What feature is this?

[saturndude]

Hello,

Forgive my newbiness. I have some footage (free over the air TV) that I would like to author it on a DVD. One copy, like a book (at least here in US) is legal. I played 2 VHS tapes and my capture card produced 2 MPEG-2 files on an NTFS partition, each is about 4 Gigs.

If the viewer chooses "Episode One", I would like the DVD player to display a second menu. This menu lets the viewer choose "opening credits", "main episode", or "closing credits".

I believe this feature is found on the full-season retail DVD box sets of "21 Jump Street" (Fox network, USA, late 1980s). What is this feature called? Are there any authoring programs that will NOT HAVE this ability?

I am not sure that I will do this, but I am exploring it.

After I know what this feature is called, I can ask more intelligent questions about how to put it in the half-hour over-the-air comedy show that I taped.


REMEMBER: 1. Preserve Nature. 2. Always wear a helmet.
3. Ride safely. 4. Read owners manual carefully before riding.

[jameshgross]

It's called track and chapter menus.

By the way "Free over the air" TV is still copywrited material.
In the U.S. you may make copies only for your own in home use.
You cann't distribute the shows in any manner or view them in a commerical venue.

[AlanHK]

What is this feature called? Are there any authoring programs that will NOT HAVE this ability?

Menu.

Some simple authoring apps don't have menus at all.

GuiforDVDauthor is a free app that can do menus for titles and chapters.

[saturndude]

Oh, yes, certainly it's for in-home use (and it's against the law to charge people money to watch it in my house as well).

I heard once that there was a "gentlemens agreement" that content producers would not object to distributing stuff that was clearly abandoned, but I cannot prove it, and I don't really think the RIAA/MPAA are "gentlemen" at all. And if old stuff I thought was abandoned is now being released ("Welcome Back Kotter", 1975 - 1977 or so), clearly we cannot be sure that ANYTHING is okay to distribute (except with written permission).

One other idea I have is that after the viewer selects "Episode 1", they can choose "skip chapter" on their remote to skip opening credits. There would be no mention of this however. I believe the season box sets of "Cheers" does this (the Boston bar where everybody knows your name).

Anything special that I should do to still captures (ATI Multimedia Center software) to make menu backgrounds (I have Photoshop Elements 5 and decent a understanding of concepts)?

Any help is always appreciated. Thank you.


REMEMBER: 1. Preserve Nature. 2. Always wear a helmet.
3. Ride safely. 4. Read owners manual carefully before riding.