Question on making own menus and logo intros

[ultraman36]

What software (hopefully freeware but any will do) if i want to take a movie and make my own custom menus and logos (moving intro)? Not just taking screen shots and making menus out of those but semi pro custom stuff

[waheed]

Dont know about menus (will need a DVD Authoring software for that), but for logo intros (including animated), you can try PGCEdit (freeware).

[guns1inger]

How does PGCEdit create intros ? It might let you add one to a disk you have already authored, but it doesn't help the original poster.

If you want Pro results, you need to play with Pro tools, which means money. There are a number of freeware tools that can produce good results with some effort on your part. I would start with looking at the following

Video tools
Wax2 - Free compositor and effects tools. Can do text and particle effects etc. A little clunky, but good for the price.
Winmorph - From the same stable as Wax2. Morphing software.
Virtualdubmod - can be handy to make quick edits and has a good range of filters for simple post work

Stills
Gimp - probably the best of the freeware still image editors, although personally I've never liked it. Does layers etc as well.
PhotoFiltre - simply but effective french (in English as well) editor. Find it as Snapfiles.com

Encoders
QuEnc, FreeEnc and HCenc are all available. Probably hand to have avisynth and FitCD lying around as well. At this point, HCenc seems to be emerging as the front-runner for quality.

Authoring
DVDAuthorGui and DVDAuthor - commandline authoring system based on xml (hence the need for the Gui). There are a couple of GUIs for it. Try them all to find one which suits you. Apparently it can do pretty much anything - still menus, motion menus etc.

With these tools you can create pretty good disks. They would be necessarily as easy to use or as intuative as the pro tools, and will take more effort on your part to master them for the best results. That said, look through some of the back posts and you will find that most of these do have quite devoted users so you can always get help.

If you want to spend a little, then things start to change.

Video Tools
You still need to have avisynth and virtualdub in your kit, regardless of what else you may use. Also, look at Vegas or Premiere at the higher end, or their respective entry level versions (studio and Elements)

Stills
If you have the budget, there is only one choice here - Photoshop. It has bloated somewhat over the past couple of releases, but it is still the king. If you have budgetry constraints, consider Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop Elements instead.

Encoders
CCE Basic - fast, high quality.
ProCoder Express - slower, but still high quality. Has strong format conversion capabilities as well.

Authoring
Tmpgenc DVD Author - strong entry level authoring tool.
DVD Lab - More complex and more capable in many respects, but limited to a single titleset.
DVD Lab Pro - multi-titlesets, multiple audio and subtitle tracks. Can do pretty much anything, but have your assets ready before you begin

There are many other tools to be considered aside from those mentioned - After Effects, Combustion, DVD Workshop, Encore. It mostly comes down to what you want to produce, how much effort you are prepared to put in and how much money you want to spend.

[thecoalman]

DVD Workshop works very well if you don't want to prepare the material before hand, it accepts nearly every common format across the type of files you'll be using for creating menus (still images, video, animations etc.). It's very versatile and also very easy to use, It's not cheap though.