How to make a new combo DVD Menu for combining existing DVD's

[Scav2003]

I have several old concerts from 1970's TV.

They were set up into VIDEO_TS folders, that can be burned and made a DVD with a menu.

The person who originally made these, designed these so that the 4 concerts could be burned together by moving the right numbered VTS_# files into the same folder with new VIDEO_TS* files (so concert 1 is in VTS_1, 2 is on VTS_2 and so on).

If you have the combo menu, it works brilliantly (I've tried this with a different set).
You get a front menu that lists the 3 concerts. Click on it, it takes you to the concerts custom menu, and so on.

However, for the current grouping, I don't have the combo menu.

So, is it possible to make a new one? (a new master menu that leads to the Pre-existing sub menus)?

I've tried with Toast so far, just by making a menu and transplanting it, but the results have been less than whelming.

Could iDVD or Studio or something else do this? Is this something that just can't be done?

[terryj]

DVD Studio Pro could do this, however the assets would have
to be demuxed first back into .m2v and .aiff ( or .ac3) and then
a new menu could be built that has buttons that point to the different
concerts, which would be added to the timeline in their demuxed asset form.
You then could create a sub menu that then further breaks down
the assets into seperate concerts on their own seperate sub-menus
if you wish.

Toast 8 should allow you to pull the assets from their Video_TS folders
and then generate a new menu and build a new DVD. The menu
will be straightforward, making all the assets appear on one dvd
as sequential assets, without sub menus to only specific concerts.
Frobozz can speak more on this, but IIRC, that is all Toast 8 can do.

[Scav2003]

Could iDVD be used for this...making a DVD with dummy media files with the structure I want, then go in and repace the VTS_# files with the real ones after and use Toast to burn?

Is there somewhere (I'm sure there is on this site) something that talks about how the files work? as in...does the VIDEO-ts file say "when this area is clicked, go to VTS_1" or does it say "when this area is clicked, go to VTS_1 that does x, y, and z?"

[Herve]

Could iDVD be used for this...making a DVD with dummy media files with the structure I want, then go in and repace the VTS_# files with the real ones after and use Toast to burn?

not easy, because .IFO stores a lot of informations but not all (exemple: the jump with remote "Menu" is in the stream =VTS, not in the IFO).
For most of your functions you can use your tip (but take a look to your result with myDVDEdit)

Is there somewhere (I'm sure there is on this site) something that talks about how the files work?

read tuto on www.mydvdedit.com

as in...does the VIDEO-ts file say "when this area is clicked, go to VTS_1" or does it say "when this area is clicked, go to VTS_1 that does x, y, and z?"

both, depends on the pre/post commands, registers, command cells, etc (in fact depends on what does/did the authoring software)

(so not very easy but possible, the best way is to extract all the streams -and menus- and make a new authoring with them: DVDSP or ... even MovieGate)
bye