Capturing Menus from DVD

[jacklimpin]

Can you extrapolate and use a Menu off a DVD ? I appreciate you could just capture the screen and create a new menu from scratch, but some menus have sound and are animated. If the links do not work, can't you just re-assign them ? I use TMPGenc Author 3 to create a new DVD, and initally assumed everything would be imported and available to edit, but the menus are never shown. DVDShrink shows the menu but I cannot access it. I suppose what I am asking for is a program that will allow importation and editing of a pre-recorded menu, as well as DVD authoring capabilities.

[Baldrick]

Have you tried DVDremake Pro ?

[jacklimpin]

No I haven't tried DVDremaker pro. I've also just seen a post for VobBlanker and editing menus. I'll try these first and post the results.

[jacklimpin]

Not as easy as I thought. Obviously from a layman's point of view you should copy the menu, add the movie tracks you want to run, link them to the menu and compile. Dvdremake pro, as others have said, has limited help so you are in the dark really. Vobblanker is no easier. Add to the mix a menu that has many layers, animation and sound, and it gets complex. Whilst dissappointed, i'll stick with static screen grabs. It's easy to do, and I can spend my time on other things.

[usually_quiet]

You are right, it does take some work (maybe too much) to modify an existing menu and re-use it, especially if you do it manually, without benifit of DVDRemake Pro. On its own merits, a project like this may not make sense, however if you want to get into designing and authoring more complex original menus, picking apart an existing one can be very instructive.

Of course, you have to have a good underatanding of how the menu functions too (button order and what they do) in order to reproduce it, and sometimes what you think of as one menu is actually several. Investigating it thouroughly is the first step. If the menu is not too complex, and you know what you are doing, it's sometimes possible to re-use at least some of it.

Sometimes there's an intro section that plays before the actual menu is availble. If you need to change that too, then that's probably too much work to be practical. However if you don't, there are really only two layers in the menu once it is on the DVD, one for everything that is normally visible and one for the button highlights.

The video and audio for the motion menus can be demultipexed and used as assets for re-authoring. There's a way to extract the button highlghts too with Subrip or DVDSubEdit if you need to re-use them. Some buttons in the menu probably can't be identical though and must be overlayed with new graphics using your authoring program. You may have to use a graphics program too in order to make nice pictures for the buttons.