I want to create video & photos on a DVD and play it on a DVD player

[samoyed]

HI,

I am very new to this and the more I read, the more confused I got.

I hope you can help me.

Basically I have some videos (avi & mpg) and some photos (jpg).
I want to put them together nicely (like a story or a movie) on a DVD and be able to play it in a DVD player (and the PC as well)

I can't figure out the best and simplest way without spending excessive money.

I have Nero, Windows Movie Maker & VirtualDub on the PC.

My problem is
1) don't know how to combine the video and photos to create a story
2) don't know what software to use to combine them together
3) don't know what to use to burn the result to DVD such that it will play on a DVD player (and the PC as well)
4) don't know how to create menu (you know how u watch a movie and it has menu and u can make selections)

I hope I am using the right terms.

Your help is greatly appreciated. I need to cheer someone up with memories of the past.

[guns1inger]

You combine video and together in an editing program. Windows Movie Maker is a basic editor which can do what you want to get you started. If you find you are doing this a lot then you may wish to look at something better down the track.

Microsoft also has Photostory, which is a free download, and can make movies out of photos, which you can then load into Windows Movie Maker. Some find it easier to do this that try to do it all in Movie Maker.

After you had edited your movie and added music etc, you need to output it as DV AVI. This is the highest quality output that Movie Maker offers under Windows XP.

You then need to encode your DV AVI files to DVD compliant mpeg-2, and author it to create you DVD. It is the authoring process that creates the menus. Here you have a choice. You can encode the video and audio to DVD compliant formats with something like Xvid4PSP, then author with GUIForDVDAuthor or DVDStyler, all of which will cost you nothing. Or you can look at one of the consumer authoring tools like tmpgenc DVD author, which can also encode your video for you.

Once you have your DVD structure on your HDD as a Video_TS folder, you can burn with Imgburn.

My personal opinion - Nero has no place at all in this process, even though it claims to be able to many of the things you need. I don't believe it does any of them well enough or reliably enough. Others have a different opinion on this matter.

The first few times you do this, it will feel complicated and time consuming, and it will be. There is no simple way to get a good result, no matter what you see on TV. But it quickly becomes a simple task if you learn how to do it properly from the start.

If you are prepared to spend a little money, I would suggest you look at the basic Ulead products like VideoStudio.

[samoyed]

HI guns1inger,

Thank You for getting back to me.
It sounds complicated to me coz I am new to it but I am gonna try.

Question:
Is there a free software available that could encode and author?

Thanks a bunch!

[guns1inger]

There are few,however the all come with caveats.

GUIForDVDAuthor is a freeware DVD authoring tool, however it does not encode video. DVD Styler is also free, based on the same engine as GUIForDVDAuthor, and also does not encode. Both are worth looking into for authoring.

For encoding you can either learn how to encode manually using HCEnc and AviSynth for video, and Aften for AC3 audio, or you can find a front end tool. However the front-end tools tend to be all-in-one tools that will encode and author a disc for you, but you have little control over menus.

One method that does work is to use FAVC as the front-end for your encoding. It uses AviSynth, HCEnc and Aften, and authors a finished disc. However the menus are simple text menus, and not very attractive. What is does have though, is an option to keep the working files. So you can use FAVC to encode your video(s), and when it is done, delete the finished disc it has built, and the use the video and audio streams it created along the way in GUIForDVDAuthor or DVD Styler.

[samoyed]

Thanks guns1inger!

I am going to get started!

[guns1inger]

Good luck

[pepegot1]

Use VideoStudio Pro X2. It does a good job as I have intermixed videos and pics with it. You will have to pay for it, but it is easy to learn and can do it all, at a low price..

[samoyed]

Hi guns1inger & pepegot1,

Do you know where I can find a detailed tutorial of Videostudio Pro X 2 on how to intermix video and pics.

I could read it and then decide if I wanna purchase it.

Thank You

[samoyed]

Hi,

Its ok I found the tutorial. Thanks!