When I back up my DVD's, I like to create VCD's or SVCD's with exact chapter points, i.e., the chapter points fall on exactly the same frame that they did on the original DVD. The method I use to do that (in a nutshell) is as follows:

1) Rip
2) Run ChapterXtractor to find the frame numbers at which each chapter starts
3) I look at the timecodes in ChapterXtractor and figure out how many discs I will need, and which chapters will go on each disc
4) Create a project with DVD2AVI, never using the Forced Film option
5) Run IVTC in TMPGEnc and set up to frame-serve
6) Save the TMPGEnc project
7) Convert the TMPGEnc project to .avi with VFAPI
Load the .avi file into TMPGEnc
9) Using the forced picture type setting on the GOP tab, I specify the chapter frames as GOP I-frames
10) I save the project as X different projects, where X is the number of discs
11) Using the Advanced Source Range option, I set up which part of the .avi file will be encoded for each disc. This will be accurate to the exact frame
12) Batch encode
13) Demux and remux with bbMpeg

Of course, you can also modify these steps a little and encode with CCE, running pulldown.exe after encoding and before muxing with bbMpeg.

Then I usually use vcdgen (from VCDImager) to create a basic XML file, then I edit it to add menus, chapter points, etc. However, this can be a royal pain copying and pasting so much stuff. To make the XML file creation easier, I wrote a utility where I can type in just a few parameters along with my chapter point frame numbers, and it will generate all the XML files for me. The utility will generate code for VCD's and SVCD's, although I have only tried it with SVCD's so far.

In any case, I know this utility will only be useful if you are doing frame-accurate chapter points in a DVD backup, like I am doing. It is not a full-fledged GUI for VCDImager like TSCV! It doesn't have anywhere near that much capability. However, it does make things go a lot faster for me.

Right now, the utility requires that you have a single menu (still or video) with a selection for each of your chapters. It also requires that you have a still or video at the end that says, "the end", or "please insert disc 2 of 3", or whatever. The menu structure works as follows: You see the main menu first. Pressing a number key will take you to that chapter. Pressing the Return key at any point will take you back to the menu. The menu times out after 60 seconds, and starts playing chapter 1. When any chapter is playing, you can press the next and prev buttons to go to the next or previous chapters. I think you get the idea.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in this type of utility, please email me and I will try to get it to you. I would be interested in seeing what people think of it, and if you find it useful. Again, this thing doesn't aspire to be like TSCV, VCDComposer, etc. It is just a simple utility that I have found useful.

BTW, I call the thing "VCDig"

- digvid