Making menus/setlist for DVD on a Mac

[U2Lynne]

I've got a few DVDs that have no nice startup screen, no setlist, and they are just chaptered every five minutes (or so). I don't want to seed them in that condition. I'm on a Mac and have all the standard mac tools - iMovie, iDVD - is there a tutorial someone can point me towards that would tell me how to add a menu/startup screen and how to index this correctly?

[wbaetz]

Hi Lynne. I've had good luck at VideoHelp.com. The site is mostly geared towards Windows of course, but there is some Mac related expertise there as well. I usually check out the Mac forum http://forum.videohelp.com/viewforum.php?f=9&sid=sid%3D3e556c22dbeb3d4e13446da2437ae934

I've generally found answers to most of my video related questions there, although I haven't progressed to the level of DVD authoring (yet).

Hope this helps!

[U2Lynne]

You are right, of course. Here I recommend that site all the time (including the Mac forum which I have posted in and gotten great help) and yet I forget about it when I need it!

[saltman]

I think most people use Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro for mac. You may find that the programs you have can't handle .vob files directly. You may have to demux them into the elementary streams mpg and wav (or ac3). Then make menus and recombine them. I know only a few pc programs can work with the .vob files without demux. Make sure you don't render when you recombine them.

[willndmb]

you don't want iMovie or final cut UNLESS those are the programs to work with the vobs
for the menu itself you will want to use iDVD of DVD SP
poss combined with photoshop

[wilson]

i would defintely get dvd studio pro..... its actually easier to use than idvd and can do what you want it to do rather than having to use chessy templates on everything....


.. and why not... since apple is nice enough to let everyone use there programs for free

[AAR.oner]

DVD Studio Pro, but i'm pretty sure you'll need to demux first...if someone can answer definitively on that i'd appreciate it

[ffooky]

Yep, you absolutely positively do have to demux first.

A much cheaper option that will accept muxed MPEG-2 input is MovieGate .

[AAR.oner]

thats what i thought, but it had been a long time since i used anything from a .vob source...cheers ffooky

lynne, here's a program i've used to demux [seems to be a decent prog for the task], but if you find something better let me know
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html

[pawel]

Be very careful with demuxing. Most home made videos are not fully follow DVD standard, and contain a lot of errors - dropped or/and too long frames, not correctly synched audio etc. Oryginal video may play fine, as these errors are almost not visable. However, some demuxers try to correct these errors, and very often end with more bugs like cuts on video and audio.

So, demux with high quality programes, which may check and report potenatinal problems, and also offer various options for stream "embellish" One of such very good freeware and cross platform progie is Project X: http://sourceforge.net/projects/project-x

[U2Lynne]

Wow, this is a lot more complicated than I realized. But, I will give it a go. It's good to learn new things.... right?

[U2Lynne]

Hmmmm, OK, I downloaded MPEG Streamclip 1.8 (Aaron's link) and imported the VIDEO_TS folder and told it to Yes, fix the timecode breaks. I played it and it looks and sounds fine (in sync), but now what? Export to DV? Demux to M2V and AC3? (I know it is AC3, 256 kbps). Right now I'm trying Export to DV and it's making one big ass file! The original VIDEO_TS folder is 3.77 GB and so far this export is a bit over 2 GB and only 10% done (which leads me to think the end result will be 20 GB!). Does that sound right or should I be doing the second option to Demux to M2V and AC3?

(Sorry for the perhaps stupid questions, but this could lead to a tutorial if I figure this out. )

[ffooky]

You can use the M2V/AC3 option. I have no idea what the audio portion of a DV stream is but using the demuxed streams would avoid any conversion/recompression of the audio (if that's indeed what might be involved).

You're blazin' a trail for us here Lynne

[AAR.oner]

i'm with ffooky, go the m2v/ac3 route...but to answer re: the files size for dv, yeah that sounds about right...one hour of dv runs a little over 12GB on average

[pawel]

U2Lynne, .DV file is in fact AVI. Such conversion of course degrades oryginal video because you first recompress *.VOB (MPEG2) files to AVI then compress again to VOB format. It's lossy process in both directions.

When you dumux VOBs, you separate them into video and audio stream only, and you do not re/compress anything.