MovieFactory 2 SE - Can I make chapters with separate files?

[audioqueso]

Hello everyone. I'm new here and looking for some guidance.

I bought an ADS Instant DVD 2.0 and captured all of my video's from my Hi8 camcorder onto my Dell 8500 laptop. They are all compressed in mpeg2 at the highest quality available via ADS Capture Wizard. It actually came out pretty good.

I've edited all my video files using Ulead Video Studio 7. Cropped, trimmed, whatever.

I got my DVD burner (DVD+R/RW) from Dell, and I'm trying to use Ulead MovieFactory 2 SE to make a DVD of some misc files I have. (Have already burned one successful DVD of just videos, no menu).

I have four main theme of videos (my house, my dogs, Christmas, & Busch Garden). The house files are separated into 3 video files. The Christmas is in one big file. Busch Gardens is in 7 separate files. And the dogs is in 29 separate files.

Now, they will all fit into one DVD, but what I'm trying to do is make one main menu that will lead me into four submenus. But I can't. I've been looking around, but from what I'm getting, I can only make chapters/submenus by allowing MovieFactory 2 to make the splits itself. Is this correct? Is this the only way to make submenus with MovieFactory?

Merging the smaller files are not a big deal, but I'm not trying to merge 29 files and split them up again. Can anyone help me with this? And if MovieFactory can't do it, is there a better program out there?

Thank you in advance for everyone's help.

[elkfir]

I believe MovieFactory will treat each mpg file as a separate title. If you have 29 separate mpg files then it will have 29 separate titles showing on the main menu. I don't think there's a way to get around this. You can create your own chapter points in each mpg file, which will show in the sub menu. But, in order to limit the number of titles showing in the main menu, you will have to limit the number of separate mpg files you are working with.

Hope this helps somewhat with your question.

[audioqueso]

That sucks.

Well, I tried making the same DVD with TMPGEnc DVD Author.
Everything in creating the DVD worked out exactly how I wanted it to.
But two things went bad.

1 - To add music to the menu I had to make the background image a mpg file. I did this. And it worked on the computer, but it doesn't play the music on console player.

2 - TMPGEnc DVD Author makes the videos look a bit funny. My videos in the 2nd DVD all have a shaking to them. I compared the 2nd DVD to the 1st DVD created by Ulead MovieFactory 2 SE and there is a very noticeable difference. I prefer the a/v quality of Ulead, but it has an annoying menu issue.

Any ideas or recommendations?

[Specialist]

Check out the expanded menu-creation flexibility in Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3.0.

The FREE trial download is here:

http://www.ulead.com/dmf/trial.htm

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

Any ideas or recommendations?