Multiple VIDEO_TS folders --> one dvd with menu?

[Ubik]

I have a bunch of VIDEO_TS/AUDIO folders created from .avi files via ffmpeg.
They are about one gig each.
I'd like to burn three or four onto a single DVD with a menu to choose between them.

I can't figure out how to do this and would be most grateful for some help.

Cheers,

Ubik

[Frobozz]

You first need to extract the MPEGs from each of the VIDEO_TS folders and then use an MPEG-friendly DVD authoring application (such as Toast) to author a new VIDEO_TS folder that includes all the titles.

This is easy to do with Toast 7. Extract the MPEGs using the Media Browser, type the title descriptions and select the menu thumbnail frame, choose a menu template and burn your new DVD.

[espidog]

Hi Ubik,
It depends on what disc burning app you have you got, if any. Probably the easiest way to do it involves using Roxio Toast 7 (which you have to buy, I'm afraid, but it's not hugely expensive and very good value for the money). If you have got Toast 7, this is what you do:

At the top of the main pane, select the 'Video' tab.

If you just want to burn a disc from one VIDEO_TS folder, go to the options panel on the left, click the "DVD-Video from VIDEO_TS" checkbox, and drag your VIDEO_TS folder into the main pane. Be aware that this option does not allow you to create any menu.

If you want to make a menu, or if you want to put the contents of several VIDEO_TS folders on one disc, select the "DVD-Video" checkbox. Below that, you'll see various options, including one to choose a menu style. At the top of the main pane you'll see the words "My DVD". If you click these words, you can alter them to whatever words you want to appear as the title of your menu.

Now drag each of your VIDEO_TS folders into the main pane. (Each time you do this, you'll get a warning box saying that some files are unsupported and will not been included. Don't worry - that's OK. It's just telling you that it's ignoring the IFO and BUP files because it will make its own.)

Each item you drag in will appear in the pane as a separate video clip, with an "Edit" button to the right. This button enables you to customise the 3 lines of text that will appear next to that item in the DVD menu. If you click on the little video clip itself, you get a slider control to help you choose a still image from the video for your menu button.

When you've done this for all your clips, put your blank disc in the burner. Before hitting the big red "BURN" button, make sure you have selected the right size of disc (there's a tiny little button just above "BURN" that gives you a choice of CD, DVD or DVD Dual Layer).

When you hit "BURN", Toast will re-mux the contents of all the VIDEO_TS folders, make a menu and write its own IFO and BUP files to create a playable DVD. As long as you haven't tried to put too much stuff on the disc, it will do this WITHOUT RE-ENCODING YOUR VOBs, so there will be no quality lost.

Toast 7 has lots of other refinements too, like custom encoding modes etc., but I won't go into them here. If you don't want to use these, its default settings are pretty good.

It isn't a perfect app - in this forum you'll find many people complaining of audio sync problems, especially when using Toast to encode from DivX AVI files or ripped mpegs - but it's probably still the best all-round burning app available for the Mac.

Hope this has been some help,
Espidog

[Ubik]

Thank you so much Frobozz and espidog!

I managed to get it working.

One more question though... maybe for you espidog if you'd be so kind... you seem to be the Toast-master!

After I've loaded all my VIDEO_TS folders into Toast and got everything ready to burn... is there any way I can save something like a disc image file so if I want to burn it again later I can just use that instead of copying the first DVD I made (if it's still around!) or redoing the whole thing from scratch?

I hope that makes sense.

Cheers...

And thanks again...

Ubik

[espidog]

Yes, you can make a disc image. Just go to "File" on the toolbar, and look for "Save as Disc Image" in the drop-down menu.

If I just want to see what the menu is going to look like, a trick I often use is to make up a 'fake' disc using a tiny DV file or mpeg - 30 seconds long or so - instead of the real ones. I drag the same file in several times, write all the text in as it would appear, then make a disc image of it. Saves tons of time: as Toast has virtually nothing to encode/multiplex, it makes the image in less than a minute.

Cheers,
Espidog

[Ubik]

Great!

And one more time... Thank You!

_Ubik

[Ladd]

I can confirm that the above detailed explanation as to how to combine multiple VIDEO_TS folders into a single VIDEO_TS with menu selections works just fine -- I've been doing exactly that with Toast 7 for seemingly forever. No more arcane trial and error with FFmpegX anymore for me!

[3lutz3toe]

Hi, I’ve tried doing like stated above in combining 2 VIDEO-TS folders into 1 DVD w/ selectable menus. (I have Toast 7).
Everything worked fine, the menus, sound, video, but the subtitles (srt) are missing.

(These were AVI muxed files that that I authored in FFMPEG w/ selectable subtitles. And I have burned a few discs w/ only 1 VIDEO-TS folder and the subs worked fine).

I have 40 episodes of a series and I want to save discs and space if I can combine 2 into 1 DVD.
Any ideas why the subtitles to appear on the 2 to 1DVD?

[MaxxR]

I prefer using Dvd2OneX for this - it uses a lot less disk space and can compress episodes to fit the disc, ie giving me the possibility to decide how many I want on each disc and it also transfers the subtitles I get in ffMpegX.