AC3 music compilation on DVD problem

[the future]

I'm trying to achieve the following: a music compilation of about 80 tracks on a DVD to play on my standalone DVD player (connected to the stereo system).

Success so far: converted aiff audio tracks to ac3 tracks that will import into DVD Studio Pro (conversion via Quicktime and A.Pack).

Problem: to build tracks DVDSP will author, I need to have video tracks of the same length as the ac3 audio tracks. These video tracks should obviously be as small as possible as they shall only function as "dummys". A video track of a still picture or something like that is what I have in mind (and is something I have actually seen on commercial music DVD singles). Does anybody have any idea how I can produce such "dummy" video tracks? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!!

[pants]

i think it'd be easier and maybe more dvd disc space efficient to have all you songs as still menus w/audio instead of tracks with audio. but if you did it this way you'd have to put buttons on all the screens which isn't hard, but maybe more time consuming and you couldn't easily do like a play all. you could do it though through scripting, i think. something to the nature of menu time outs. so time the menu out after the song length then jump to the next menu. but that might be more work than you want.

so are you in dsp 2 or earlier? earlier you have to just render out qt movies the same length of the songs, encode as low as possible to still have enough room for all you music.

in dsp2, you could just import a still image of what ever, throw it in a track add your audio, adjust the still image to the length of the audio, then your done, just in your encoding settings you want to set it low enough so you have enough room for all your music. this way you could also then just add a subtitle that can be turned on and off to tell the name of the song, or always on. subs as easy in dsp2.

you might want to use a bitrate calculator too. add up the size of your audio, then how ever much space is left, see what bitrate you need to use or stay under. but also if it's just a stil limage with no move ment you can go pretty low. also if you wanted to encode before you got to dsp2 or even do this in early versions, encode at 352x240 mpeg1 vcd specs, cause at that quality no movement should look just fine and be really small.

[the future]

Thanks for answering, pants. I only have DVDSP 1.5, sounds like this would be way easier in DVDSP 2. Will try the method you mention.

[pants]

i thought of one other way you might look into doing this in 1.5 or even 2. by using slides shows. i haven't used them really so no real tips other than, you could have a title slide for each audio track, then in the slide show just set each piture to each sound. and have one big slide show. but i don't know the pros and cons of this, like you might not be able to skip ahead or back. or you have one slide show track per song. this maybe easy an easy solution.

[jazzman]

What is the easiest way to put a bunch of CD tracks on a DVD? Will Toast 6 author an audio DVD? I always assumed this was a simple deal but maybe not.

[WiseWeasel]

You could always make an ISO 9660 disk full of AIFF files. It'll work if the player is capable of reading DVD media.

[ZeroSix]

or an MP3 capable player or AC-3 as ISO capable player.

I havnet heard of a way to author as DVD_Audio yet on a Mac.

Using your "dummy" tracks MIGHT work. But it would prove to be too much work on your part...

[jazzman]

Wow the AVI products look like a great glimpse of the future computer/home entertainment fusion. A media server with an IR command set, gotta love it. So to transfer say six CD's (.6 gig each) full of aiff audio files to DVD (4.3 gigs) in a custom playlist is not something that us Macphiles are doing yet? But it can be done given the tips by previous posters? And what about Toast's new version 6 with the authoring/encoding features, has anyone tried audio-only with it?