Sizzle vs. FFMPEGX SVCD>DVD Tool question

[Iceman67]

I've used both to make home movies when I got a DVD burner. Before I used VCD Builder and/or GNU VcdtoolsX 1.1. I liked how VCD Builder would allow the user to create a menu with pictures and put several mpegs into each separate title. I also liked how you could program essentially the buttons and features for use with a dvd player and remote.

With ffmpegx's svcd>dvd feature under the Tools tab, I normally get great results as far as speed in building and output. Con: No menu, no pictures, and you have to fast forward scene by scene to get to the one you want. Pros: automatic play from one scene to the next, takes pretty much any mpeg I throw at it.

With Sizzle, I can build a nice menu with pictures and some button creation. Con: Apple's DVD player can't figure out what the Resume Play button does, you can't play all the scenes one after the other automatically, you can't fastforward from one scene to the next consistently (on Apple's DVD player you have to go back to the menu and select the scene you want), Pros: you get a nice menu tool and background pictures, easy organization of the scenes.

Ideally, I'd like to build a DVD with several movies (eg. Thanksgiving, Christmas, baby's first steps, etc.) with a menu to allow me to go from event to event EVEN though each event will have several mpeg scenes (e.g. the turkey baking, the eating, the Cowboys game, etc). I would prefer to make this dvd without DVD Studio Pro, iDVD, or iMovie. I know Toast can do this but it takes days of processing time on my G3 Powerbook 400mhz.

I've done a lot of searches and read up on tutorials. Does anyone have an approach that accomplishes this? Thanks.

[Iceman67]

Given the lack of solutions, I have been experimenting myself. Here is the best solution to date:
1. Take all the scenes (mpeg1s) that are related, eg. Thanksgiving1.mpg, Thanksgiving2.mpg, etc, and put them in one folder.
2. Using ffmpegx's Tools' Tab, convert the VCD/SVCDs > DVD
3. Repeat this as necessary and remember where they are saved.
4. Using Toast, follow Frozbozz's instructions on Multiple VIDEO_TS folders by putting the VIDEO_TS folders into Toast's Video tab with DVD-Video selected.
5. Also check Create DVD Menu but probably not Auto-Play if you would rather start from the video. This creates a simple enough Menu with basic images for each VIDEO_TS folder you created (don't forget to rename each VIDEO_TS folder to something like Thankgiving, etc.).

I'm sure there is a more elegant way to do this. By the way, Toast multiplexes, muxes, encodes, etc at different speeds for different media. Mpeg1 is very fast. Mpeg2 is slooooow. Like 24 hrs slow. FYI

If anyone has any comments on this approach or an alternate solution, feel free to chime in.

Ice