How to author a DVD with menus and chapters using DVDit

[Baldrick]

Tools: Sonic DVDit - free demo of DVDit SE, click on DVDIt Test Drive to get it

Sonic DVDit SE only supports PCM Audio(uncompressed audio), it means that you can not store as much video on a DVD if you used compressed audio such as Dolby Digital. PCM Audio is about 10 MB/minute and DD about 1-4 MB/minute depending what compression factor you use.
Sonic DVDit PE supports Dolby Digital and PCM Audio.

You can import AVI or MPEG2 video, if you import AVI DVDit will encode it for you and if you add MPEG2 within the DVD standard DVDit won't reencode so you can use TMPGenc or CCE to encode the video first to get best quality. Sonic DVDit SE will automatically convert all audio to PCM.


THE GUIDE

Launch DVDit
Select New Project


Select NTSC(if your source video is on NTSC) or PAL(source video in PAL)
Select MPEG2



MENUS
We start with the menu, I will create a simple menu with 2 sub menus.
To the left you have the Theme background, you can also add your own backgrounds - just right click in the window and select add from file.
Drag the background to the first menu and drag more background to create more menus.



BUTTONS AND TEXT
Click on the buttons button at the bottom and just drag the button to the preview window.
Do the same for the text, click on the T button and drag the text to the preview and double click on the text to change it. To change colors select Effects->Adjust text in the menu.




ADDING MOVIES
1. Select Movies and click on the files tab(the button to the most right).
2. Right click in the Theme window to import your videoclips, you can import AVI or MPEG2. (Note that AVI movies will be encoded to MPEG2 DVD Standard)
Drag the new video to Movie 1.
If you have more videoclips just add them also.
To make the video the default play when you insert the DVD drag the Video 1 to First Play.



CHAPTERS
1. Click on Menus to get back to the menu screen.
2. Click on the menu where you want the chapters menu.
3. Select the Movie 1 at the left corner.
4. Just double click where you want the first chapter and drag the chapter into the preview window.
5. And contine add chapters until you are done.
6. You can also add text to the chapter preview pictures, click on the T and drag the text as you did when added menu text.




SIMPLE PHOTO ALBUM
To make a simple "photo album".
1. Select the main menu where you want to add links album images.
2. Click on the files tab.
3. Right click to add images, jpg,bmp...and drag the images to the preview window.



To modify the playtime for each image right click on it and change the playtime.
Under remote mapping you can modify which order they should play in, set the Next button to the next image and also the End action to the next image and it will play them all automatically if you dont hit next.




LINKING
And last the linking so the buttons links to correct submenu or video.
Select the main menu.
Select Movie 1 and drag Chapter 1 to PLAY, you should hear a sound if you linked correct.
Drag the Menu 2 to the Chapters button.
Drag the Menu 3 to the Photo Album button.
Remember also to add Main Menu buttons to all submenus and link them to the main menu.
If you have several Movieclips and want them to play seamlisy after each other you doubleclick on them under the Movies tab and select the play order as you did with the photo album images here.




SIMULATE AND BURNING
Before burning click on the play button too simulate the DVD and see that everything works.




Select Build DVD Folder (you could also directly burn to your DVDR if it is supported)
Select where to save it




Done. Now you can simulate again with WinDVD, just copy/move the VIDEO_TS to any partition root and select that partition as default DVD in WinDVD.

To burn the DVD Folder, use DVDit's own burning tool or launch any other DVD burning only tool.

