VCD menu/chapters for television shows

[Sawbones]

I've been working with putting some captured television shows to VCDs lately and wondered a couple of things about menus that don't seem to be answered anywhere else in the forum. Fitting about 3 episodes (half hour shows) per CD is no problem and the default setup with VCDEasy is to have each show be a chapter - skipping through the shows using either the number keys or the pervious/next buttons. However I thought it would be nice to have chapter points at every point in the show where a commercial break had been, so each episode would be broken up into usually 2-3 chapters. Skipping between episodes can still be done with the number keys, but previous/next would skip around at commercial break points.

My question is has anyone done this approach before? Is it common? if so, what application do you use to get the timing offsets in the episodes to establish the chapters. If this seems like a collosally bad idea please let me know

[KSJ]

I've been working with putting some captured television shows to VCDs lately and wondered a couple of things about menus that don't seem to be answered anywhere else in the forum. Fitting about 3 episodes (half hour shows) per CD is no problem and the default setup with VCDEasy is to have each show be a chapter - skipping through the shows using either the number keys or the pervious/next buttons. However I thought it would be nice to have chapter points at every point in the show where a commercial break had been, so each episode would be broken up into usually 2-3 chapters. Skipping between episodes can still be done with the number keys, but previous/next would skip around at commercial break points.

My question is has anyone done this approach before? Is it common? if so, what application do you use to get the timing offsets in the episodes to establish the chapters. If this seems like a collosally bad idea please let me know

This can be done, has been done, and isn't really that hard to do. You have a number of options in VCDEasy.

The first is to save each Act of each episode as a separate MPG. This is what I do when capturing hour-long shows, to avoid it getting out of sync. Then just check to make sure they'll play and advance from one episode to another in the correct order in VCD Easy.

Or, you can write down the time stamp of each commercial break and in the Chapters tab of VCD Easy, schedule a chapter at that time. Again, double check in the tab after the Chapters tab (I don't remember what its name is) that the segments all play in the right order and that at the end of one episode, you go to the next episode rather than jumping back to the menu (Unless you want to jump back to the menu--it's what DVDs do. I just personally would prefer DVDs would advance straight to the next episode.)

KSJ

[Sawbones]

I hadn't thought of anything so simple as just chopping up the episodes into many MPEG files thanks, that should work just fine.

I was trying to just record the timestamps, but my mpeg player (windows media player) isn't exact enough, 1 second isn't quite close enough for that kind of cut. This will be much easier.

[KSJ]

I hadn't thought of anything so simple as just chopping up the episodes into many MPEG files thanks, that should work just fine.

I was trying to just record the timestamps, but my mpeg player (windows media player) isn't exact enough, 1 second isn't quite close enough for that kind of cut. This will be much easier.

Try opening it up in VirtualDub. You don't have to save it, but if you open it and step forward and back, it will give you the time-stamp of the frame you're on to the thousandth of a second, I believe (or it will give you the frame number, which I believe you can use as well in VCDEasy). I will also allow you to put a frame on your clipboard as a still for menus, so you can just paste it into Paint and save it as a bitmap for use later when designing menus.

KSJ

[geek rock]

don't forget, if you chop up the mpeg files you have into smaller ones, there will be a tiny pause between files as your DVD player changes to read the next mpeg track, even if you set the delay between tracks to 0.

what I'd do is use virtualdub as said below.. or try this, i posted this in reply to someone in another thread..

what i do is, load up tmpgenc, go to mpeg tools, merge and cut..

then select the mpeg you want, click the "edit" button, and play the mpeg. you can use the features in there to display the times where you want to change chapters.

i found each point i wanted to make a chapter at, then typed it out in notepad. once you've got the list in notepad you can just copy it and then paste it into vcdeasy.

Mark