How to make a good VCD menu quickly?

[alpax]

VCD menu is quite a common topic, but unfortunately I haven't found an answer for my simple question yet...

I want to create a VCD with several video tracks (6-12 on one disk), and make quite a simple menu with thumbnails using some frames from the tracks. I don't like the idea to spend hours while resizing and moving images in Photoshop, preparing some script for VCDImager and so on...
I just used Nero 5.5 and actually its menu authoring feature is almost what I need, except it's not so customizable as I want. I just need the same functionality - choose a title and a still image for the menu item directly from the track loaded to be burned. But I need to have more control on the layout - for example, have 4 thumbnails on the screen (Nero allows only 6), choose font size for the titles, and the most important thing - change the size/position of the thumbnails and size/position of the titles.

I hoped that Nero Vision Express 2 is exactly what I need, but when I tried it, I've found it's not much better than Nero itself. It does have a layout with 4 thumbnails, but when I choose the one with the titles, the thumbnails become too small and looks like there is no way to enlarge them though there is a lot of free space around. When I make the titles font bigger, the thumbnails get even smaller...
Do I really want too much?!?
Is there a software, which has the same features as Nero Vision Express, but has more customizable menu layouts?

Well, now I'm even ready to use Photoshop to make the "menu of my dream", but is there any guide how to do it quickly? From my point of view there is a lot of manual steps, which are quite time-consuming:
- Prepare still images for the menu thumbnails. Use some player or some conversion program to grab a frame from each track;
- Load all the images (including background) in Photoshop;
- Put everything in one image with separate layers;
- Resize and move around each layer-thumbnail (do several tries to make a perfect layout);
- Save the final image;
- Repeat the steps above if another menu page is required;
- Convert the images into still-image MPEGs (this probably depends on the burning tool).

Are there any shortcuts in this sequence?

OK, suppose the menu images are ready.
What software to use to compose the VCD with menu and burn it?
I tried VCDEasy, but it doesn't look so "easy" (at least compared to Nero). Should I read more guides and make another try or you could recommend another program, which can do that with less efforts?

Thanks.

[sterno]

If you're just working with thumbnails and labels a "draw"-style application would probably be a lot easier than Photoshop. Photoshop and most other "paint"-style apps are oriented toward working with pixels. Draw apps work with objects (like thumbnails) and let you arrange or align them, stack them, resize them just by dragging the outline, change fonts/styles on labels, etc. You can put together a layout very quickly and then make fine adjustments when you're satisfied with the overall look.

A page-layout app would also be OK, and in a pinch you could try something like PowerPoint. The only problem would be that a lot of those don't do a good job of exporting a graphic so you'd have to open the exported image and crop/resize it.

VCDEasy is probably the easiest one you'll find that has decent authoring capabilities. Nero is easier because (as you found) you can't customize anything, you get what you get and that's that. VCDEasy is actually pretty easy to use, it just has a cluttered interface so you have to get used to it. It also has a pretty good tool for converting JPEG images to MPEG stills.

[alpax]

Thanks for your reply sterno.

I already thought about some "CorelDRAW-like" app, which makes manipulating with different graphic objects easier than "Photoshop-like". Probably I'll try a good-old CorelXARA. I liked it some time ago for its size and speed compared to CorelDRAW.

Well, I'll do another approach to VCDEasy. There are some guides available, and actually I have a lot of experience mastering different apps with quite an odd interface (or even without it), so I'll definitely do this one, but that requires time, which is always not enough

I'm just wondering why there are no really convenient tools for this task. I don't think my requirements are so specific...