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  1. Tools required: DvdComposer

    Part 1 of this tutorial touches on using the Project Wizard in DvdComposer to automate the whole DVD building process.

    This tutorial continues with building a DVD in DvdComposer without the wizard. Let's start by first creating a menu on your DVD:


    Creating your menu

    One of DvdComposer's greatest strengths is in its menu composition ability. You can alpha-blend different video files, and preview your motion menu in real-time before you actually create your DVD.

    When you start up DvdComposer, an empty menu has already been created for you. If you want additional menus, you can click on the "Add Menu" button on the toolbar:



    The easiest way to fill up your menu with content is to use the pre-built menu templates. To do so, you can simply drag & drop the menu template you want into the menu editor:



    Alternatively, you can build your menu from scratch. Let's do that here step by step:

    1. Setting the menu background:

    You can either use a still photo or a Mpeg video file for the menu background. Let's use a Mpeg video file for this example. Drag in your Mpeg video into the menu background, and hold your mouse cursor. After a short pause, a popup menu will appear:



    In this example, we'll select "Set Background". If you want the audio of the MPEG file you've dragged in to play as well, select "Set Background and Audio".

    If you wish to customize the background video further (such as setting the START/END time of the playing video), you can do so from the MENU PROPERTIES window:




    2. Creating buttons:

    Now that you've set the background, it's time to create some buttons. Again, you can either use the pre-built button templates by dragging and dropping them, or create from scratch. We'll demonstrate creating buttons from scratch.

    On the menu, click on the left-mouse button and drag it. Once you've reached the size you want, release your mouse and an empty button will be created:



    In DvdComposer, a button is made up of 2 layers of image: VISUAL and SHAPE. You can think of the SHAPE as your button border frame, and VISUAL as the picture inside the frame. The SHAPE is a photoshop PSD file that is overlayed on top of the VISUAL (which can be a photo or video).

    Let's fill up our newly created empty button with a VISUAL first, by dragging in a video file. Again, you should drag and hold, and wait for the context menu to popup :



    To set just the VISUAL, select "Set Visual".

    TIP: If you select "Create Track and Link to Button" from the menu, DvdComposer will set the visual, create a new track with the video you just dragged in, link the button to the video track, and set the end-jump of the video track back to the activating menu. All in one action

    Now that we've set the button VISUAL, we can proceed to set the button SHAPE. You can create your own shapes in Photoshop (more on this in a later tutorial), but it's probably easiest to just use the pre-built ones, simply by dragging & dropping them into your button:



    Notice that in the above, the brick background shows through slightly in the picture (visual)? This is because the photoshop SHAPE file we've used has a transparency layer that blends it with the background.

    The SHAPE, besides decorating the button's border, also specifies the highlight for the button when the button is selected. You can see this in the BUTTON PROPERTIES window:




    Now that you've created your menu button, you will need to link it to either a menu, track or a playlist, so that it actually does something when you press on it.

    If you have other menus/tracks/playlists created, you can simply link your menu button to them by right clicking on the button, and select the right Target:




    That's it. To create more buttons, simply repeat the above process. Once you're done with your menu, click on the PLAY button in the menu editor, and you will see all your video files (buttons + background) playing synchronously together.


    (Edit: The following content has been edited on 25th May. Decided not to proceed with part-3 of the tutorial, but put a small summary on creating Tracks.)

    You already know a simple way of creating Tracks from the above, by dragging in your video file into a menu button and selecting "Create Track. Link to Button." to automate everything. So, you can theorectically create your whole DVD with just using the Menu Editor. If this is what you want, click on BUILD DVD when your menus are all created, and you should be all set.

    Alternatively, you can also create your video tracks in the Track Editor, which will give you more control. To link your buttons to your tracks, simply right-click and set the Target, as explained above.
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  2. Member DVWannaB's Avatar
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    I think I will give the baby a shot. Looks like it may be a keeper. Look out DVD-lab
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  3. Member DVWannaB's Avatar
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    Just some quick impressions after one night of testing. One phrase jumps into my mind immediately: MEMORY HOG!!!!! Ran it on my laptop WinXP-P4-40GB-512MB RAM. Wooo......this baby is powerful and uses some kinda memory. It actually at one point locked up my laptop and would not respond and couldnt do anything. Finally had to do a Tak Manager - end task, before it finally shut down after a long wait. I will have to give it a run on desktop Win2000 which has more HD space available.

