do you actually bother with menus?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

when i author a disc, it's usually video files i have either downloaded in the past or have recently captured
i just don't see the point of spending time making fancy or animated menus
am i the only one who feels this way?

[canadateck]

I feel its an ART , Not just a DVD menu.

[lordsmurf]

Some of us actually put effort into DVDs, and "downloaded clips" are crap and never used.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

...and "downloaded clips" are crap and never used.

very true, i usually spent waaaaayyy too much time 'fixing' them and cleaning them up as much as possible, which is why i got a capture card and have spent the last 2 days studying all of the fantastic guides available at www.lordsmurf.com!
you sir, are the The Man!!!

unfortunately, sometimes download is the only option. if a show isn't on anymore, what are you gonna do?

as far as putting forth the effort, I make DVD's for me, not anybody else, so I'm not trying to impress anybody with them. I just wanna watch some 'toons!

[Bodyslide]

I use Menu's on 95 % of all my work.

[wwjd]

I actually enjoy making menus because it is a chance to be creative. But I mostly make menus because it is one of the great advantages of DVD, you can quickly and easily navigate to exactly where you want to be. I suffered enough with hunting through VHS tapes looking for a particular section or scene.

[SEALs1230]

I'm still trying to figure out how to make menue But once I do I will be using them.

[housepig]

I make at least a basic menu on almost everything, just to be able to scene select, at the minimum.

on some movies, I go the extra mile and make full motion, animations, intro videos, etc. etc. etc... mostly rare stuff I convert from VHS.

[Noahtuck]

Some of us actually put effort into DVDs, and "downloaded clips" are crap and never used.

Here Here on both points!!!!

you can quickly and easily navigate to exactly where you want to be. I suffered enough with hunting through VHS tapes looking for a particular section or scene.

I hear that!!!

On backup's, just the movie.
On all my LD transfers of movies that will prob. never be released on dvd, full blown custom motion menu's everywhere!!! usually some extra scenes from the movie or the like (lots of cutting and joining) joined with some type of music or sound effect from that actual movie. anywhere from 15 seconds to 2 minutes in length.

[dcsos]

Whatever you do menu or not

dont forget to put chapters on the disc
(If you don't have patience to set chapter points at the proper points, at least locate them every 10 minutes)

otherwise. You might as well keep the downloaded file instead
Chapters make you able to get to the scene you need withou leaning on the ff control

[kisrum]

I don't kid myself about how much my siblings want to watch 40 or 50 minutes of home video from our family reunions. Menus let them jump to their favorite parts, their kids, and yet position me to not leave out someone else's favorite part.

Tmpgenc DVD Author makes it so easy, if not creative, I can't see any reason not to do menus on regular or home movies. If you got the time, find software that allows more creativity.

[p_l]

Making menus is part of what makes this hobby fun!

[jdizzy40]

If you purchased some quality software you would find that making menus is not only easy but fun and gives you some navagation abilities when trying to view let's say 20 MTV Videos. I have a great collection of music videos as well as documentarys that look professional and take as little as 10 minutes to set up and author. So that's my take.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

i use TMPGEnc DVD Author for all my projects
and i always insert each episode as it's own track, that way i can simply hit the skip button get to the episode i want, it's easy because i usually don't put more than 6 eps per disc

[dipstick]

In your case, it doesn't matter because you're using someone els's hard work. There's no point on putting a personal touch on that.

Many here like me that work on our own material feel that making a great menu is one of the best and most important things to do. It gives it the personal touch.

[reboot]

"Downloaded clips" get a basic, choose which one type of menu, because I author between 4 and 16 per disk.
Home made capture, and VHS transfers of rare material, I go all the way, using nothing but DVDLab Pro.

[CogoSWSDS]

I've authored 2 DVDs (previously I did VCD) since I got my burner. Both have been home movies, and I think one of the great advantages of DVD is to be able to jump to any chapter I want in a matter of seconds. Granted, yes, I can do that without a menu, but a menu just makes it so much easier to get where I want to go.

[State Of Mind]

DVD copy - no menus, just the movie
Home video - More than one clip, then yes.

[mats.hogberg]

It depends on what's on the DVD. For a one movie DVD, I really find a menu a waste of both time and space. For other work, it may have a purpose, such as if I do a DVD collection of a TV series I've captured - it has happened, but rarely.

/Mats

[BSR]

But I mostly make menus because it is one of the great advantages of DVD, you can quickly and easily navigate to exactly where you want to be. I suffered enough with hunting through VHS tapes looking for a particular section or scene.

ditto

And set chapters at about 3-5min intervals to speed searching up when watching a title.

[Batanen]

It depends on what's on the DVD. For a one movie DVD, I really find a menu a waste of both time and space. For other work, it may have a purpose, such as if I do a DVD collection of a TV series I've captured - it has happened, but rarely.

/Mats

I have to agree. On my series DVDs, I'll make menus mostly for the sake of selecting episodes. I have also created menus for a friend of mine that has several of her beauty pagents on the DVD. For movies, I usually don't, unless I have selectible subtitles and/or audio tracks....or unless I'm just REALLY bored......

Anywho...I generally use Photoshop CS or DVD Menu Studio. Seem to be the best two I've found so far. Anyone else find any better ones?

