Adding a menu to a dual-movie disk

[WHeisenberg]

Hi all,
This is my first post here - so please be gentle with this noob

I have a client who sells video programs. Up until 'now', they have only been available in VHS format.
I spent the good part of a month trying to convince them that if they want to increase their sales, they need to offer more than VHS tapes as a product, and they finally agreed.

They had their 'original' video on BetaMax cassette, which for whatever reason had better clarity than the videos they provided on VHS. It seems the BM tape was the original master for their programs.
They took the BM tapes to a local video duplication shop and had them transferred to DVD.

Each of the 4 'chapters' of their program had originally fit on a single VHS cassette, so there were 4 total VHS cassettes in their package.
Now that they have been made into DVD format, the place that did the VHS-to-DVD translation made 4 separate DVD's out of the 4 VHS tapes.

I can see that it would be easy to fit 2 of these program chapters on to 1 DVD, even in their current 'unshrunk' state, since each chapter only takes up about 1.1GB of space on a DVD.

I am using AOMedia's DVD Ripper to create a single AVI file out of the first two chapters (to put them on a single DVD disk), and will soon rip the 3rd and 4th chapters onto a single disk as well. Thus, turning 4 separate disks into 2.

My problem is, when I rip these to AVI, it is creating a single file out of them. When I 'reburn' these onto DVD, there is only a single file that shows up. Thus, I cannot even begin to create some type of 'menu' that will work to allow the viewer to choose which chapter they want to view. .. or so I think.

I guess it doesn't matter whether these chapters are part of the same program or not.. it could just as easily be two separate movies completely.. like 'X-Men' and 'X-Men 2'.

I think I'm going about doing this the wrong way. I'm not sure of two things:
1. How do I go about getting two separate files to be used as individual 'chapters' on the DVD when they are really two separate movies?
2. How do I then build a menu that will allow me to give the viewer a choice between which of the two chapters they want to view?

The reason I'm trying to make the 4 DVD to 2 DVD change for their program is so I can show them that these will indeed 'fit'. I might even have a go at trying to get all 4 of these 45 minute programs onto 1 DVD - but that comes out to 3 hours and I dont think that will work.

They are concerned about the cost of having a 4-DVD set made, printed, packaged and shipped as compared to a 2-DVD set. Apparantly the 2-DVD set costs a lot less, which translates into more profits.
I'm sure they'll go with the DVD programs even if they are stuck with 4 disks.. but the average person kind of 'expects' there to be at least an hour and a half of video on a single disk. If they're sold 4 DVD's that dont even have an hour of information on them each - they could be disappointed, or worse yet, they may see '4 DVDs' and expect 8-9 hours worth of video.

I've read a lot of forum posts, both here and on other sites, and they all seem to point me in the wrong direction.. which is pretty easy to do since I'm unsure what 'direction' I need to be headed in in the first place.

Anyone have a clue for this clueless poster?
Thanks!
WHeis

[Baldrick]

You don't have to convert it to avi(=lose video quality). Use instead dvdremake pro, see http://www.videohelp.com/guides/how-to-put-two-full-dvds-to-one-dvd-preserving-origina...enus-id702#702 . Or you can also use tmpgenc dvd author to import the dvds and make a new dvd with menus.

[WHeisenberg]

Thanks for the info!

I needed a place to start, and it looks like that'll do it.

Appreciate your brain!
WHeis