[martin]

my dvdit wont seem to work every way i encode useing tmpeg it wont use it i also tried pruceup that wont load file in pruceup only gets file god what am i doing

[teddy107]

It works. SWEET!!!!. I use generic mertiline.com DVD-R, DVDit SE and Pioneer DVR-104 and played in my both Apex 703 and PS2. My first very nice DVD movie. :P But my Primo ( parassi) won't work when I directly try to copy from original DVD. It says " initial movie size larger than acceptable size" .Jezzzz. Original DVD use 7G disc or something but only 2.7G of data in it but my primo 2.0 flagged me for not enough space. Wish I have raw data copy capabilities. If anyone try and success with Priom( prassi) please drop infos. thanks

[PATBOY]

i'm trying to use DVDIT P.E 2.5 to make some svcd on a dvd.. I do my menu and stuff the movie is svcd standart 480*480 etc.. when I burn the svcd once im done doing the menu, it says burn succesfully but when I play it on my dvd player I see half of the movie... it is not properlly centered on the tv... it is like the movie is too much on the left so I see half of it... is there a way to fix that???



Hope someone can help..

[jarhead862]

First of all, dvdit seems like a sweet program. But i have one quesion about the chapters. Like with ulead, are these chapters only selectable from the menu and not by hitting the "skip forward button on the dvd remote"????

-thanks
-jarhead862

[Baldrick]

these are real chapters so you can use the next or back buttons.

[andybno1]

sorry if this sounds like a dumb question but to make chappters like in the guide do I have to chop the movie up into smaller mpg fils?

[Baldrick]

no chopping.

[andybno1]

how do the chaters work? does it read the file and every so often makes a chapter?

[jmuma]

You specify where you want the chapter points. You can basically put a chapter point where ever you want.

[jarhead862]

what about the chapter selection menu screens. Can you use a template, because it will probably look sloppy if you have to manually drag them in and align by eyeball. Is there any way to align them?? (the thumbnails and text)
-thanks

jarhead862

[andybno1]

anyone got a direct link to dvdit se?? I have been on the site and can only see buy now links.

[SteveDVD]

Very well done guide Baldrick....

[jarhead862]

Baldrick:
great guide
but 1 question

I wanna import my own image to use as a button. But i definitely want it to have a transparent background. I use Microsoft photo draw and i set the background to transparent and tried importing it into dvdit in different formats and with different settings, but dvdit would also give the picture a white, square background. How can i put in my own picture for a button with a transparent background???

Help would be greatly appreciated
-thanks jarhead862

[SephirothEX]

I was trying to create a DVD Folder using DVDIt PE using the DVD-VCD method. I have a bunch of VCD files, and I demultiplexed them and placed the sequence header b4 every GOP as DVDIt is a b!&% about that kind of stuff. As I was authoring the disc, everything went fine until halfway through when an unknown error window popped up. I know this question is kind of out there. Any suggestions?

[harpoon]

Hi all,

First off, great guide; I made my first 'test' miniDVD without any problems.

I have DVDit PE 2.5, and wanted to know how to include ac3 audio. I have created a separate ac3 file (I also have the same file in a dolby digital .wav version) with all separate channels. Now, do I have to mux it with the mpeg2 file somehow before importing into DVDit or is there a way to do it after?

If I am to do it before, what prog should I use. (I have used TMPGEnc and BeSweet in the past, but they seem to convert the ac3 file into stereo which is just static and comes up as such even when playing on the DVD player). If there is a way to do it in DVDit, I'd like to know. I did go into audio settings and checked convert audio to dolby digital but from the manual, it seemed like this would just be normal stereo converted to ac3 (In other words, ac3 downsampled to stereo I think). Any help would be appreciated.

Anyone?

Thanks in advance!

[jmarkoa]

I totally do not undrestand this authoring thing. I don't want any menus or chapters in my movie. I just have an MPEG file that is 4.0GB that I want to turn into a VIDEO_TS file to burn to my DVD+R so I can play it in my standalone player.

Is this possible? Anyone know how or where there is a guide specific to this Problem? I've been searching for weeks!

[localfinesse]

I totally do not undrestand this authoring thing. I don't want any menus or chapters in my movie. I just have an MPEG file that is 4.0GB that I want to turn into a VIDEO_TS file to burn to my DVD+R so I can play it in my standalone player.

Is this possible? Anyone know how or where there is a guide specific to this Problem? I've been searching for weeks!

Same here. All I want is the movie and nothing else.

I tried to do the tutorial with out any chapters. When I played the dvd it dvdit the sound was way off from the movie. What is that?

