Menu Building Help

[HuckHound]

Hi,

I have two DVDs where each has three movies burned into it - presumably by using DVDShrink or something like that.

I want to take the first two movies from DVD 1 and the third movie from DVD 2 and burn them onto another DVD with a front end menu to select the relevant movie.

So I have on my hard drive the following VOB files

For movie No 1 VTS_01_1 and VTS_01_2 from DVD 1

For movie No 2 VTS_02_1 and VTS_02_2 From DVD 1

For movie No 3 VTS_03_1 and VTS_03_2 From DVD 2

What is the best way / software to use to build a menu for this. Would I still have to demux the VOB files?

Thanks

[petar]

What is the best way / software to use to build a menu for this

Best depends on your preferences but you can use TMPGEnc DVD Author, DVD-Lab, Ulead DVD Workshop...

Would I still have to demux the VOB files?

Not with the above software but if you do you can use any authoring tool you want even if it doesn't support importing of VOB files/DVD-Video structure.

[HuckHound]

Thanks for the advice.

I've burned the DVD with DVD-LAB, which plays fine.

However, when I play the DVD with PowerDVD and try to use the navigational slider, nothing happens. It just carries on playing.

If I open the VOB file direct from PowerDVD, the slider works. With the little knowlege I have, I'm assuming there's something in the IFO files that's making this happen, but I can't see any settings that might overcome this when compiling the DVD.

Any suggestions

Thanks in advance.

[petar]

I assume you imported the VOBs without multiplexing. I've never thought that was a good idea (doesn't mean it won't work but navigation problems are quite probable as you've experienced). Perhaps I shouldn't have suggested DVD-Lab.

Despite that some people think VOB is just a different mpeg file, it contains far more stuff than a normal mpeg system stream. One should either import a VTS structure as a whole (if the application can read it) or demux the VOBs before importing.

Try TMPGEnc DVD Author. It can read and import an entire VTS. If you only use DVD-Lab demux the assets first, extract the chapter points (with ChapterXtractor, for example) and import them into DVD-Lab.

Did you try playing the DVD in a standalone? Standalones navigate slightly different from a software player so it may be OK.