What software to make a DVD?

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

Hi i want to make my own dvd but don't know which software to use since there are so many i need a software that can:
-create main menu and track menus
-add switchable subtitles

in the past, i have tried:
Nero<---can't do both
Diko<---always get error message, plus, it doesn't support switchable subtitles (does it?)
Avi2Dvd<---can add switchable subtitles but can only create one main menu

thanks in advance

[Bjs]

Encoding :

Super for conversion to mpeg2 .
Vdub to bbmpeg (frameserving) , also chapter list creation
Bbmpeg for all avisynth script's ... or quenc .

Audio :

Besweet for ac3 .

Menu's :

The gimp / avisynth for menu background's ... avisynth for motion stuff
Wax2 for more motion stuff

Subtitle's :

Subrip
Visualsubsync
srt2sub or is that sup

Vob demultiplexing :

Vobedit

Mpeg2 demultiplexing :

Batchdemux

Dvdauthoring :

Dvdauthorgui

Dvd navigation editor :

Pgcedit

Playback :

Koolplaya + freedvdcodec + ac3_filter's + sub filter's or
Ifoedit (not under xp) or commercail player's ... power dvd , nero showtime , windvd .

Throw in blender for creating other animation's for dvd menu's .

Burning :

Imgtool burn or dvd decryter

From here , you can do almost anything you need ...

----------------

Simple answer ... dvdauthorgui

[redwudz]

Gi-Ma-Mi, in the future please use a more descriptive subject title in your posts to allow others to search for similar topics. I will change yours this time. From our rules:

Try to choose a subject that describes your topic.
Please do not use topic subjects like Help me!!! or Problems.

Moderator redwudz

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

@redwudz: sorry about that, it won't happen the next time

@bjs: sorry to say this but your answer doesn't help me at all, i mean what i need to know is a specific software that can create a dvd and multiple menus and switchable subtitles.

just like avi2dvd + the creating multiple menu funtion...

[lordsmurf]

Do not use all-in-one crappy software.

Give a budget.
I have great suggestions, but it would run about $750 total for the programs.

Find a guide for those programs.

[kschang]

If you want free, use multiple programs.

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

can you 2 recommend which softwares you're using for your dvds?

[Nelson37]

GuiforDVDAuthor will do everything you asked for but not everything you will need.

It does switchable subtitles and multiple menus but no encoding or editing.

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

as you guys said, using multiple softwares is the best way and it's free, i have a question to ask
before, i always used all-in-one sofrwares to create my dvd so if you used different software to do this, in the end, how do you combine the final product?
i mean you create the menu seperately with Wax and then do others things with other software, how do you combine the menu and those things together in the end?

[borax]

can you 2 recommend which softwares you're using for your dvds?

This depends on the source...
Source Video:
DVB: Demux with projectX or pvastrumento, cut with cuttermaran or mpeg2schnitt
SVCD: Demux with TMPGEnc, transcode audio with BeSweet to 48 kHz
AVI (i.e. DivX, Xvid...) Encode Video with Avisynth + HC w/o audio, export audio with virtualdub to WAV, transcode WAV to ac3 or mp2 (48 kHz) with BeSweet or ffmpeggui
=> The result are always elementary video (m2v or mpv) + audio (mp2 or ac3) streams which can be used in most authoring programs.

Menus:
I only use GfD (as I'm the writer of this tool ). For the menu background any image (bmp, gif, jpg) can be used. For animated menu background I use uncompressed AVI or Mpeg2 (these may be 'layered' transparently).
The buttons are either text, simple images (bmp, jpg) or transparent gif (where the button-highlight may be the visible part or the transparent part of the gif file) or a combination of these elements.

I don't know wax very good, but I'm sure you can export either AVI or a bunch of BMP files which can be used in Avisynth.

[lordsmurf]

My videos are encoded to MPEG-2 separately. I create compliant streams in advance.

I primarily use Ulead DVD Workshop 2 for authoring.

I burn in either RecordNow Max for SL, or the PcgEdit method for DL.

