Ok guys ... you may consider this a stupid, dumb newbie question ... and I'll agree that to you guys it is, but here goes. What I want to do is to take, for example, two of my old Charlie Chan movies and put them on one dvd. That I have accomplished thanks to DVDShrink and DVD Decrypter. Problem is to get to the second movie I have to either watch movie one or fast forward through it. What I want to do: add, for example, a chapter title(s)/heading (for lack of a better word) that would say something like: Charlie Chan in The Chinese Cat and Charlie Chan in Reno. Then by clicking on Reno, for example, jump immediately to that movie, thus bypassing movie Chinese Cat. Any suggestions (other than jump in the lake?) would be helpful. Oh and I have looked through many of the forums but can't find the answer. Thanks again.
Hi jim1812, This is not a bad question at all! The perfect program for doing this is DVD Lab. With DVD Lab, making a menu as you described would be easy. DVD Lab requires a bit of learning on your part but once you spend a few hours with it you will find it rather easy to create all sorts of cool things. Here is a good first project guide: http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/mpg/dvd-lab.htm I recommend you download the 30 day trial of DVD Lab: www.mediachance.com/dvdlab If you decide to use this program and have any problems or questions, let me know! Cheers, Frank
jim, frank knows his sheeaat, he has given me a few ideas concerning menu developing. Dvdlab is great for creating menus, more than I'll ever know probably. lol One drawback, it costs 99.00, if you want something a little cheaper and still does a good job, in Nero Ultra 6 you can use nerovision express to create menus and combime titles as long as they don't exceed 4.3g's( if they exceed that size, you can do them in another app, then go into NVE). It does a very good job(not on dvdlab's level, but very nice) and you get all the other programs in ultra 6's package, recode, dvd cover design, burning rom, cds, PC backup, and a whole lot more. You can get the entire package at eagletronics for 49.00, it normally costs 99.00, that's a steal. Just a thought......
Thanks bigorange! I have been having a great time with DVD Lab. It is just fun to use and after looking at the prices of some of the other programs that do the same thing, I think its a bargain. Spending that kind of money does require a commitment and I think a decision would have to be made before the trial runs out! I agree about using the Nero programs, that might be a way to get used to the business of creating menus. Lots of folks have Nero and don't even know what they are missing, IMHO. Cheers, Frank
lol, totally agree frank, of course you know I went ahead and got it. God forbid I let a trial app expire and not buy it! I've been playing around in it. The more I learn the more I realize I don't know. Five months and counting on my little project. lol thanx for all the help, see ya! PS-checked out your link, I've got three guides, now make it four! _X_X_X_X_X_[small] [bold]GO VOLS![/bold]........Dell Media4600, XP home,Pentium 4 @2.80GHz/800Mz, 512MB, 280 HD w/8MB, 17" flat panel, AIO-A920, 8x DVD-ROM, integrated 5.1 audio, HP dc4000, Plextor PX-708UF[/small]
Hi again bigorange, I just downloaded the trial for Adobe Premiere Pro a week ago. I had to buy the "for Dummies" book just to start the thing. I have been working my way through it and am starting to get the hang of it. I think those guys that made "405 the movie" used it. Have you seen this? http://www.405themovie.com/Home.asp Anyhow, I'm having to decide how deep I want to get into all of this video stuff. I know exactly what you mean when you said "The more I learn the more I realize I don't know". Sometimes I wish I could conjure up an expert to help me out when I get stuck on something. I guess thats why I spend so much time at AD. Lots of experts here, right? Actually I go to several other forums and lurk around, Doom 9 etc. I think I've seen you over at Digital Video forums talking about new Shrink upgrades. I've seen Pete floating around the web as well. Its always cool to find fellow ADers. I always try and use my AD handle out and about so others can recognize me as well. Cheers, Frank
frank, that is absolutely hilarious, I put it on my desktop. What a great site, you can't see me but I'm rolling over here! Oh yeah, I been cruising around, thought I'd seen you too. I like AD the best tho. See ya! (still laughing)
TMPGenc DVD Author 1.5 also allows you to create menus and burn dvds (with the appropriate files ofcoarse).
