DVD with chapters already I only want to make a menu while retaining all...

[dbbarney]

I have DVD vobs that I need to create a menu for. They are divided into 5 chapters with 20 or 30 sub chapters (or whatever you call them) and I don't want to lose them and have to recreate them again. I just want to create a menu for 5 chapters on the DVD. It seems like everything I read about shows that the DVD is encoded again during the process as if I am creating a DVD from separate files, and while the end result gives me a menu with 5 chapters that works beautifully, I lose all the 20 to 30 sub chapters for each of the 5 chapters. I just want to create a menu for files that are already divided.

[hech54]

Do you mean the DVD contains a TV series with 5 episodes, each episode has chapters?

[dbbarney]

Yes. That sums it up well. thx for any help.

[chowmein]

I'm "pretty sure" you can load the vobs into DVDAuthorGUI and it will retain the chapter marks. Sounds like you got 5 title-sets, each with 20-30 chapters. You need to confirm with liquid217 (here in the forums), he is the software developer (PM him!). You "should" be able to easily make a menu with 5 buttons that link to each titleset. DVDAuthorGUI is (IMO) the best (and easiest) free DVD authoring/menu-making application out there!

(IF DVDAuthor GUI doesn't retain the chapter marks, hmm, I'm not sure what other software will do this... Of course it can be done, but in a convoluted roundabout way...)

[manono]

If it's a DVD already with IFOs and BUPs along with the VOBs, you can easily extract the chapters (Chapter Grabber, ChapterXtractor, PGCEdit) and then load them up into something like DVDAuthorGUI or any other authoring program when creating menus after loading the VOBs. I don't believe I've seen anything in DVDAuthorGUI that allows for the use of chapters contained in VOBs alone. But I could be wrong about that.

[chowmein]

"Calling Liquid217, come in Liquid217!" bzz bzz

[liquid217]

I think Manono answered the question as well as I could, if not better. Chapters are stored in the IFO, so they would need to be extracted with a separate tool before reauthoring. I don't think I have ever used any of the 3 apps he mentioned above (at least, not for extracting chapters), but they should work just fine. Chapters need to be in the following format for DVDAuthorGUI: HH:MM:SS.SS