authoring a DVD with "extras"

[phatfreeza]

here's my problem people...

i know how to author a basic dvd. what i'm trying to do now is author a dvd with "extras". what i mean is i want to include a bunch of jpegs on the dvd ... perhaps in a separate folder or something.

i just want it so that the movie i'm burning will still play on my dvd player, but when i put the dvd in my computer, i can access the jpegs. it would also be nice if i could access the jpegs from my dvd player.

is this easy to do?

i'm using dvdcomposer.

TIA

[daamon]

Hi phatfreeza,

Try this, but it depends on your DVD player as to whether it'll work.

Author the DVD and produce the VOBs etc. in the VIDEO_TS and empty AUDIO_TS folders - BUT DON'T BURN IT YET.

Place all your JPEGs in a folder then burn the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders along with the folder containing the JPEGs to a DVD. Your DVD player masy give you the option of searching the additional folder and it may do a basic slideshow of the JPEGs.

These JPEGs will certainly be accessible as normal files on your PC.

Use a re-writeable disc...

The other way is to create a slideshow of the JPEGs, encode to MPEG2 and then include that as an additional track selectable from the DVD menu.

You'll still be able to view the pics on the PC, but only as an MPEG2 slideshow and not as seperate JPEG files.

If you have room, you could always burn the files in their own folder...

[phatfreeza]

Hi phatfreeza,

Try this, but it depends on your DVD player as to whether it'll work.

Author the DVD and produce the VOBs etc. in the VIDEO_TS and empty AUDIO_TS folders - BUT DON'T BURN IT YET.

Place all your JPEGs in a folder then burn the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders along with the folder containing the JPEGs to a DVD. Your DVD player masy give you the option of searching the additional folder and it may do a basic slideshow of the JPEGs.

These JPEGs will certainly be accessible as normal files on your PC.

Use a re-writeable disc...

The other way is to create a slideshow of the JPEGs, encode to MPEG2 and then include that as an additional track selectable from the DVD menu.

You'll still be able to view the pics on the PC, but only as an MPEG2 slideshow and not as seperate JPEG files.

If you have room, you could always burn the files in their own folder...

thanks for the informative reply!!

i will have about 2 gigs of space leftover and my pictures only take up 1 gig... i'm trying to figure out what your last line means.

"if you have room, you could always burn the files in their own folder..."

can you elaborate? do you mean burn the video_ts audio_ts and folder X with some sort of burning software? i'm not sure i follow... thanks!

[guns1inger]

The mandatory folders are Video_TS and Audio_TS. Some players won't miss the Audio_TS folder, as it isn't used, but it is part of the spec so you should keep it there. After that you can add extra folders to hold pretty much anything you like. Most DVD players will ignore these folders, but for PC files they are fine and within spec.

Not all burning programs recognise or allow these though, or at least don't do it in an obvious way. Example - VSO CopytoDVD - when you burn a DVD file structure, you browse to the main IFO file, and from there CopyToDVD works out where everything else is. But it only picks up the Video_TS and Audio_TS folders. You then have to manually add any extra folders you want included. Nero, on the otherhand, just drag and drop what you want.

[daamon]

thanks for the informative reply!!

"if you have room, you could always burn the files in their own folder..."

can you elaborate? do you mean burn the video_ts audio_ts and folder X with some sort of burning software?

No problem.

As guns1inger says, using more versatile software, like Nero (there are others), you'll end up with the VIDEO_TS, AUDIO_TS and FOLDER_X (name of your choosing) on the DVD with the JPEGs in this folder.

Note: This folder only may be seen by your DVD and display the images. Though they will definitely be accessible on your PC.

To get the pictures definitely viewable on the DVD, you'll need to create a slideshow, encode to MPEG2 and add this as another track in the DVD that can be selected from the menu.

The downside of this is that the pics are no longer in JPEG format, though they'll still be viewable on the PC, but only (effectivley) as footage and not individual JPEG files.

And, again, use a re-writeable before burning to a permanent DVD.

Good luck...