"Black" still menus being generated through TSCV .84 problem

[wewafed]

Oh boy, I know that I'm going to be flamed for this one, but I want to know why I can't use TSCV's menu generators to make a still picture from my mpeg file. I've followed Sefy's guide to the T, can't find the TSCV .85 beta he has in his example, and everything is hunky dory, except that i want to make simple menus..

Can someone tell me one of a few things.. When is the .85 version of TSCV coming out? Can someone give a detailed way around this? TSCV is a simple and easy way to author VCD's, but is useless to me if i can't make simple menus!! Any help/info on this would be greatly appreciated!!

Ryan

[vitualis]

You could try VCD Easy instead. This is another GUI of VCDImager and it actually makes "real" stills (via MJPEG Tools). I haven't kept up to date with the development of TSCV but the last time I looked, if was still using TMPGEnc to encode stills via a hex patch. These are not real stills -- and I strongly suggest you use VCD Easy to make them (or use VCD Toolkit).

For more general VCD authoring info: http://www.vcdimager.org/guides

Regards.

[wewafed]

ok... i think we're getting confused.. i want to take a screen capture from my existing MPEG file, actually one from each "chapter" of the movie, and make a menu for them.. kinda like thumbnails to preview the movie.. you know.. like they have on DVDs. i don't have images yet.. i need to make them. but they come up black. VCDeasy only acts like you already have the screen captures. i don't.. what can i do?

ryan

[Big_Jit]

You can Make your own screen Captures by either playing the movie or opening it up in a video Editor [like Virtualdub...] and stopping on the frame that you wanna use for your chapter(s) and press "alt+Prt Scrn" on your keyboard. Then paste them in your favorite Graphics proggy (I use IfranView32...) and save them as Chapter(xx).bmp to a folder on your computer. Then you'll have the stills. Then you can eithercreate the menu manually or have VCDEasy do it for you...

Hope this helps....

[wewafed]

that's still not helping.. it just captures black.

[Rokkis]

I'm quite frustrated myself about this black picture-issue ! What kind of graphic-adapter are you using? I got a ATI Radeon 64-vivo and I've tried different workarounds without success.
1. Tried to disable overlays and Direct draw in MPG-properties. No help!
2. Started "Video In" before starting TSCV. Seems to have some impact as the thumnails is no longer black but grey! Still no picture...
Same problem using TMPG or Mpeg2enc.
Hopefully somone with a ATI-capturecard out there is telling us how to make it work.... Thanks!
Rokkis

[wewafed]

i got it to work by opening virtualdub and capturing the window with paint shop pro, but TSCV sucks with the menu generation... so i gave up. if anyone knows about good menu generation programs, let me know..

[ams_chris]

TRY ULEAD DVD MOVIEFACTORY FOR CREATING YOUR MENUS WITH THUMBNAILS....

[Big_Jit]

open the movie up in VirtualDub and move the slider to the frame that you wanna use for your chapter thumbnail. Then click on Video and choose "Copy source frame to clipboard". Then open a graphics Editor/Viewer and click Edit and chose paste. You've Got It!...