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

Encode Video with Avisynth + HC w/o audio

sorry to bother you again but how do you do that step? i tried to look it up and found this guide but the pictures didn't match with what my HC version was showing


btw: are these: dvdauthor, DVDAuthorgui and GUI for dvdauthor related? i see the similar in the names so just wondering

[kschang]

You need to run HCGui, which then runs HCEncode.

DVDAuthor is a command-line utility. DVDAuthorGUI and GUI for DVDAuthor are attempts to provide a more user-friendly interface to that powerful program.

[borax]

but how do you do that step?

Some basic knowledge of Avisynth is necessary to use this method...

Avisynth is script based. It may not be very simple to understand for beginners, but it is by far the most powerfull freeware solution. The script (an avs file with commands on how to 'treat' the video - resize, crop, filter...) can be loaded directly into HC / HCGui which encodes the video to a dvd compliant stream if you have set up the avs file correctly. There are numerous guides around for getting started with avisynth. Just have a lokk into the Guides section:
Avisynth Guides

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

i know the basic of Avisynth (because i'm using it to do my hardsub and convert rmvb files a lot) but what i don't know how to use that HC
after writing the script, i click the 'input file name (*.d2v, *.avs)' button, browse and open that xxx.avs i just create and i don't know what to do next

[borax]

Ok, that's not very complicated...
After selecting your input avs, click on 'output file name (not set)' annd select the path and filename for the encodes m2v file.
Select the correct aspect ratio ( 4:3 or 16:9 ) and click on encode

Some other hints: You may set up either the 'targetfilesize' or an average (and maximum) bitrate. If the filesize doesn't matter, you can also use the 'constant Quantization' (can be found on the tab: Advanced). This way only one pass is made during encoding which speeds up the overall process by nearly factor 2, but you can only guess the final filesize (needs some experience/testing with different Quant values). I do my encodings usually with a quant value of 2.5 but this is only for good quality source files. Higher values give smaller filesizes, but the correlation is non linear. In the misc folder of HC you can find a pdf with some more information.

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

what if you get something like this: (9)Error, Avisynth message: invoke environment error-pass 1 in the info box of HCenc 0.18.0.0?
after the (9) reached (4), HCenc closed itself and the m2v file i got has a size of 0 bytes

[borax]

I've never had an error like this... If you use the line
ConvertToRGB24()
as last line in the avisynth script, can you play the avs file with a video soft player (like MPC)?

The output from avisynth (or the input to HC respectively) should have no audio (use 'KillAudio' within the avs script), DVD compliant framerate (25 for PAL, 29.97/23.976 for NTSC), DVD compliant resolution 720/704x576(480), 352x576(480), 352x288(240) and the colorspace YV12 (use 'ConvertToYV12()' as last line within the avs script). Resolution values in parentheses are for NTSC.

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

I only know the very basic of Avisynth
what you are talking about (ConvertToRGB24(), KillAudio, ConvertToYV12()...) i have no idea
if you can, plz direct me to any links that explain about all those things
or can you plz give me an example by write a script for this video: 512x384 (i'm living in the U.S so my target would be NTSC)
thank you in advance

[kschang]

Download AVSEdit. It has a helpfile for all the AviSynth commands and lots of examples.

[manono]

That script that crashed HC, open it in VDub(Mod) and report back on the error message it gives. It may be specific enough for you to fix it yourself. It's always a good idea to test out your scripts before sending them to the encoder, by opening them in VDubMod, or as borax suggests, by playing them in a player that accepts AviSynth script file input.

I believe that HC accepts only YV12 input, so if the source isn't already YV12 (DVD source), add ConvertToYV12() as the last line, as borax said.

I only know the very basic of Avisynth

Start reading, and stop feeling sorry for yourself:

http://www.avisynth.org/
http://www.avisynth.org/mediawiki/wiki/Main_Page

[borax]

write a script for this video: 512x384

In order to help you with a script, more information is necessary (source/target quality, framerate, used codec, interlaced/not interlaced...).

