Low-cost VCD Menu Creation (w/ Motion & Music Background

[cvannest]

We're using ProCoder to create VCD-compatible MPEG1 files and are looking for a low-cost authoring program to create the menu front-end for the final VCDs. Here's what we're looking for:

(*) Low-cost (~$100),
(*) VCD creation,
(*) Motion menu creation,
(*) The ability to customize (e.g., layout) menu graphics and thumbnails,
(*) Background music on menus,
(*) MPEG1 file import without re-compression (so we can use our ProCoder output).

Does anyone know of a low-cost solution, like MyDVD version 4, that does all this? We're just looking for something that lets us create a customizable front-end/menu for VCDs right now; we'll move up to the regular DVD authoring later.

Thanks,
CV

[Betamax]

Hi,

VCDwizard is what you might need :

You must pre-create a 'fancy' mpeg, which you're gonna use for your menu (there are tools of Adobe (costs a lot!) that can do this, I don't know their name(s) to create the avi, then encode to mpeg and voila).

You totally control the PBC-creation in VCDwizard, so you could create a menu just as you want.
VCDwizard is free.

cu.

[cvannest]

Betamax, thanks for the tip on VCDWizard. I looked at the screenshots at http://www.labdv.com/vcdwizard/screenshots.php and it looks promising, so I'll check it out.

Meanwhile, I'm guessing from those shots that it doesn't automatically create thumbnails of the clips for you? Using Photoshop isn't a problem for me, but it would be a major time saver to have the thumbnails automatically generated vs. a manual export and resize routine everytime.

Thanks,
CV

[tjdmobile]

What? Nobody recommended the FREE utility "TSCV"? It does everything listed, and is free.

Uses the VCDimager engine, and can be found at http://www.tscv.org/download.htm

It is a very handy utility, but takes a little time to master the motion menu creation. It creates by far my fanciest VCDs, however I found that typically I just pop in a disk and play from start to finish, so I don't really need menus...

Good luck!

[cvannest]

Checked out their website and it looks promising-- but the download link is currently broken, with a note about fixing it/them soon.

BTW, I just tried creating a motion MPEG menu using DVStorm: 6 layers of Picture-in-Picture (for the video stills that represent menu choices), a bug layer, and two title layers all supered over a monochromed slow-mo video clip for the menu background. Whew, talk about labor intensive! I was looking into using this with VCDEasy in case I didn't find a turn-key soution, but at this rate time is money-- I hope TSCV gets their link working or I'll be looking at DVD Workshop or another commercial app.

Thanks,
CV

[vitualis]

If you really want full customability, you will want to use VCDImager and edit the XML script yourself. No GUI is as powerful.

You will need to create any stills and motion menus with other programs. For stills, I suggest you use VCD Easy. For motion menus, I suggest a real video editing program (e.g., Adobe Premiere -- it depends what your needs are).

TSCV made stills are not proper stills BTW and don't work on some players.

http://www.vcdimager.org
http://www.vcdimager.org/guides

Authoring VCDs isn't something you can master without some significant learning but the freeware tools available are definitely more powerful and customisable than any commercial solution.

If you are unwilling to learn, there are some good/easy to use commercial solutions, but being commercial solutions, they are definitely outside of your $100 price range. Nevertheless, you should have a look at VideoPack5 if you want to use a commercial program.

BTW, I don't know anything about "ProCoder" but it is widely acknowledged that the highest quality MPEG-1 encoders at VCD bitrates are TMPGEnc and Panasonic MPEG encoder. TMPGEnc is free while Panasonic is commercial (but cheap).

Regards.

[cvannest]

Authoring VCDs isn't something you can master without some significant learning but the freeware tools available are definitely more powerful and customisable than any commercial solution.

I just finished making that motion menu with DVStorm (+ Premiere 6) and VCDEasy, and I was really impressed with the power and customizability of the VCDEasy and supporting tools package. Much more control than I was able to do, or at least figure out, with Ulead's DVD Workshop. I didn't even realize the VCD standard had so many options until I checked out some of VCDEasy's controls.

BTW, I didn't mean to diss the use of free software-- these tools are really amazing and equally amazing is that they're available at all. Kudos to those producing them and making them available for us. I was actually thinking that I'd really like to use one of these (VCDEasy so far, but I'll check into VCDImager, too) because they offer so much control and produce great results. But my main goal was to create a motion menu with thumbnails-- that was easy to do except creating the thumbnails was a real time-taker using a ton of layers in Premiere (I use Premiere 6 w/ the DVStorm card). I'm sure it would get easier with more pracice, and I'd probably develop a shorcut routine to bang them out.

I'll keep investigating; right now I'm thinking about also looking into Sonic's MyDVD and Pinnacle's Studio 8, although I don't know if they'll allow me to import my already-created MPEG1 files without re-rendering. I'll also keep checking out the tools here and see if I can streamline the Premiere/thumbnail process with VCDEasy and/or VCDImager.

Thanks,
CV

[Betamax]

Betamax, thanks for the tip on VCDWizard. I looked at the screenshots at http://www.labdv.com/vcdwizard/screenshots.php and it looks promising, so I'll check it out.

CV,
Fyi, VCDwizard also can create STILL's (and also to you Vitualis) I can garantee that the STILL's of VCDwizard are compliant.
I used the sources of MPG2Enc (linux group) as they clame the still's are 100% compliant with VCDimager.

StillCreation via VCDwizard is possible starting from rel. 2.5.1.0 (and up).

[cvannest]

Any idea why some would think that VCDWizard stills aren't compliant?

Also, does this reference about non-compliance hold for menus as well, or just stills/slide-shows?

Thanks,
CV

[Betamax]

With 'compliance' I mean :
In the STILL's, generated by the 'mjpgTools'-library (used in VCDwizard - 'mjpgTools' is another project of mine) there is a special 'section' of bits that are preserved for VCDimager.
VCDimager will fill these bits/bytes with its own code when a cue/bin is generated.

Creating 'non-compliant' STILL's is also possible and I don't see the difference between these and the one's created with VCDwizard. But apparently 'it is'.
In the past, I created STILL's using a complex process via TMPGenc. These are not compliant STILL's although they will be accepted by VCDimager as STILL's. The difference was in the file size.
The file size of PAL-MPEG-1 Still's (created by VCDwizard) is approximaly 217KB, but when created by TMPGenc it's only about 87KB...

cu.
---
BTW. Release 2.5.2.0 of VCDwizard has been released and is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcdwizard/

[vitualis]

In the past, I created STILL's using a complex process via TMPGenc. These are not compliant STILL's although they will be accepted by VCDimager as STILL's. The difference was in the file size.
The file size of PAL-MPEG-1 Still's (created by VCDwizard) is approximaly 217KB, but when created by TMPGenc it's only about 87KB...

There is more difference that that. The TMPGEnc method (if we are still talking about the same thing) was nothing more than hacking a few headers on a single frame MPEG. VCDImager accepts them because it just looks at the headers -- but that doesn't mean that they will work... and they didn't on some players.

BTW, I don't believe I ever mentioned or impudated that VCDWizard generated stills weren't compliant...

Regards.

[Betamax]

There is more difference that that. The TMPGEnc method (if we are still talking about the same thing) was nothing more than hacking a few headers on a single frame MPEG. VCDImager accepts them because it just looks at the headers -- but that doesn't mean that they will work... and they didn't on some players.

We're talking about the same thing..

BTW, I don't believe I ever mentioned or impudated that VCDWizard generated stills weren't compliant...

Sorry, didn't want to be unpolite , I just taught you mentioned about some stuff being compliant and others not.

Regards.