How to burn multiple VIDEO_TS folders to one DVDR w/Menus/Chapters

[Iceman67]

I've looked and looked for ways to put multiple movies on one dvdr and still retain some menu/chapter functionality. YES, I know Toast can put several of them but you end up with Toast's automatic chaptering. And I didn't want to mess with Sizzle (always crashes on me), DVDSP, etc. I like dvd2onex's joining feature as it automatically keeps combined dvdr small if I choose but I do not like that it does not let me navigate or choose which dvd/movie I want to watch. It automatically starts on the first one. Hawkeye shows some promise but it crashed on me several times and some features were not intuitive though I really like that you can add your own backdrop or rip it from the source dvd. I've read and searched all over and this is what I came up with.

Goal: combine multiple dvds onto one dvdr (e.g. burn fitness dvds to one - I use fitness dvds as an example because their chapters are essential to the next movement as in yoga OR the just my favorite shows from a shows volume set) with the ability to choose which "dvd/movie" I want to watch WITHOUT the dvd player automatically playing the first one.

Tools: DVD2ONEX and TOAST (with knowledge of the left side drawer which shows advanced options like burning an SVCD, etc.)

Method:
1. Know the location of your VIDEO_TS folders (if you have your movies as avis/mpegs, convert them to VIDEO_TS)
2. Using DVD2ONEX's "Join" feature, create a New Disc with as many VIDEO_TS folders as you want in the movie.
3. Select the size of your output dvd and give it some name you can recognize. I prefer 4472mb but whatever floats your boat.
4. Make sure you select the appropriate sound, language, and subtitles you want because you don't get the choose in the final product.
5. Create the NEW Disc as either image or file set. I prefer file set.
(Optional: test the New Disc Video_TS in DVDPlayer to make sure all the movies are on there that you want. You will have to use the Players Title selection or just fast forward through the chapters)
6. Open TOAST's Video Tab and choose "DVD-Video." Name the Video whatever you want at the top e.g. Yoga DVD, Best of DVD, etc. and choose a theme if you want. (And for the super fancy ones, create a new backdrop in Photoshop. Search other posts for the method.)
7. Using the VIDEO_TS folder you just created in DVD2ONEX, drag that VIDEO_TS FOLDER to Toast. It will tell you some files cannot be imported and that's ok. You are left with the original movies you processed in DVD2ONEX but you have to fix their names appropriately. NOTE: I do NOT choose "AUTO-PLAY WHEN INSERTED" nor Play Items Continuously.
8. Click on the movie's Edit button or double-click it to change the name. You can also drag the slider carefully to show the frame you want as the button. This is kind of hard to do and you can't always get it to show the name of the movie. Try your best.
9. OPTIONAL: Currently, the Toast dvd will burn a dvdr that when inserted will show a menu of the movies/episodes/workout on the dvd and it allows you to choose which one you want. IF you want further menu/chapter capability, prior to Burning, click on the picture of the MENU STYLE on the left side so that it pops ups Disc Settings window. Check "Include scene menus for video" and when you click on the movie button of your choice, it will not play but rather take you to a sub-menu letting you choose the movie chapter of your choice. If you do NOT want the sub-menu for chapter selection, you still get the very same chapters. Toast merely shows you what the chapters will be in the sub-menu.
10. Either Burn or hit Apple-D to burn as a disk image. Toast will zoom through this process without having to re-encode like a madman.
11. Check your new disc in DVDPlayer.

Advantages: One goal is to retain the original chapter markers because I do not like the way Toast chooses them automatically or even how you can set them when burning avi's at equal intervals. For some mysterious reason, Toast retains the chapter markers from the original VIDEO_TS folders burned in DVD2ONEX - this is a huge bonus. My other goal is to be able to choose which "dvd/episode/movie/workout" I want to watch from the beginning without having to select the Title button (yes, I'm that lazy when it comes down to actually watching PLUS it's also more impressive when others use the disc). This method is also pretty fast.

Good luck, I hope this helps some of you. If this is helpful, maybe one of the moderators could sticky or add this to the Guide section. I appreciate knowledgable feedback and fine-tuning tips. Just, please, don't post, "You can do this in X program" without showing how to do it and how it is faster/easier. Thanks.

[terryj]

while this is all fine in good, and YOU may hate DVDSP,
You could have cut about five steps out of your equation
if you take the time to learn a true DVD authoring program.

Step 1. Rip all DVDs you want as Movie only or Title Sets
using MTR.

Step 2. Demux the Ripped VOBs with MpegStreamclip,
fixing any time code breaks along the way.

Step 3. Import the Demuxed streams into DVDSP, set on
the timeline, and chapter them to your hearts desire.

Step 4. Setup a menu with appropriate chapter buttons
linking the files as necessary for menu usage.
A button here to jump to this Denise Richards workout,
A button here to jump to Carmen Electra's Stripper workout, etc.