Some things you could try:
1. Can Avisynth open the video directly?
- Just put two lines in the avs file, save it and open it with a soft player (MPC) or Vdub/VDubmod

AVISource("c:\movies\512x384clip.avi")
ConvertToRGB24()

If yes, this is the preferred way to 'read' the source
If not, try:

DirectShowSource("c:\movies\512x384clip.avi")
ConvertToRGB24()

For DirectShowSource it may also be necessary to specify the framerate:

DirectShowSource("c:\movies\512x384clip.avi", fps=29.97)
ConvertToRGB24()

Next step: Resize

AVISource("c:\movies\512x384clip.avi").LanczosResize(720,480)
ConvertToRGB24()

If this is ok, replace ConvertToRGB24() with ConvertToYV12(), 'kill' the audio and load the script in HCGui:

AVISource("c:\movies\512x384clip.avi").LanczosResize(720,480)
KillAudio()
ConvertToYV12()

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

i use to open those file with only one scipt line:
AVISource("c:\movies\512x384clip.avi")

can i ask what is the use of: ConvertToRGB24() and ConvertToYV12() ?

and here is my clip's info through Gspot


untitled.bmp

[kschang]

can i ask what is the use of: ConvertToRGB24() and ConvertToYV12()
?

You are ignoring me! Download AVSEdit. It has a helpfile for all the AviSynth commands and lots of examples.

[gadgetguy]

can i ask what is the use of: ConvertToRGB24() and ConvertToYV12()
?

You are ignoring me! Download AVSEdit. It has a helpfile for all the AviSynth commands and lots of examples.

You could also try reading the documentation that came AviSynth. It should be in the Docs folder where AviSynth is installed.

[borax]

As already posted: RTFM...
But ok,

can i ask what is the use of: ConvertToRGB24() and ConvertToYV12() ?

Videos (and images) use different colorspaces. Typical for videos are YUV (YV12) and RGB.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_space and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUV

If the source video uses YV12, not all players can deal with it. Therefore I use ConvertToRGB24() for 'normal playing' to make sure the player can show it. HC on the other side accepts YV12 only. If your source is RGB, HC can not encode it. Therefore you need to convert it to YV12 with ConvertToYV12()
If the source has the same colorspace, the converter just does nothing.

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

@kschang: sorry, I didn't mean to ingored your message, it's just that i scrolled all the way down to look for borax's answer since i didn't think some else would answer my question so soon like borax usually does.

thanks gadgetguy for the help

@borax:thanks for the great tool and guide(GUI for dvdauthor)
but i have question though, when i opened GUI for dvdauthor, i got errors message saying that i'm missing: GFDDSView.exe and HCbatch_015.exe were not found, about HCbatch, i don't know but i see GFDDSView.exe in Gui for dvdauthor's folder.
is that a problem needed to be fixed? because after closing those error messages, GFD can be opened.

[borax]

Open GfD, go to the Default Settings, Tab: Permanent. Klick on the 'File open' icons right next to the path of GFDDSView.exe and manually point to the file. HC is only needed for animated menus. If you want it, just download it (can be found on the GfD download page) and copy the HCbatch_015.exe file into the same folder where also the dvdauthor.exe file is (usually the same folder where GUI_DVDauthor.exe is).

[Gi-Ma-Mi]

i found this in the download page: GUIforDvdauthor XP install
so do i have to install the whole thing again? because i can't find any particular HCbatch_015.exe file alone

export audio with virtualdub to WAV, transcode WAV to ac3 or mp2 (48 kHz) with BeSweet or ffmpeggui

i forgot to ask you about that, if i use ffmpeggui, i don't need virtualdub to export the audio to WAV, and then use besweet to convert it to ac3 or mp2, rithgt? because i can do both steps in ffmpeggui

[borax]

You can use the XP installation package (this also includes Avisynth, but as you have installed Avisynth already, there is no need to install it again). This may be installed just 'over' the 'old' package. There is no need to uninstall before.
One remark: The newest beta of avisynth ( 2.5.7 beta ) doesn't work with the mpegdecoder.dll which is used to decode mpeg files within avisynth.

Download of HC 'Stand-alone': https://www.videohelp.com/~gfd/edcounter.php?file=download/HC_015.zip