(advanced) menu authoring. Help on program choice !

[Discipulus]

I want to make a qood looking menu.
-intro movie (4 seconds)
-menu
-3 episodes

I want to put all my Trigun episodes on VCD. I already have the episodes converted, made the intro and menu still.
Now what I want is that when you play the disc, you get the intrro, then the menu, there you'll have the choice of selecting 3 episodes by clicking the thumbnails. I want little playing clips like you can do in Nero, but I want to place them where I want them on the screen and instead of just playing the clip itself, I have made little 5 to 6 second lasting clips that I want to be reapeatedly played as thumbnails.
I also want that when I have the cursor on one of the thumbnails, on the bottom of the screen, some text appears saying the episode number and title.

Now I've tried VCDeasy and Nero, but both don't seem able to do this.
I've also tried TSCV and VCDImager, but I find the guides are completely targetted onto chapters, not seporate clips >.<

I'd prefer not having to learn xml, but if there's no other chance, I'll guess I'll do it.

So, have any ideahs ?
BTW, sorry for my crappy english >.<

[sterno]

Compositing your thumbnails together in to a single video clip to use for a menu can probably be done reasonably well in avisynth. If you put the menu in to the same MPEG as your intro (to get that smooth flow) you'll probably want to make it loop by having the clip time out to an entrypoint (chapter) at the start of the menu portion. If you make them two different MPEGs the menu clip can just timeout to itself.

The menu you describe is pretty much beyond the capability of VideoCD. Normally, VideoCD menus require numeric selection, no cursors or hilighting or anything like that. However, the CD-i support for VCD does allow for specifying "hotspots" on the screen to select an item. Supposedly some computer DVD players recognize the CD-i stuff and let you click the hotspots with the mouse, but they probably won't work on a set-top DVD player. Hotspots are also not nearly as fancy as DVD menus (which could do what you describe), there is no way to get that kind of functionality on a VCD.

I think that vcdimager can author CD-i hotspots, but you probably will have to add the hotspot coordinates in to the XML file by hand. Off the top of my head I don't know the syntax, since it's useless to me I've never bothered with it.

[Discipulus]

hmm

This what I have so far.

-opening MPEG
-menu still
-episode 1
-episode 1 menu clip
-episode 2
-episode 2 menu clip
-episode 3
-episode 3 menu clip

DO I have to put the menu clips (thumbnails) into the menu still and make one menu mpeg or what ?
And It's not that I want an actual cursor. I ant the thumbnail to be highlighted or something. DO I need hotspots for that ?

[sterno]

DO I have to put the menu clips (thumbnails) into the menu still and make one menu mpeg or what ?

Yes.

And It's not that I want an actual cursor. I ant the thumbnail to be highlighted or something. DO I need hotspots for that ?

In theory, hotspots allow for some type of hilighting. But, as I said, hotspots are not well supported. VCD menus really aren't very interactive.

You can also fake hilighting by creating several menu clips, each one with a different item selected. You would have to set up the PBC to use prev/next or something similar to select them, and then have Default for each go to the appropriate place. Personally, I think that's a lot of trouble for something that still won't give you what you really want.

[Discipulus]

oh.
Thanks.

Guess I'll just have to simplifie things then ^_^;