Newbie needing help with menus using EZ Creator

[Kmanz]

I tried with Nero first but it crashed on my system for unknown reasons. Needing a friend that can steer me in the right direction before going the VCDEasy (not so easy) route. I dl'ed some of the more popular freeware utilities deditcated for authoring and they seemed very daunting. Want to get a workable solution with software I am familiar with before heading into deep waters.

Problem: With Roxio EZ Creator 5.0.02 I can add .mpg's to my VCD disk and they burn fine and playback fine. Trying to use the menu feature didn't do anything different upon playback. I had 5 .mpg's and they just played in sequence, no menu appeared at all. I wanted a still image of one of the mpg's in the playlist and just the 5 titles of the 5 files, nothing fancy like even thumbnails at this point (taking it slow). Just wondering if I am expecting too much for what this piece of software is capable. Thanks in advance.

Kevin

[Kmanz]

I haven't a clue as to the loopback feature and the length of time after playback is for. Should I be setting loopback to be infinate so as to have the menu appear? Do I need to have the infinate setting engaged for the length of time after playback? These are the seemingly simple questions Roxio apparantly overlooked in their 2 paragraph explanation of the menu features (Way to go Roxio).

[ROBO1964]

I was testing this myself today. From what I can see is you need to make a movie with the menu on it as the menu was active and worked but doesn't show up anywhere from what I could see. So I assume you have to make one and make it a movie and it should loop indefinately.

[Wicked_Al]

EZ Creator seems to want a movie for the menu, and as the previous post said, loop it indefinitely. One thing you might be able to get away with is to create a bitmap of the menu you want, then use a program to create an mpeg still. I dont have Creator anymore so I cant test this. One program you can use is VCDImager(VCDEasy) to create the mpeg stills, but then you might was well use it for creating and burning the (S)VCD.

Fromthe description of what you want to do you should probably try Nero...its menu is simple and you can have a still with text and stills from the mpegs, and select psuedo chapters.

[Kmanz]

Last night I was able to test the menu feature with the playback feature before burning the VCD. It worked and the 2 prior posts are correct you need to make a static image or movie of a menu (Which Roxio never mentions...idiots!!!).

Is there any simple step by step approach to making a MPEG still image? I was reading the guide for that in the tools section and its showing all this coding to be done and something with XML script or whatever XML is???? And its saying how easy VCDEASY is lol.

Any simple interfaces to actual do the work? (Besides NERO ... it's not stable on my machine). Thanks.

Kevin

[Wicked_Al]

Try VCDImager, which is a gui to VCDEasy. To create the stills or menus you dont need to know anything about XML, and its fairly simple. Just open up VCDImager, then click on tools, then MPEG Stills.

[Kmanz]

Ok I was able to get the MPEG still saved. How do I make it a menu? I mean what software must I use to make an overlay over the image?

Another question would be what software would be used to make a menu over a motion MPEG?

From the description of EZ creator or Nero it didnt give me the impression I need powerful applications like Adovbe Premier or Photoshop to do editing....