Creating a DVD with Menus and switchable subtitles on Mac OS X

[koke_broke]

Hi there, this is my first post so please be gentle

I have a couple of AVI's each of which has it's accompanying subtitle in *.srt format. I would like to create a DVD so that when I play it in my standalone DVD player I can select which AVI to play, and then to be able to choose if I want subtitles or not.

I tried using iDVD for this and it works great BUT I can't add subtitles. Can you please help me?

[terryj]

This is only possible in DVD Studio Pro.
Author a disc where you have the avis on seperate tracks,
and the subtitles are on their own tracks.

Once burned the disc will be able to select which track (avi) to play,
and if you want to turn on or off subtitles with the selected track.

With iDVD, the only thing you'll be able to do is play the avis
with the subtitles burned in, iDVD, when last I looked, doesn't
allow for track authoring, only asset based authoring,
meaning you drag the assets in, author and burn to disc.

[ffooky]

For a single movie it's perfectly possible with ffmpegx. If you want to put multiple films on a single disc then you could try encoding each AVI to DVD spec with ffmpegX, VisualHub or whatever you have available and then use them along with their SRT files with MovieGate.

Quite a lot of fiddling around, trial and error etc but a bloody hell of a lot cheaper than DVD Studio Pro.

[terryj]

Quite a lot of fiddling around, trial and error etc but a bloody hell of a lot cheaper than DVD Studio Pro.

How much fiddling around.....?
I can get this type of project done in DVDSP in less than 5 mins ( setup)
and then burn time to disc.

It depends on how much your time is worth to you? *shrugs*

[ffooky]

Well assuming I didn't have DVD Studio Pro and didn't/couldn't get it the same way I got my avi & srt (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more) my time wouldn't be worth £831

[terryj]

actually since the ability to do this type of setup
has been around since DVD Studio Pro 2,
you could buy a legit copy for as little as
$39.00! or bundled with the whole studio
for around $125.

You got to love the weak american dollar.......
that should be worth closer to what you value your time ffooky....

[ffooky]

Well I couldn't believe the price (for the whole Final Cut suite) but I can't see DVDSP available on its own on Apple's UK site.

I'm all too familiar with Apple's upselling approach...which is frankly subtle sodomy...but not making it seem possible to buy the product on its own surprises me even for them.

Yep, $39 is more my going rate...I'll even bring my own sandwiches.

[terryj]

Well I couldn't believe the price (for the whole Final Cut suite) but I can't see DVDSP available on its own on Apple's UK site.

I'm all too familiar with Apple's upselling approach...which is frankly subtle sodomy...but not making it seem possible to buy the product on its own surprises me even for them.

Yep, $39 is more my going rate...I'll even bring my own sandwiches.

Apple stop selling the programs separate long ago, my links are actually
to eBay, where you can find much better deals on ( older and some new)
software.
Other such places are VARS who specialize in older machines / software,
academic software vendors, and catalog wholesalers.