    But I must say this package has a lot of promise. I ran the wizard and saved the project, so that I could make tweaks to menus. It is very simple to use and make edits. Love the ability to not only set-up thumbnail chapters with animation, but also has a Play All functionality that my current proggie, DVD-lab, does not do. Didnt get a chance to finish the project last night and burn to disk, but the initial trial run is very promising. One annoyance was that the program was slow to react and execute commands. Then it would, without anything I did, would start to scan my MPEG files. That I dont get, since it was already scanned during the loading process and I was just in the process of adding text and changing button styles. This again may be due to the programs draining of memory and uses this as a mechanism to refresh itself. I will know for sure on my desktop, which is working on a rendering project currently.

    Whats missing?
    - More diverse menu selections. Need more professional, sports and tech looking menu templates.
    - Buttons? Didnt like the buttons at all, as they are very rudimentary and look kinda cheesy. Ability to graphically/artistic change buttons without going outside the program would be a nice thing to have.
    - The ability to artistically/graphically change the look, color, feel of the base menu (a la DVD-lab).
    - The ability to add SVCD tracks to the VTS (along with VCD and DVD).

    Nice looking entry into the DVD authoring. Worth a look and more testing.
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  4. Member DVWannaB's Avatar
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    PictureToTV,

    So far I have found DvdComposer to be very unstable in WinXP environment. It keeps crashing. I will be sending the error log soon. When it is not crashing it moves at a snails pace to simple things like adding text or buttons or changing them. The program seems to work worry free when you use the wizard to create a project. The problems seem to be after that is completed.

    Some things that are puzzling:
    1) Dont understand why DvdComposer is using 100% computer resources
    2) When I decided to cut short my edits, because of the problems I talked about, I then tried to compile the DVD project. It seemed to be going ok, with demuxing and re-muxing MPEG2 files. On the second and last MPEG2 file the system crashed and generated the error log (which I will send to you). After closing out of DvdComposer, I went to the folder that contained the project/DVD compilation. DvdComposer created 2 folders. Strangely enough, the folder showed no files, but indicated that it had 8 GB in it. Also in the second folder that had the name of the project showed no files and using 4 GB.
    3) During my edits, not many, DvdComposer would without anything I did, would start doing a scan of the video and audio files. In all, during this project it did that 3 times. It is slow and time consuming and really no reason to do that.

    In any case, some work to be done.
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  5. Hi DVWannaB,
    U may want to send us mail (info at codejam.com) regarding your issue instead, since it's quite impossible for us to keep track of all the diff threads in a forum and do support.

    A small note is that DvdComposer utilizes quite a bit of DirectX to do video blending. You'll need a decent (no need for high-end) video card with at least 16mb RAM (32mb for serious work). Laptop video cards, unfortunately, are a few generation behind desktop's.

    The video scanning is necessary for accurate chapter points. It's only done once for any new file you've imported.

    Regards,
    - Casey
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  6. Member DVWannaB's Avatar
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    ok, will do. error log will be emailed today. but no more testing on WinXP laptop. Win2K Pro desktop for future testing.
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    Originally Posted by PictureToTV
    Hi DVWannaB,
    U may want to send us mail (info at codejam.com) regarding your issue instead, since it's quite impossible for us to keep track of all the diff threads in a forum and do support.

    A small note is that DvdComposer utilizes quite a bit of DirectX to do video blending. You'll need a decent (no need for high-end) video card with at least 16mb RAM (32mb for serious work). Laptop video cards, unfortunately, are a few generation behind desktop's.

    The video scanning is necessary for accurate chapter points. It's only done once for any new file you've imported.

    Regards,
    - Casey
    When putting several VCDs to DVD disc with DVDComposer, does the program re-encode the VCDs to DVD or just convert the audio from 44.1 khz to 48 khz ?

    Thanks.
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