need a DVD authoring software. Although few great programs like DVD Shink, IfoEdit, or ReJig have an authoring functionality as an added bonus, it's not their main purpose and therefore this functionality is rather basic.

There is a lot of authoring programs for the users of different level. Very good program for beginners is TMPEnc DVD Author (http://www.pegasys-inc.com/en/download/tda.html). You should search the web and the forums for the features and comparison of different authoring programs. Check out the products by Sonic (http://www.sonic.com/) and Ulead (http://www.ulead.com/).

[Mac Sidewinder]

You could simply snag the title frame (I usually go and find a good pic of the cover from the internet) and save it as a jpg or bmp file. Next use a graphics program like Adobe Photoshop (any program that lets you save layers) and create a button on the pic. Then import this pic into a authoring program and assign the button to the movie (or extras, etc). There is a step by step guide in the Guides DVD section on how to do this. You can even add an audio soundtrack to the menu.

I cap from sattelite and create my own menus. If it is a single video file my menu has an invisible button on it, since by default the dvd player selects the first (and only button). All you have to do is press the enter button on the remote to start the video. Why look at a single button that says "Play" or something like that.

Mac

[RLLMoFP]

Thanks.

I'll give TMPEnc DVD Author a try. I notice there's a guide available, very cool!

When creating buttons, does the button have to be on a seperate layer? Or is that just a better way of placing the buttons on the image.

[oddyseus]

Its just an efficient way of arranging your assets around.

[Mac Sidewinder]

Your buttons can be anything you want them to be whether they are part of the background pic or layers on top of the background. In your author program, you should be able to define the button area by drawing around it then assigning a function to that area. By putting them in layers though, you can move them around easier, add and delete them also.

Mac