Adding music in TMPGENC DVD Author

[SoCalMK]

Is there any way to add music to the background when making a menu in TMPGENC DVD Author? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[parman]

I was wandering the same a short time ago, then i switched to DVDLAB. a really good bit of kit, a few experimentals later and now audio with all my menus, scene selection, the lot. Once you find your feet it becomes rather easy to use. (and thats from a newbie)

[SoCalMK]

Thank you for your suggestion. But did you ever find out whether or not that function existed on TMPGENC DVD Author?

[parman]

sorry m8, didn't look any further into it.

[jimmalenko]

There is. It's called a motion menu. Go into Menu Display Settings, then click on the Motion Menu tab. You need a DVD-compliant MPEG (See What is DVD? for specs). So you need to merge a still image or vision or some kind with the audio of your choice (TMPGEnc the encoder can take BMP or JPG files for this) and then specify this MPEG as your background.

[SoCalMK]

How would you go about joining a .jpg and an audio file in TMPGENC encoder?

[daamon]

Have the picture.jpg as the video source, and your chosen music for the audio source. Encode...

[tug_hill2]

Hello, You can add an mpeg as background. The video part of the mpeg
will become the menu's motion background while the audio will be the menu background music. To do this... while you are making the DVD - click on the CREATE MENU button, then click on the MOTION sub-menu - then check the motion options, including the "additional pics for background....... Under this last option, you'll be able to select an mpeg and that will be your music/video background. You'll need to hae this ready in advance...!

Makes for a really nice effect...! :P :P

Starz_Kid...

[SoCalMK]

Thank you all for your help. I managed to create this mpeg-2 files in TMPGENC, but when the dvd has finished authoring in TMPGENC DVD Author I only have the picture background but no audio. Has anyone else had this problem and could you possibly point out what I may be doing wrong. Thank you in advance for any help offered.

[daamon]

Did you do the audio as 48KHz? It's a common mistake to use 44.1KHZ audio - it has to be 48KHz to meet the DVD specs. That said, I think that TMPGENc DVD Author automatically re-samples the frequency, so that may be a red herring... Worth checking I guess...

Use AVICodec or GSpot to find out the frequency.

What was the source? Again, same 2 tools to find out.

Does it play OK on the PC?

[NamPla]

Did you tick the "Use Background Music of Video for Menu BGM" button?

[SoCalMK]

Thank you for all your help. I decided to use a motion background for my menu using the steps all of you suggested. Using a clip from the file that I am authoring, the background menu plays fine but I am still not getting any audio. I loaded the clip that I am using for the menu background into VirtualdubMod and here is what is says about the audio:

48KHz stereo, 224Kbps AC-3

I decided to make the audio AC-3 just like the audio of the file that I am authoring. And I did check the BGM box so I don't think that's the problem. Also, the file that I created does play fine before I author simply using Windows Media Player, audio and all. I am rather proud of myself that I got this far, but am at a complete loss as to why I'm still not getting any audio. You guys have already been a big help, but can you tell if there is something that I am still not getting? Thanks in advance for any help offered.

[kyemeng]

Perhaps you would want to try out a sound file that is not ac3 and see if that works.

[johns0]

I did a test with wav and it works with that,just encode a clip and choose pcm as your audio,mp2 should work as well.

[SoCalMK]

Could you please go over how you did this with wave step by step. I tried with wave as well and I still did not get any audio. Perhaps I can see my mistake if I see your method.

[daamon]

Hi SoCalMK,

Fear not - There could be a perfectly simple answer to this... What version of TMPGEnc DVD Author (TDA) are you using?

I ask because when I first started using it I went through the same frustrations as you and it turns out that, until recent versions, TDA doesn't play back AC3 audio - it just allows it to "pass through", meaning that all will be well once authored.

Trust me, if it's this then just author (I'd suggest a re-writeable, just in case) and all should be well. I can't remember the version where AC3 support was introduced, but I think it was after v1.5.

Fingers crossed it's as simple as that...

[SoCalMK]

I appreciate the suggestion, but I don't think that's the problem. I am using Tmpgenc DVD Author v. 1.6 so it should support AC-3. I also thought that maybe it just wouldn't play on my PC and that it would be fine onece I authored it and played it on my dvd player. But no such luck as I am not getting any audio there either. In addition, I've tried to do the motion menu background with non-AC3 audio and that hasn't worked either. Perhaps I should just try another authoring tool. Could anyone post a step by step guide or point to a url that has one?

[SoCalMK]

Perhaps I will list my method for how I made my menu and hopefully someone will be able to catch my error.

1) I took a 30 second clip from my main file and cut it using Virtualdub.
2) I then extracted the audio as wave using the same program.
3) Then I encoded the wave file as AC-3 using BeSweet.
4) Then I encoded the 30 second clip to a dvd compliant mpg-2 file using Tmpgenc (video only and saved as a .m2v file).
5) I then multiplexed the resulting video file and the AC-3 file from BeSweet using Tmpgenc.
6) I then loaded the resulting file into Tmpgenc DVD Author as background menu for all pages, check motion menu and also the option to use the audio from my background image as the audio for the menu.

