How do I author like this?

[vulcan4d]

Hey guys I need some help. A friend of mine captures TV shows and burns them on CD's so he can watch them again. For each show he has all the menus, scene selectins and so on you normally would find on a DVD, although he makes SVCDs. To be more specific the SVCD starts with a menu with several options. It's like Play Episode, watch trailer, view credits, cast bios, scene selection and even some music from the shows, it's really quite professional. Everything is so well organized, you got text, pictures on like every page. Now I asked him how he has done it, but he ain't revealing his secret. Now I tried probably every authoring demo on the net, nothing is able to make the menu look so good as his.

So I managed to borrow a couple CD's he had burned, told him I just wanted to watch those episodes. Well the truth is, I wanted to find out how he has done it. I browsed the files on the CD, and found his menus to be nothing more than high quality pictures . He probably uses photoshop, very well though, to add all the pictures, text and yes even the selection options. So on each of the menu pages it's just one giant picture, music in the background, and something to track which option you have selected. Now I'm closer to understanding his ways, but I'm not there yet.

In each of the authoring programs it's very easy to put in a picture, so that's one thing out of the way. Music is aslo very easily added, and so is a seperate video track (trailer). Now what I don't understand is how he got this selections to work. In the menus you hit # 1, 2, 3 etc, each number corresponds to a selection. Now linking a specific remote number button is pretty easy in most authoring programs, although I havn't tested it but I seen the options, but how do you link a spefic number to a scene in some part of the video? None of the authoring programs I have tired had the ability, not sure though . Remember all the scene selections are nothing more than 1 giant picture, so how do you link a number button to make it play at a particular time in the video?

I'm sure you guys have A LOT more experience with authoring SVCD's, DVD's or whatever so would you mind pushing me in the right direction? Which authoring software would you recommend in doing the above? Any other tips would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[Mirror_Image]

Try those "How to" links over to the left.

[vitualis]

All those things mentioned above can be easily done with VCDImager: http://www.vcdimager.org

Have a look at the demo disc on the site to see what can be achieved.

For some authoring guides and tips: http://www.vcdimager.org/guides

Regards.

[droopy928gts]

For what its worth.

VCDImager is the best indeed. TSCV is what seems to be a very good GUI to be used in combination with it.

http://www.ttool.de/indexe.htm

I normally don't use it but from what I've seen with others it has loads of good features.

Good luck, Leon