Ok, I recommend this software all over the place so I thought I should write a brief guide to using it for all those allergic to reading the pdf's that come with the software. When you open DVD Lab Pro you see the main windows in the background and you have a dialogue box. Choose your target system Pal or NTSC and then select the top option (Normal VTS Menu + Movie) and click OK. Close the tips box and you have your main interface. (See next pic) In the main window you will see 2 windows, one called CONNECTIONS and one called MOVIE 1. At the bottom of the screen is another window called the ASSETS window (there are tabs at the bottom of it called Video & Audio/Backgrounds/Objects etc. To the top left you will see a dirctory tree window relating to your project. For now we'll use the Assets window. Your video files need to be MPG's already, if you havent encoded to mpg yet use TMPGEnc express or similar to create an mpeg from your avi. Right click in the assets window and choose IMPORT, you can then browse to your films and select them (you can multiple select within the same window so you can get them all in one go). Click OK and this will bring your films into DVD Lab. You may get a warning dialogue about demultiplexing, just select the highly recommended option and OK for each film you have imported. You should now have 2 files for each film in your ASSETS window, an Audio and a Video. Lets assume you are authoring a DVD of TV episodes. We have 4 episodes starting with episode 1. To make keeping track of things easy we'll use common sense and episode 1 will be Movie 1. Click and drag the Episode 1 video file from the Assets window onto the window MOVIE 1. It will now look like a shortened timeline. Click and drag the Audio file for Episode 1 and drop it just below the video in Movie 1 (called audio 1). This is now the first movie that can be worked with in your project. For Episodes 2 - 4 we need to open a new movie window for each episode. This can be done by ALT+M or by going to MOVIE>Add New. You then simply repeat the process for Movie 1 for each of these episodes. [bold]If you want a SCENES selection menu on your root menu then for each movie you need to go to the MOVIE menu and choose auto chapters. I normally opt for 6 chapters. Ok it, and then with each movie you created repeat this process.[/bold] If you've done it correctly you should now have 4 movies. I'm going to assume here that the file sizes are all ok and we are not going to have any problems fitting these episodes onto a DVD. In the bottom right of the screen will be a size indicator that will be either green or red depending on the size of data. We can shrink down the sizes of the mpg's but thats a mini guide of its own so I'll do that at the end, for now we're assuming everything is OK!! Ok, so far so good and nothing taxing at all, simple and straightforward, with practice you'll be doing this blindfolded!! Now we have our movies loaded into our project we need a MENU so this is where we look to our PROJECT DIRECTORY window. Notice the Menu directory and the file MENU 1, double click it. In the main window you will now see the menu window with a black background. I find it useful to maximise this window while I create the menu. If you look at the tabs at the bottom of the Assets window you will see one called BACKGROUNDS. Click it and then choose a background by clicking it and dragging it onto your menu background. Looking pretty already isn't it lol!! Now to the left of your Menu 1 window you will see a VERTICAL toolbar where the text type is indicated as [bold]Aa[/bold]. Click this. Now its your choice what you write but for each different episode and any scene selection menus you must create a different text object due to the way we link them. So what we will do is this. For your first text object put it somewhere near centre top and call it TV Shows Episodes 1-4. You can change the text colour and effects such as shadowing and bevelling in the properties window top right. Now create a new text object called Episode 1 and place it somewhere to the left of centre say. Create another text object and call it scenes and place this just below Episode 1. Then repeat this for episodes 2-4 but have a significant gap between each one obviously. See pic below. Creating our main links now is really easy. From the Project Directory window click and drag Movie 1 and drop it onto the text for Episode 1. Easy wasn't it, that now links the words Episode 1 to Episode 1. Now we drag Movie 2 to Episode 2, 3 to 3 and 4 to 4. We're nearly ready to compile our dvd, all we have to do now is get our scene selection menus sorted. To do this we click on the words Episode 1 in our Menu window. See Pic above. We then click the wizard button (a magic wand) and choose Add Scene Selection Menus. Choose a scene selection background and note there are 3 drop down menus in this dialogue window. We need to concentrate only on the MOVIE dropdown. As we are working with Movie 1/Episode 1 we leave it at movie 1, but for Episodes 2 - 4 when we repeat this process we obviously change the movie drop down to the repsctive movie so episode 2 is movie 2 and 3 is 3 etc. Click OK and you will be asked do you want to create Scene Selection Menus to which you obviouosly say YES. It will then use the chapters you created with Auto chapters and probably prompt you with a reminder to create a link for it in Menu 1. Don't worry cos we're going to do that now. In the reminder prompt it says exactly where you need to point to. It's usually Scenes 1 for Movie 1. Click OK. Now Click SCENES that we created just below Episode 1. RIGHT Click it and choose LINK>Scenes 1 for Movie 1. (For each episode it'll be slightly different, Scenes 1 for Movie 2, Scenes 1 for Movie 3, you get the idea!) And that's it. Your scene selections are done. Repeat this process for each Episode and you are ready to compile your DVD. We compile our DVD first to our hard drive where we then burn from. To compile our DVD we go to the PROJECT menu and choose Compile DVD (Project>Compile DVD). You may at various points get minor issue warnings indicated by glasses as tips (this will make sense if you are using the program) I usually just OK these and have never had any problems. you will likely get one of these here but as I say click OK. Only if there is a serious issue should you not continue. Choose your output directory and then click START. Leave it to get on with it's stuff, a full dvd norm takes me around 20-30 mins max. Hooray we now have DVD ready files to be burnt in the ever familar VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders. You can choose your own software to burn these but I usually stick with DVD Lab and we burn from there just as easily as we compiled. PROJECT>Burn DVD. Confirm and burn!! Congratulations, you have now just made a multi title DVD with full root menu and scene selection menu. Although it took a lot of text to describe the process I'm sure you will agree that that was fairly quick, easy, efficent and pain free!! I hope I've covered all of the basics and from there you can get going. If you have any questions or comments just ask!! Good luck )
Hazey - excellent guide! Couple of suggestions though: why don't you convert it to a pdf file so we can print or save it? and how about making the pictures bigger so they can be read more clear?