Everything else about the dvd seems in working order. After I author and burn, all the menus display properly, the main movie plays fine and I can hear the AC-3 audio in my main movie file. But the menus are completely silent and I don't hear the AC-3 file that I created and joined to my 30 second clip.

Someone please help!

[hech54]

Did you tick the "Use Background Music of Video for Menu BGM" button?

The above option is VERY important.
Here are the specs of what I used in my most recent background in TDA:

Works very well. I ripped it from a DVD. Loaded the .vob into MPEG-VCR and had it create the .mpg clip shown above.

[SoCalMK]

Yes I did enable the option to use the audio of my background image. Can anyone list their method here please using Tmpgenc? It seems like many of you have used this program to encode a video file to use as a motion menu background with audio, so I'm hoping to compare methodologies and see where I went wrong.

[SoCalMK]

I got it to work!

[daamon]

Well done...

Explaining how would be nice - for others in the future who may have this problem and stumble across this thread. There's nothing more annoying than thinking "Aha, this guy's had the same as me and finding out you've solved it but not saying how...".

So, please, take a few minutes to share your soultion.

[jimmalenko]

I've got a sneaking suspicion you can't use AC3 or MP2 audio on the motion menus - I'm sure I read it in the help file for TMPGEnc DVD Author, all of all places

[hech54]

I input this into TDA:

And this is what DVDShrink says the menu audio is now so I guess TDA converted the audio.

[SoCalMK]

You are correct in stating that TDA does not support AC-3 audio in its menu. So as some of you suggested, I decided to try a different audio format instead. In trying to use wave, I encountered a peculiar problem. I used Virtualdub Nandub to cut out my clip for my menu background and to extract audio from it in wave form. When I took these two files and encoded them on Tmpgenc Plus, I got complete silence and no audio. So I decided to use the original Virtualdub and when I did that I got horrible audio/video sync problems. So what I decided to do was the following:

1. Cut out my 30 second video clip from my original .avi file using Virtualdub Nandub

2. Import that .avi file into original Virtualdub to extract the audio as wave

3. Use the two files in TmpGenc to encode to DVD compliant mpg-2

Now my menus have audio and none of the sync problems I had before.

[KevDog]

I'd just like to add something to the discussion:

Using TmpGEnc DVD author to create DVD menus, all mpeg background images must be encoded from a .m2v and .wav source or the audio will not play (in my own experience).

What I orginally wanted to do was to make a mpg background image (including moving video with audio) by simply cutting mpg video recorded from my video card. I was unsuccessful at doing this however and simply got a still image as my background image with no audio. In order to make this process work appropriately I had to do the following:

1. Using TMPGENC - I De-Multiplexed the captured mpg video into separate video (.m2v) and audio (.mp2) streams.
2. Using BeSweet - I converted the .mp2 stream into a .wav file.
3. Using TMPGENC - I Multiplexed the .m2v video and audio .wav making a new .mpg file
4. Using TMPGENC DVD-Author - I then used the new .mpg file, and chose this file as the background image. I knew the length of my audio was 69 seconds in length, so I had to change the length of the motion menu to 69 seconds.

I stumbled onto this solution indirectly and hope it will help others!

[lordsmurf]

Make a quick MPEG movie in Adobe Premiere. Easy as that. Use as menu object, motion menu. Even if background is still image.

[daamon]

As long as the version of Premiere you're using supports making MPEGs - 6.5 and earlier (I believe that's right) don't have an MPEG encoder bundled in with them.

I believe it's Premiere Pro and onwards that do...

[alanparrott]

I had this menu no sound problem.

I have been recording a TV series and wanted to use the intro as the menu backround with sound.

My normal route is rec onto a Panny DVDR and the on my PC I use MPEG-VCR to edit and then author with TMPg author. All worked well until I wanted to have a movie menu with sound. It would appear that while TMPG allows the AC3 to pass thru on the actual movie/video it is less accomodating on the moving menu.

My solution was to cut the clip I wanted in MPEG-VCR and when saving it change the Audio to MPEG and all was fine.

There are a couple of quirks in that the properties remain for all video menus in that project so youncan not have different lengths for a different track/chapter menu.

Cheers

Alan

[lordsmurf]

As long as the version of Premiere you're using supports making MPEGs - 6.5 and earlier (I believe that's right) don't have an MPEG encoder bundled in with them.

I believe it's Premiere Pro and onwards that do...

Ligos codecs allow MPEG import in Premiere 5-0 to 6.5 (the one I use).

Export is native in Premiere 6.5 (MC 1.3, aka Adobe MPEG Encoder), and then 3rd-party like Procoder (maybe Express too) works in Premiere. Also CCE and LSX and others.