The most basic levels

[TheOnlyMerlin]

I want to knwo details about the most basic levels of DVD authoring. As in, how was it designed? Is there a scripting language at a bottom level to it? Or is it a situation similar to Powerpoint and all the dvd menus are simply presentations with minimal customization capability?

I am a coder by nature and got an inspiration for an idea with DVD's, but it required very bottom-level access. Something I have yet to find. All I have been able to find is simple visual editors (akin to a website editor for web development).

Basically, if at all possible, I want to know if there is a scripting/programming-style language being used from the actual DVD.

In any case, that's my main question.

I have a second question.

Is it possible to have let's say... a beginning screen with an image in the background (let's say of a character). The menu has a selection of 3 or so other characters it can show. And every time the DVD menu pops up, it randomly picks on of those characters to show.

Is this possible?

I appreciate any help that you can give. And if any of this seems noob-ish, please bare with me.

[reboot]

Yes, yes, and yes.
http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/Help/index.htm
The complete manual online.

[TheOnlyMerlin]

A little unclear as to what yeses go to what, so I will make my questions clearer.

Is it possible to script or program (IE text-based) DVD menus?

If yes, then Where can I find the details about doing this?

If no, then is it possible to have a DVD menu that randomly selects a new image every time the menu is started?

If yes to this, can some details on how to do this be provided?

Thank you.

[TheOnlyMerlin]

Forget all that, I love you. lol
Thank you, I now know what i needed to know. Now I have another question, is there any editors (with minimal gui) for editing these "VM Commands"? I think I already have a basic understanding on how they function, but forcing myself to not rely on these cheating methods might make my projects of higher quality.

Thanks very much.

[reboot]

AFAIK, there are no "scripting" apps for DVD, but...If you learn the "language" well enough, you can load any script you want into DVDLab and have it produce (compile) the project, without doing any WYSIWYG editing/composing in the actual program itself.
Take a look through the manual for "Labtalk". There's lots more.

Now you know what I meant by, "Yes, yes, and yes". ;)

[ShawnFumo]

I'm also a newbie, but if you just want to experiment with scripting commands in DVDs, you may want to mosey over to the ifo/vob editors forum and check out PGCEdit. That lets you edit/insert pre+post+cell commands (as well as button commands in the last beta). The interface also helps with coding in that it lists all the possible commands with the valid entries that can go in them. Best of all, it is free. :)

Shawn