How to add a DVD menu to .vob files (AC-3 audio)?

[space_monkey]

I'm doing this for a friend who has made his own 20 minute short film, we're trying to make a DVD from it that looks somewhat professional. A simple root menu with two options (PLAY MOVIE and CHAPTER SELECTION), and then all the chapters (13) displayed on one screen as a list of a few words that describe each chapter. Motion menus would be nice but not required.

I have 20 minutes of DVD video that is 1.5 GB (broken up into two .vob files), it seems to have AC3 audio.

My friend sent the physical film to a lab that transferred the movie onto a DVD. He was quite dissapointed at first because the DVD authored by the guy at the lab wouldn't play on my friend's standalone DVD player. (no menus, feature film only) So he sent it back since he paid a lot of money to have the DVD made, and the guy sent back a second DVD which didn't work either. So my friend brought both DVDs to me, and we found that both DVDs played on my standalone DVD player (Apex 1500) and my computer. However on the computer monitor there was a noticable amount of junk (black boxes that come and go, crooked edges of the film) at the top and bottom of the screen that aren't visible on a TV using a standalone DVD player. My friend called the lab to ask about that and the guy said that the computer shows a different resolution than the TV, so this junk visible on the computer is "normal". Since all the frames seem to have this junk on the screen, I don't think it would have been difficult to crop the same amount from the top and bottom of each frame, that is of course if one wanted to do a good job about it. [/rant]

So in order to get MPEG-2 files I suppose I have to encode them from the .vob files, which seems silly to me because Encore will then re-encode back to .vob anyway to compile the DVD. (Won't this introduce artifacts?) The film quality is pretty crappy anyway (grainy and it's in black and white), so there probably won't be a noticable difference, but common sense tells me to minimize the handling/manipulation of the data. IF somebody with experience could point to a guide or suggest the best software to get MPEG-2 files from .vob it would be much appreciated.

I have read everything I can find here and at doom9, but as you can see below I have yet to find a working solution.

I spent hours getting the menus to look just how I wanted using DVD Lab 1.3beta, but when I compiled the DVD, the buttons don't do anything, even though I think I connected them properly. Other weird things were happening such as when you select an item, the highlighted text shows up somewhere else on the screen, even though everything was working properly in the preview mode. I "compiled" the DVD, which basically writes another 1.5GB of .vob files that this time include the menu data to whatever output directory you want, and I opened the VIDEO_TS.IFO file in WinDVD. It didn't work properly, and since my friend wants to give this out to friends and potential employers he wants it to look professional and so it has to work in both standalone players and on a computer. I didn't bother burning to a DVD, but it is possible that it would have worked properly in a standalone player, but that's just not good enough.

So then I tried out TMPGEnc DVD Author, this worked perfectly and even makes motion menus fairly easily, but it restricts you to use certain menu templates, none of which looked the way I wanted them to.

So then I tried Adobe Encore DVD, this seems to be really powerful software that is integrated with Photoshop/Premiere/Aftereffects, but it wouldn't take my .vob files, so I'll have to convert the .vob files to .mpv format first I think. Can anyone suggest an easy way to do this? Some people in other threads have suggested simply renaming the .vob to .mpg and then Encore should be able to use the files.

Lastly I tried Ulead DVD Movie Factory, this accepted the .vob files but popped up an error message saying it doesn't support AC3 audio. Is there an easy way to convert the audio stream to something else that will work with this software???

At this point my best guess as to the most efficient strategy would be to demux the video and audio streams, convert the audio to some other simpler format that Ulead DVD Movie Factory can handle, and author the DVD menus using that software. At the same time I'll probably try some noise reduction on the audio track or maybe remux the original audio track from CD instead. It's strange that the lab my friend sent his film to would do such a poor job, I doubt that they will get many repeat customers judging from the quality of their work.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[dlb]

TMPEGenc DVD author does have a edit function on the menu.
Background images files can be used as can small video clips.

I find this is a great piece of software, especially the file clipping. Chapter points are so easy to insert. Individual vob files or the whole dvd video can be inserted without the need to convert to mpeg.

I have done a 48 chapter (4hour) dvd of the first year of my twins and the result is great using it.

Have tried Adobe Encore and Dvd Architect but TMPG is my favourite.

dlb.

[daamon]

Hi,

I know youu say you felt restricted by TMPGEnc DVD Author, but this link might be of interest:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=191115&highlight=

It also contains some other stuff (on tools) that might be of use.

Hope this helps...

[FOO]

If you want to take your Vobs apart to make the Authoring programs happy:

Vobedit will demux the video and audio to separate files.
you can then remux them to a MPEG2 file with AC3 audio if you want

DVD2AVI will extract and convert the audio to a WAV which can
be converted to MP2 audio with TMPGenc. This will tend to
work better in DVDLab.