Hi guys: Fasfrank: thanks for the info on dvdlab pro. while I dont mind spending $$ for good programs, my wife gave me this response ...'$99 FOR WHAT???? BS!!!' guess i won't be getting that particular program for a while! lol But i do think i will attempt to get the trial version and give it a shot! Bigorange: thanks to you for the same info. I do have Nero version 6 so i probably have what you are talking about! I am like a lot of the guys in that if i get a program and it does what i originally bought it for, then i dont bother to check out its other parts! duhhhhhhhhhh lol F1drake: thanks for the info about Tmpgenc ... i'll try to locate it and give it a shot as well. It is really nice being able to go to a site and find such helpful folks. Especially in this site. I've been to others and for some strange reason or other unless I am a comp guru I can pretty much take a long walk off a short pier. thanks again to you all. see you online sometime i hope and i can let you know how my adventure turned out. Jim1812
Hi Jim, Nero has some tutorials at their website, here's a link: http://www.nero.com/us/631956523192996.html Oscar, the author of DVD-Lab, seems to have beta versions of the program available much of the time.It seems like every time one 30 day trial is about to expire, another beta version shows up. If he ever finishes the pro version, I'll buy it! It's a beta 5 right now so it has been out a few months. He also came out with a free beta version of standard DVD-Lab. 1.4b2 I think. I haven't opened my 1.3 in quite a while! I finally got around to backing up LOTR ROTK. What a long movie! I just split the thing in two and added a simple menu to each disc . I made an insert disc 2 clip using some camcorder footage, windows movie maker, and NeroVision Express. NVE has some pretty good text features. Check it out! By the way, welcome to our club! Cheers, Frank _X_X_X_X_X_[small]motorcycle racer computer newbie Sony VAIO Suzuki GSXR1000 [/small]
Frank: Thanks for the info about Nero. I'll try to go out there today and find what I need. I took a quick gander and after I saw they had 35 millions guides, i said to hell with it (since I have decided to treat myself to the movie King Arthur today!) and will do it later tonite or tomorrow. I think it will take longer than a quick perusal to find under Nerovision Express or wherever the menu making program!!! Next, I have tried since yesterday to d/l the DVDLab Pro to no avail. Fact is the site keep showing up as non-existant! I even removed all the security on my comp to no avail. Perhaps he is just down for a while and will come back later on. I did get the instructions for it from another site tho ... all 21 pages of it!! Oh well I was looking for some bathroom reading material!! lol. (FYI TempGENc has just about the same number of pages for its instructions. What ever happened to the old days of insert disc, hit this button, enjoy????) Thanks, again Jim
jim, you would be surprised at the ease of menu creation in NVE., believe you me I'm no guru when it comes to constructing menus that frank is. I'm working with DVDLab right now and tho it has many more options it is quite a bit more complicated, stands to reason, don't it? NVE is a perfect starting point, plus it will convert your files and burn them for you. When you're done it has a little software remote control that you use to operate your "dvd". Anything you don't like or doesn't work you just go back and redo. When it meets your approval, then ya burn. Very simple, but a nice product when finished.
