MAKING MENUS WITH SOUND IN THE BACKGROUND

[AK349]

can u make menus on vcds,svcd or dvd with sound or music in the background. If so how, can nero do it.?

[cvannest]

Some programs, like VCDEasy and DVDWorkshop (and probably lots of others), can do this for you. However, I haven't seen how to do it with Nero 5.5.9.0-- I sure wish it could, as that's our current favorite and it would make things much simpler.

-CV

[Big_Jit]

Hey cvannest how do you do this with VCDEasy?...

[cvannest]

There's a pretty good tutorial at http://forum.vcdhelp.com/userguides/104503.php (or just view the "HOW TO... AUTHOR" to the left).

The gist of it is that you have to take a still image and some tunes and create a seperate MPEG1 file for your menu (I used Premiere for this), then set that file to be the first played and play forever. That way, someone starting your VCD sees that MPEG first, but since it plays forever the MPEG's music just keeps looping. While you're at it, you can also use the opportunity to create a motion background by using some not-to-bright video instead of a still.

Works suprisingly well, but I'm still using Nero until I figure out how to streamline the thumbnail creation process in VCDEasy-- being automatic, Nero still does that faster. If you don't need thumbnails or don't mind creating them by hand, VCDEasy is slick.

-CV

[vitualis]

Menus with music in background (two methods):

1. Create a video clip and loop (obviously you can have more than music -- you can have animation as well). Disadvantage is reduced resolution which can have an impact on text on a menu.

2. High resolution still + audio only segment-item: http://www.geocities.com/mikk999/StillsWithAudio.htm Disadvantage is that not all VCD/DVD players can handle audio only segment-items.

2 and a half. Some VCD authoring programs create an MPEG file where they multiplex an mpeg still image with the audio. This is "2 1/2" point because it is not compliant and again don't work in some/many VCD/DVD players.

Regards.