Xylob: LOVE the Cobra/Decepticon graphic! **scratching head and mumbling "would that be Deceptibras or Cobricons....+"**

Batanen

[non-linear]

For the most part, I make menus. For series, the menu is for identifying the episodes (and sometimes have things like episode number, airdate, etc). For movies recorded off TV, I usually just have the movie start since there's no use to having a menu.

I like having menus because they provide useful information about the disc, as well it gives me a chance to be creative -- and since most people I know still use VHS, there's that impressive/jealousy factor that comes into play from having a DVD with a custom menu.

I never use chapter menus (scene selection), but I put chapter points at the beginning of each segment (between where commercial breaks were). I never make a DVD without chapter points.

[housepig]

dont forget to put chapters on the disc
(If you don't have patience to set chapter points at the proper points, at least locate them every 10 minutes)

good point!

since DVD Lab lets you import chapter lists, I put together several generic chapter lists ... every 3 minutes, every 5 minutes... for one project, every 10 seconds! (it was a faux slideshow).

if it's a video where I don't need the full custom job, I can just pull up one of these files and propagate chapters in a few seconds.

[mats.hogberg]

I like TDA for this - "Add chapter point each XXX minutes". Simplicity itself.

/Mats

[burnman99]

Yes i think menus are very important if you want to put out a quality product. If it's just for yourself, then you can skimp. I'm hoping to learn the Dreaded motion/switched menu with dvd-lab and motion/dfx menus with either dvdlab dvdauthorgui or gui for dvdauthor in the near future. I can't wait!

Rog

[mats.hogberg]

Overly crafted menus are a PITA IMO - Take Queen Greatest hits Vol 1: When you want to select a song in the song list, a vertical list to the right on the screen, you don't move a "cursor" up and down (too simple!) - the list starts scrolling, and after scrolling up or down one position, the typeface of the selected song changes. Cool - Not! This process takes about 5 seconds to play, and it takes enough time before anything happens at all after the keypad press for you to start pressing it again and again, until you discover that your player is frantically trying to locate and start playing the transition. So, for each song (disregarding first and last), there are 2 videos, one for it scrolling into position from above, one for scrolling into position from below.
I'd taken a simple monochrome (sub stream) text list that gets highlighted any day.

/Mats

[lordsmurf]

All of the Hanna Barbera cartoon DVDs are like this too (Flintstones, etc). The menus take FOREVER to scroll through because they're layered. PITA, indeed!

[spectroelectro]

Graphical menus for DVDs are one of the worst ideas in consumer electronics, right up there with DCC and 8 track tape and the RCA analog CED videodisc. Don't confuse quick and easy navigation, however, with graphical menus. Audio CDs and SACDs both feature quick and easy navigation -- by track numbers. Press the button, advance the track. What's the problem? No one has ever complained about a lack of graphical menu in audio CDs or Super Audio CDs. Read rec.audio.high-end, and you'll hear a LOT of folks complaining that they have to hook upa ferkakta TV set to their DVD-audio player to see the graphical menu & navigate the stupidly-designed and idiotically-implemented format.

DVDs with chapter points but with all MPEG-2 files linked and dragged into First Play won't show a menu (until the entire disc plays) but let you navigate quickly and easily. Menus are a worthless waste of time and oneof the great curses of the DVD video format, along with the eternally-to-be-cast-into-a-lake-of-fire 1 gig VOB file limit.

DVDs shouldn't have grahpical menus and they shouldn't ahve an unnecessarily complex Audio_TS Video_TS / BUP / VOB file structure. DVDs should have been designed so that they play when you pop 'em in the player, like audio CDs or LDs or SACDs, and the user navigates by punching track numbers. The file format should've been a single long native MPEG-2 file. This would have immensely simplified DVD video authoring and burning. But nooooo....the geniuses who misdesigned the video DVD couldn't do that, could they?

Doesn't take that long to design a menu or author a DVD...until you have to do 100 of 'em. Then, it gets onerous. Didn't the guys who designed the video DVD file format and disc protocol ever hear of KISS -- Keep It Simple, Stupid?

[Xylob the Destroyer]

i can agree with most of that rant....
most decent DVD players have buttons on the remote for subtitle & audio
so why not just make the disc play upon insertion and then pick your audio & sub options with a coupla quick button presses??

[adam]

I can't imagine trying to navigate through a DVD with lots of extras without having the benefit of a graphical menu. That would be much more complicated then visually choosing the appropriate heirarchy (main menu-> extras-> trailers->international trailers) as opposed to having to skip through dozens of chapters on dozens of tracks, without knowing what any of these items were until after you viewed them.

Audio cds have substantially fewer tracks than DVDs on average, and they are typically not broken down into further heirarchys. You've got x number of songs and you jump between them, whereas on a DVD I may have 30 different points to jump to just on track 1. How do you get to a particular trailer if its stored at chapter 10 on track 56 without knowing this information beforehand? You'd have to sit there and hit NEXT a few hundred times.

Xylob the Destroyer, most DVD players already support the option to do exactly what you want. Simply turn off PBC either in your player's menu or via its remote. When you insert the DVD it will just start playing the movie. You can then change all audio and subtitle options, or make all chapter jumps, via the remote. However, good luck trying to navigate through all the extra features without turning PBC back on. You will quickly realize that at least a basic menu structure is absolutely necessary whenever the disk contains any more than a single movie and a few extras.