Hi guys, I tried going to mediachance.com again and it still seems to be down. I'm getting a "to many people using server" message. It's been down a couple of days now. Well I finally finished disc 1 of Return of the King. I split it into two discs. The split point was to abrupt and actually looked like the movie had failed. This is what I did: I want the transition to my "insert disc 2" video to just have the last scene of the movie fade away, then a moment of black, then a fade in to the "insert disc video". Once the insert video plays for a few seconds, background music begins, and a moment later text begins to scroll across the screen. The first thing I did was to split the movie into two halves. I used Shrink's start/end feature to select a split point roughly at the end of chapter 29, then scrolled to scene change and selected the actual split point. I then backed up this first half to a folder on my HDD. To make a smooth transition at the end, I needed to apply a fade of some sort. You cannot apply a fade unless there is something to fade into (when using NVE) so I needed a "black" video with the fade applied between the end of the video and the black video. The fade needed to be about 3 seconds in duration. A point or two... These simple appearing things take a bunch of time to accomplish. Because I'm using NVE for the transition effect, I have to know the quirks and limitations of the program. So first I performed an experiment to see how it would work. I took a short clip and a black video clip and then added them in NVE. I attempted to apply the transition (zoom fade) between the two clips. It wouldn't work. NVE turned my black video into a 0.3 second segment even though it was a 15 second clip to begin with. The problem is that the transition duration is limited by the length of the video it is transitioning into. For example, if the clip following after the transition effect is three seconds long, the transition maximum duration is then limited to 1.5 seconds. I needed a 3 second transition so my black video clip needed to be 6 seconds minimum. Kinda hard to to do if NVE keeps turning them into 0.3 second long clips. The solution to this was to create my black clip in Windows Movie Maker. I loaded a black .jpg image into the slide show feature and set a duration of 6 seconds. I applied two "invisible" effects to this black picture: Fade in from black and fade out from black. Once this was done, I backed it up to my HDD as a high quality .wmv file. I now had a black video clip that would not be reduced by NVE. Whew. The next thing I did was to load the four .vobs of "disc 1" into NVE, along with my 6 second .wmv black clip. Once this process was completed I added these assets into the story board along with the zoom fade transition. I set the duration of the transition to 3 seconds and backed up the whole thing to my hard drive. This completed the first "asset" of my project: The first half of the movie with a zoom fade at the end of the last scene. The next thing I needed was a "insert disc 2" clip. Rather than use one available from DVD Shrink.info or other sources, I decided to make my own. I had some summer storm footage on my camcorder that I thought would look nice so I used it, along with some some .jpg images and an audio track as well. I used NVE to assemble all the parts with text, transitions, audio and video effects and burned it to another folder on my hard drive. I now had all the assets to complete the project in DVD-Lab. In DVDL I created a menu to select either the movie or my "insert disc 2" music video. I used the main movie as "movie 1" and my "insert disc 2" video as movie 2. Movie 1 links to movie 2 directly and once movie 2 finishes, it is set to return to the menu. The menu buttons link to movie 1 and movie 2 with a loop set if nothing is selected. I did not create a chapters menu yet, I don't know if I will or not. Well, thats how I managed to spend two days working on the first half of LOTR ROTK. Now for the 2nd half! Just one more note. When using text effects in NVE, don't count on it being sized correctly for your final rendering. For some reason it seems to get a lot bigger during the process. My "Insert disc 2" looked like "sert disc" the first time around even though the NVE preview looked correct. Once you finish rendering to your hard drive, take a look at it with your media player. Sorry for the long post! Cheers, Frank _X_X_X_X_X_[small]motorcycle racer computer newbie Sony VAIO Suzuki GSXR1000 [/small]
Very cool frank, I am suitably impressed! One question, since I am working on a video project right now. Could all this not have been done in DVDLab, or was it just easier in NVE? I am doing a slide show with a bunch of family digital photos and for opening and closing the dvd I want too add film footage, maybe something like you did with a fade. This would all be on ONE disc of course. Would it be better to assemble in lab, then burn and create in NVE? I thought lab would make a better menu? PS- I may now bug you to death. all long replies are accepted. lol I know you can burn out of lab, cos I did it using dvd2dvdr. _X_X_X_X_X_[small] [bold]GO VOLS![/bold]........Dell Media4600, XP home,Pentium 4 @2.80GHz/800Mz, 512MB, 280 HD w/8MB, 17" flat panel, AIO-A920, 8x DVD-ROM, integrated 5.1 audio, HP dc4000, Plextor PX-708UF[/small]
