Looking for the ideal menu and chapter creator

[_Jason_]

Hi Everyone,

I have not seen anything like what i am looking for, but maybe someone else has. When you play a dvd in you stand alone player, it comes up with a nice menu eventually. Some of the menu options have circular buttons, some of them have text and when you scroll to it and press the button it plays etc. Does anyone know of any program that does menus like that? I just want to create some fancy menus and stuff.

Thanks.

[RadicalEd]

Erm.. are you talking about creating VCD and SVCD menus or DVD menus? As far as DVDs go I have no idea but I can give you a wealth of info about VCD menus.

The simple answer when dealing with VCD is no, you cannot create menus that highlight stuff when you select it. The biggest reason why this is impossible is because VCD dosent recognize the arrow keys on DVD remotes. Previous (<<), Next (>>), return, and default (play)(>) as well as the numerical selections 1-99 are the extent of buttons that VCDs can recognize using PBC. In addition, it is widely believed that VCDs cannot create rollover effects the same as DVDs do. To the extent of my knowledge they can't, but I'm doing some intense research about it and I have some theories. The full functionality of VCD xml is not really known, and there may be some tricks left undiscovered. Anyway I'm working on that. What you can do though is add numbers to your menus and use the numerical selections as an alternative.

Anyway I sure as heck hope you were asking about VCDs and not DVDs because if so then I just wasted a lot of writing and haven't helped you one bit

Otherwise, good luck! I like VCDEasy and TSCV for authoring menus, but go with what works for you. Laters

[_Jason_]

Yes i am referring to vcd and svcd, thanks for the reponse, now i know. I really thought it could be done using fancy menus, but oh well i guess i need to get a dvd burner when they get a lot cheaper.

Thanks again

_Jason_

[quote="RadicalEd"]
Erm.. are you talking about creating VCD and SVCD menus or DVD menus? As far as DVDs go I have no idea but I can give you a wealth of info about VCD menus.

[marsmayhem]

You can create menus for your VCD/SVCD presentations using an art program (eg. Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, The Gimp), and generate a menu still using VCDEasy, under the Tools|MPEG Still section. This menu MPEG can then be used in VCDEasy to provide a selection screen for the viewer - you'll link your clips to whatever buttons you choose to select in VCDEasy too.

Sadly, flashy stuff like animated buttons and highlights won't be available (not supported by VCD/SVCD).

For an upscale, user-friendly option, try Ulead's DVD Workshop. It has a trial version you can download and use. Comes with everything you need to make menus - templates, buttons, images, etc. You can author and burn in the same application. Not a bad program. I like the menu builder.

VideoPack 5 also has a menu screen editor, but it doesn't look or feel as friendly as DVD Workshop's. I'm still trying out VP5's features...