Step 5. in DVDSP, Build the Resulting DVD, test in Apple's
DVD Player.
Fine tune if necessary.

Step 6. Drag and drop Video TS into Toast, burn.

Possible Step 6a. If the resulting build is higher than 4.37GB,
then have DVD2ONEX shrink the folder to appropriate size.
Then Drag and Drop that folder into Toast and Burn.

5 less steps, and it really is that easy.

Plus you get the advantage of setting your own chapter marks
and building a menu Pretty Darn Quickly in DVDSP is a snap,
you can use:

* Stills from anywhere in the timeline
* the still associated with your Chapter Mark
* Any other picture you can capture using Capture Me, etc.
for still extraction.
You can even add your own music/message to play in the background of the dvd.

If all you have is Toast, MTR and DVD2ONEX, your methods
will work. But if you have access to DVDSP, you should learn
to use DVDSP, and it can be quite fast once you get the hang of it.

[Frobozz]

When you use Toast 7's Media Browser to extract the MPEGs from your ripped DVDs, Toast retains the existing chapter markers. It only creates the 5-minute markers if none are present on the source MPEG.

What makes sense for me is for you to extract the MPEGs from the VIDEO_TS folders using the Toast Browser, set up the menu the way you want (including the option to a create a scene/chapter menu) and choose Save as Disc Image. Presuming this is a disc image that's too big for single-layer media, select it with the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window and let Toast's Fit-to-DVD feature do its work to requantize the content to fit the single-layer disc.

[Iceman67]

Frobozz, you are right about using the Media Browser. I realized that after the post that I could have done it that way as well.

terryj: thanks for imparting your wisdom. But you missed the point I belabored. I'm neither uneducated about DVDSP nor afraid to use it. Yes, its super flexible but also time consuming. My method took 44 mins on my G5 iMac to get the disk image. DVDSP has never produced a disk image for me in less than 2 hours. But hey, whatever floats your boat. Incidentally, the correct phrase is "all fine AND good." And I'm not trying to start a flame war. I'm only offering a method for something I've looked for in here and on the google. I've read other posts seeking a similar solution. If someone can build on mine to make it a perfect system, hey, more power to them.

Cheers,
Ice

[terryj]

terryj: thanks for imparting your wisdom. But you missed the point I belabored. I'm neither uneducated about DVDSP nor afraid to use it. Yes, its super flexible but also time consuming. My method took 44 mins on my G5 iMac to get the disk image. DVDSP has never produced a disk image for me in less than 2 hours.

2 hours? I'm sorry but are you talking about from build of the Video and Audio assets
to final build of video_ts /encode?
The only time I've had DVDSP take 2 hours to do ANYTHING is if
I didn't:

a. Have my Audio properly encoded through A.Pack to AC3, because I underestimated the
Audio's bitrate originally

b. Not have my (JPGS)slides in proper spec size (720x480) and I had to re-size them in Photoshop, after simulating a slideshow and seeing they weren't going to display right

c. Had a problematic m2v encode that didn't come out right, perhaps the original codec
used in an avi, for instance, was a weird Windows one, and somewhere in the stream
Compressor or ffmpegx choked and didn't finish the stream completely,
and I had to re-encode the stream.

In other words, If I didn't do what we refer to as the heavy lifting before hand,
then yes DVDSP3 can take a lot longer.
But the scenario I mentioned took me using three Workout DVDs,
"Denise Austin's 10 minute Walkabout", "Carmen Electra's Striptease 1 & 2",
from rip of vob's ( with no odd Protection [Arrcoss, Puppetlock]),
to build and burn (at 12x on Verbatim 16x media) took me a total of 37 minutes!

Granted it was only 01:42.00 mins of content, but it took me no where near 2 hours!!
the streams ripped fine, and upon demux, the audio was already AC3.
The heavy lifting was DONE.
All I had to do was build the chapter marks ( start, workout 1, workout 2, workout 3, finish),
set stills from the chapters as my buttons, slap a colored tiff from my library in the background,
slap an 18sec audio file as my music background, click build, and then drag and drop
into Toast 7 to burn. 37 minutes. No where NEAR two hours?
not knocking your skills, and I'm not Flaming here BUT You might want
to tighten up a bit or investigate what your doing
that might be causing you a slowdown? Downloading movies while trying to use DVDSP?
Playing online games while using DVDSP? Perhaps more Ram?

Any of these could be a suitable ....excuse....as to why DVDSP isn't working for
YOU in your ENVIRONMENT.
*shrugs*
BUT...
A dedicated DVDSP box with all the heavy lifiting
done ....man...takes no where NEAR 2 hours to build a DVD!!

if it did, the stink would reach back to Cupertino with all the users complaints!


