Am I asking the for the world? XVCD w/ a nice menu

[eppik]

So - I am no veteran in authoring any VCD's, DVD's and whatnot. I have, however, been mucking about with it for about 6 months. Here's the problem I am having.

I want to burn XVCDs with a half decent menu system. A little audio in the background and a reasonable visual appeal. I am not planning on buying a dvd-r burner until they are a little faster. XVCD is my preferred format since a) my player recognizes them and b) I want better bitrates than VCD. Lord knows why my player doesn't accept SVCD.

I have now tried MOST of the apps out there and it seems to me that no single app can meet both my requirements. Apps that produce great menus force the compliancy of the disc on me and apps that burn non compliant discs have a far too basic menu authoring system. Please tell me I'm wrong. Please tell me that I HERE is the app you need to build what you want!

So far I've tried:

DVD Workshop
DVD Movie Factory
VCD Composer
VCD Easy

And have JUST scraped Nerovision Express.

cheers

[EricB]

I still like DVD MovieFactory 1.0 which supports XVCD. 2.0 is slicker, but dropped support of XVCD and XSVCD.

[eppik]

Maybe that's the only choice. I tried Movie Factory after 1.0 came out. Time to track down and older copy I guess. Anyone else? Thanks EricB

[adam]

What is that you are not able to do with VCDEasy? It can probably do more than all those other programs you listed, and it certainly allows you to make non-compliant disks. I primarily make DVDs now, but I use to make many (X)vcds and svcds with VCDEasy and I would duplicate the entire DVD's structure including all menu's and features. I have yet to find a DVD whose features I couldn't at least emulate on a VCD/SVCD using VCDEasy.

If you need advice with using motion menu's in VCDEasy then take a look at my guide. http://users3.ev1.net/~CavemanLawyer/

[eppik]

Well - I'm hoping to achieve something similar to what you describe.
Slightly more advanced menu systems, some button functionality during playback, menu audio and custom buttons. I'll read up on your guide. I'm checking it out as I write and it looks like it's the level of detail I need to get my head around this properly.

[adam]

Well I intentionally picked a simple DVD for my guide because otherwise it would have been just too confusing.

As far as button functionality during playback, you can do whatever you want on any item, you are just always going to be limited to (next, prev, enter, stop, and 1-99 # keys.)

For menu audio you have to simply create an mpg with your video and audio instead of making a normal mpeg still. Otherwise, there is no difference between it and a still menu.

(S)VCDs do not support use of actual subpictures for buttons like DVDs do. Your buttons must be physically part of your background picture, so customize them as much as you want in your photo editing software. When I backed up my DVDs to SVCD I would just extract the subpictures from the menu's off of the DVD and use them for authoring my still menu's.