Thanks

[jmarkoa]

Localfinesse,
I have since seen the light!! Go to the section in this forum called "DVD ripping to DVD-R" and look for the topic called "Ripping streams with Smartripper". You've GOT to read my little guide, I think it might really help!

[pod4477]

why does dvd it always say there is a empty menu that cant be made? I followed the instructions right because i used to be able to make dvds fine.

[staniks]

how did you place images for the chapters?

did you have to capture a screen for each chapter and then import them like a normal image?

there has to be an easier way. doing screen captures for each chapter would be a pain.

great guide

[Baldrick]

DVDit creates the chapter screenshots automatically when you drag the chapter to the menu.

[Stitch]

Hi, i am new at making my own dvds.
i followed the tutorial on this site but when i went to encode the dvd, it came up with an error:

"Each GOP header must be preceded by a sequence header"

Can any1 help?

[joe444455555]

QUOTE QUOTE QUOTE QUOTE QUOTE QUOTE QUOTE QUOTE QUOTE
Hi, i am new at making my own dvds.
i followed the tutorial on this site but when i went to encode the dvd, it came up with an error:

"Each GOP header must be preceded by a sequence header"

Can any1 help?
END QUOTE END QUOTE END QUOTE END QUOTE END QUOTE END QUOTE

Yeah, me 2, same problem here.

[DVDFan99]

I got the same error: "Each GOP header must be preceded by a sequence header"
I searched around and ended up at: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/4559
But I really don't have any idea what he was talking about. I went to TMPGEnc and changed the "clip frame" by reducing all edges by 5, but it didn't help; I then changed the GOP structure "Output interval of sequence header" (without changing "Force Picture Type Setting") from 0 and then 1, but it still didn't help. I even cut the first 3 frames off from the "Source range" but the problem was still there.
Any suggestion will be appreciated.

[CiCi4]

ATTN Stitch, joe444455555, and DVDFan99:

I've come across the same error messages before as well. I'm not sure what's causing the GOP Header error, but the only way I got around it was to upgrade to version 2.5 and all the errors went away. Hope this helps.

[burned_once]

To the user with the question about how to select thumbnails for your menu:

First, dragging a movie from the palette at the right onto the menu automatically creates a thumbnail button linked to the start of that movie.

Left-click the thumbnail button on your menu, to select it. It washes out a little, to let you know it's been selected. Use the slider at the bottom of the window to move to the frame you want. It helps if you click on the "mountains" icon down there a few times, to zoom in on the timeline. Zoom enough, and you'll see the yellow tab that points to the current thumbnail frame. Dragging that tab changes the thumbnail frame.

Question for Baldric: I tried linking a chapter to multiple buttons, by dragging the movie there. It filled up my disk, leading me to conclude that it had put two copies of the movie onto the disk. Was I mistaken?

And how did you manage to create chapters without linking menu buttons to them? I'd love to break up my longer movies into chapters, but there are way too many menu buttons already.

Thanks,
Burned_Once

[DVDFan99]

Thanks CiCi4, I saw your messages at:
http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=344940&highlight=gop+header#344940

Like you, I upgraded to version 2.5 and it works fine.

To save time and be able to put some more video clips on the DVD-R, I will try Ulead DVD Workshop to see if there is any different (faster? use less space due to its acception of ac3 audio? animation menu?...). If you guys know any differences, please shareeeee

BTW, DVDit PE version 2.5 seems to crash more often.
I am using a sony 2.0 GHz 512MB PC with an ATI All-in-Wonder 8500 128MB video card.

[NeoRowen13]

When ever I try to "compile" my DVDit project the whole thing gets as far as Multiplexing (3hrs into the process) and then dies. It just says "Cannot continue due to unknown error."

Any ideas on how to fix this?

[ifilmmaker]

I think I follwoed all the steps to build the DVD. But when I try to click on the play button that I created, I get the message deco5 UNABLE TO BUILD GRAPH. And then it won't play.