In a six hour block, with all the heavy lifting done, I can get about 6 to 8 DVDs built,
and that's also taking time to read email, fix and eat lunch, a bathrooom break
here, go outside and check the mailbox there....maybe build a new audio intro in soundtrack there, a few new background jpgs here and there in Photoshop...... ...all on a Dual1MDDG4
with 2gb of ram...certainly slower than an iMac g5.... .....but one DVD in 2 hours?



I'm going to stop here.

But hey, whatever floats your boat. Incidentally, the correct phrase is "all fine AND good."

a simple mis-spelling mistake...since when did we care about Grammar here?
:P

And I'm not trying to start a flame war. I'm only offering a method for something I've looked for in here and on the google. I've read other posts seeking a similar solution. If someone can build on mine to make it a perfect system, hey, more power to them.

Cheers,
Ice

Hey,
Tomatoe/Tomato.

I just was posting back (originally) because of your statement:

PostPosted: Dec 28, 2006 10:31
I've looked and looked for ways to put multiple movies on one dvdr and still retain some menu/chapter functionality. YES, I know Toast can put several of them but you end up with Toast's automatic chaptering. And I didn't want to mess with Sizzle (always crashes on me), DVDSP, etc......Just, please, don't post, "You can do this in X program" without showing how to do it and how it is faster/easier. Thanks.

So, My post is to clear any MISCONCEPTION that this COULDN'T be done in DVDSP
Quick and Dirty. It can, and in WAAY less than 2 hours, with heavy lifting done, which in my steps I show how to get that done quickly, from the established content [original DVDs].
Not starting a flame war,
just adding to your post/expanding another POV. Tomatoe/Tomato.
Your method, using Toast, MTR, and DVD2ONEX, as I said if they are the ONLY
tools in your toolbox, are sound and valid.

[twosocks]

terryj...

just curious...

why do you use Toast to burn, when DVDSP can build then burn?

[willrob]

terry;

What's the truth?
Is it Denise Richards or Denise Austin?
Which compresses better? Do they squeal equally when compressed?
And do you really need TWO Carmen Electra workouts!?
And where in your six hours of disc making, eating lunch, reading e-mail, etc. do you actually do these workouts?
Oh, I know. They're for the kids, right. Because they're always destroying their discs.

[lawnman]

terry;

What's the truth?
Is it Denise Richards or Denise Austin?
Which compresses better? Do they squeal equally when compressed?
And do you really need TWO Carmen Electra workouts!?
And where in your six hours of disc making, eating lunch, reading e-mail, etc. do you actually do these workouts?
Oh, I know. They're for the kids, right. Because they're always destroying their discs.

[terryj]

terry;

What's the truth?
Is it Denise Richards or Denise Austin?
Which compresses better? Do they squeal equally when compressed?
And do you really need TWO Carmen Electra workouts!?
And where in your six hours of disc making, eating lunch, reading e-mail, etc. do you actually do these workouts?
Oh, I know. They're for the kids, right. Because they're always destroying their discs.

willrob,
your sense of humor floors me.



Socks:
Just work habit...Get all the work done
(the builds) then burn at your leisure in Toast.
DVDSP3 will stay in a linear mode of
build then burn on each project if you do so.
(one at a time)
But build all your projects first, then quit
DVDSP and burn them in Toast, it will go much faster.

My preferred method:
build in dvdsp, burn in toast and then build in
DVDSP while Toast burns.
makes things move faster.

[twosocks]

My preferred method:
build in dvdsp, burn in toast and then build in
DVDSP while Toast burns.
makes things move faster.

Makes perfect sense....thanks

[DavidCasillas]

Step 1. Rip all DVDs you want as Movie only or Title Sets
using MTR.

Step 2. Demux the Ripped VOBs with MpegStreamclip,
fixing any time code breaks along the way.

Step 3. Import the Demuxed streams into DVDSP, set on
the timeline, and chapter them to your hearts desire.

Step 4. Setup a menu with appropriate chapter buttons
linking the files as necessary for menu usage.
A button here to jump to this Denise Richards workout,
A button here to jump to Carmen Electra's Stripper workout, etc.


Step 5. in DVDSP, Build the Resulting DVD, test in Apple's
DVD Player.
Fine tune if necessary.

Step 6. Drag and drop Video TS into Toast, burn.

I have a DVD with randon chapters and would like to put my own chapters, but I don't have the original material, so I have to import it back.
I have MTR and MpegStreamClip, but don't have DVDSP, is there any way to get this with any other app? Is a big investment to get DVDSP just for this, since I can do my stuff with iMovieHD, iDVD08. I would like to avoid converting the DVD to DV to edit it in iMovieHD, but if there is no other way, will I degrade it in the reencoding proccess?

[pixel zombie]

i have yet to do a project where i changed the chapter markers, but you may want to look at dvdremaster and myDVDEdit