DVD Menu Authoring Software?

Johnny Versace

Hello,

I have two questions please.

1. Is there any good (and cheapish) DVD menu software out there? I want to be able to make nice arty menus.

2. Is it possible to stick a load of AVI files on a DVD and have a menu pointing to them so they play no problem?

Thanks in advance.

JV

davmigil

1. Ulead DVD Movie Factory is cheap and cheerful. It creates motion menus too. There is a fully functioning 30 day trial version on the download page.

http://www.ulead.com/dmf/runme.htm


Tmpgenc DVD author is meant to be good too, but I haven't tried it myself.
http://www.tmpgenc.com/

2. Not sure what you mean by Q2.

If you mean a DVD that will play on a PC, you could just have a html page with links pointing to the AVI files.

If you want them to play on a standalone DVD player, you will first need to convert them to DVD compliant MPEG2 files. Depending on what format the AVIs are in you could use something like the tmpgenc encoder (also accessible from the above link) to convert them to MPEG2 (again 30 day trial version available). I use Cinema Craft Encoder Basic because its quicker and I prefer the results (again trial version available but puts in watermark logo; its not to dear to buy anyway ).

http://www.cinemacraft.com/eng/home.html

If you are using a video editing package to edit your own footage it may have an option of outputting to MPEG2, so you could use that instead of the encorder.

You can then import the encoded MPEG2 into Ulead DVD creator, add a menu and some music if you want and then use the built in DVD burning feature to burn them to your disc.

Check out www.doom9.org (especially the forums) too.
All the best,

Dave

Johnny Versace

Thanks for the help Dave

Ponster

It's also possible to use a Nero plugin (version 5+) to convert the avi's to mpegs.

While Nero isn't probably as good as Tmpgenc, there's a bigger chance that you already have it and all you'll need is the plugin (Nero Re-encode I think it's called).