Nice Guide Hazey! You talk about creating an MPEG from the avi files using TEMPenc or other which can then be imported into dvd lab. When i try to use TEMPenc the files always come out too big e.g 700mb comes out at 2.36gb, and so limits the amount of video i can get on a DVD. Is there any way to adjust the target size of the .mpg file? I have also tried many other programs like DIKO but the output is always wrong, can you suggest any other good way of converting lots of avi files e.g. 8*350mb files that can fit on to 1 dvd? thanks
When you create file in TMPGEnc it does create a huge file yes. In the assets window of DVDLabPro there is a mini toolbar across the top. The very last one lets you reduce the size of your mpeg. Click it and its straight forward, you can reduce up to 70%. I'm still working on other ways to get smaller mpegs, I norm get 4-5 episodes of lost to a dvd single layer.
cheers Hazey, i'll give it a try. Also, how much does the quality drop when you reduce the size? I'm also trying to find different ways, Quenc seems to give smaller mpgs than TEMPenc + quality seems as good.
With every reduction in size comes a loss of quality however if you reduce to 70% of original size then quality loss is fairly unnoticeable. Below this and you will start to see differences in quality more noticeably. Remember to delete the original mpeg out of the assets window as the reduced file is there as a new mpeg.
kfumaster, you might want to try nerovision to put alot of AVI's onto one DVD. I use it to put 4 episodes of whatever TV show onto one disk. You can make menus real easy too. Also, I was reading in here recently that if you burn the files to a DVD as data files, the size stays the same. I haven't tried that yet but I imagine you wouldn't have menu availability.
Irish did you read the thread, I also get 4 -5 episodes of a show to a disc. nero is ok but DVD Lab Pro is much more powerful.
sorry Hazey, wasn't trying to step on toes. I just thought maybe he already had Nero and didn't know about nerovision.
Fair point. I'm really busy with work at mo but I'll prepare a PDF as soon as I can (I typed on fly for the guide) and I'll have it available to email to peeps by end of week.
Just wanted to say thanks! I've been trying to figure out how to make a multi-title DVD forever but I couldn't follow some of the other guides/work with some of the other software about. But, this was really helpful! I managed to make my first multi-title DVD with no problems...so thanks!
No worries Scarlet, glad it helped. I'm still working away and living in hotels at mo, making the pdf is still on my mind and it will be available as soon as I am home.
hi guys yes dvdlab pro is the best. many things you can find it in this program that you can't find anywhere else. the best thing is that you can do motion menu, like a menu with a movie wich is very professional and good, second you can add transitions between your menus, third you have options to create menus that never ends, what about the subtitiles?? what about creating buttons with different colors or hiding buttons?? what about converting your audio into dolby digital or AC3?? this program is really perfect. i used before DVDit, but it's kinda baby equal to dvdlab pro, nero is good but for amateurs, no professional options, sonic scenarist is very good but it's like you working in "dos" and not window, adobe encore is good too but still have limits. about the pdf file, well i have it guys, but the problem you need time to read it, it's 260 pages hehehe, i finished like 150 pages and when i arrived to the exciting notes i get tired. also dvdlab pro have the NTSC color, that's mean it reduces from your menu color like 10% so you can see it clear while you watching it on your ntsc system. guys i'm here today to look about something concerning the VOB files, i want to join VOB files together in 1 big file, and i want to convert them too into mpeg2 or edit them. i tried vob edit and videoredo and i didn't like it, i had problems. If someone have ideas, tell me pls and i can help in dvdlab pro thanx
there is a pdf included with the software that covers everything you will need to know. the pdf I was going to create was just this quickstart guide in pdf form. PM me your emails and I can send you the software pdf.
yes you are right hazey there is the big pdf like 260 pages wich is very hard to read it all but it's for professional working and there is like a small pdf it show you just the basics like 3 pages for amateurs.
NEWTECH - I will but it will only be a pdf of this guide here the only advantage will be being able to zoom on the pics. home tomo so send out pdf's then
Thanks for all that info. I have one question on it though, will this work with AVI's that require a DivX codec? Thanks Gogz
