Any branded DVD disc contains a menu with which you can start playing a video, select a movie episode, or access settings. Such a menu can also be made for a disc created at home. If it is supposed that an amateur film will be viewed on a TV screen using a household DVD player, then such a menu is simply necessary. It is much easier to spend time creating episodes and buttons to quickly jump to them once than to rewind to the right moment every time you watch. Programs for working with a DVD menu may also be needed if you want to make changes to an existing disc, for example, discard additional materials from it and edit the menu accordingly.
Developer: MasterSoftDistribution size: 9 Mb
Distribution: shareware Using Super DVD Creator, you can not only create a menu for a DVD, but also link such a disc. The program contains three modules: for creating a DVD based on video files, adding a menu and burning the result to a disc. You can run each module separately, but in many cases it is more convenient to use the DVD Disk Builder wizard, which guides you through all the steps of creating a disc.
At the first stage, you can compose a DVD from several video files. For each video added to the project, detailed information is displayed, the file itself can be viewed in the preview window. In addition, you can add subtitles. The bar at the bottom of the screen clearly shows how much space is left on the media. It is important that Super DVD Creator supports not only ordinary DVD-5 discs, but also double-layer discs (DVD-9).
After the disk layout is complete, you can proceed to create a menu. There are several background images to choose from, but you can upload any background image from your hard drive, as well as add music.
By default, a preview icon is generated for each video file based on the first frame. As a rule, this is not very convenient, since the first frame is rarely indicative. To change the frame that the video file will be presented in the menu, simply click on the icon and find the desired location using the control buttons and the preview window.
If the video files you'll be burning to DVD are longer than 10 minutes, it might make sense to create snippets not only for each clip, but also to quickly jump to the middle of them. To have the program automatically create fragments every 10, 15, or 20 minutes, you must select the Setup Chapter Property command. The frequency with which fragments will be created can be set manually. Then all that remains is to burn a DVD, which can be done directly in the program. Developer: Protectedsoft
Distribution size: 10 Mb
Distribution: shareware As a rule, DVD-authoring programs have a fairly large distribution. If this is not the case, then this means that there are no ready-made templates in the program. This, of course, can be regarded as a drawback, but, on the other hand, the menu can also be created based on any images available on the hard disk. Video DVD Maker Pro belongs precisely to those programs that do not indulge in a variety of templates. The library that comes with Video DVD Maker Pro has only five background images, so you will most likely have to take care of finding the right image. Like many programs of this kind, Video DVD Maker Pro is built in the form of a wizard. First you need to select a background image for the menu and specify the project type. Since the program interface is Russified, there should be no problems with this: you can capture from a video camera, make a selection from ready-made video files or photos, etc.
For each video file that is added to the project, a separate chapter (chapter) will be created on the DVD. Chapters play a very important role on a DVD, because it is the links to them that are placed in the menu. In other words, partitions need to be created for easy navigation through the future disk. If the video files that are being burned to DVD are large enough, you can add additional chapters to quickly move not only to the beginning of the clip, but also to other fragments. The next step after creating sections is adding a menu. Since so many users often dream of a "magic button" that would do all the work for them, the creators of Video DVD Maker Pro added a button, which they called Magic Button. When you click on it, the program analyzes the project and creates a menu with links to the main sections. After that, you can manually select the location of each menu item, as well as set the transparency and even add a depth effect, that is, make the menu items three-dimensional. By highlighting the menu items, in the Layer Properties group, you can see which fragments of the disk they refer to. It is also possible to add additional menu items. The Add Audio button is used to add background music that will accompany the menu loading. Finally, it is worth mentioning that you can choose some settings for the background image, in particular, choose the scale.
Video DVD Maker Pro can also burn a disc. The creators of the program did not forget about the need to create a cover for the disc. It is very convenient that the cover is generated automatically and contains the title of the disc and the background image selected for the menu. You can add text, images, various elements of vector graphics (ellipse, rectangle, line) to the cover. Developer: Media Chance
Distribution size: 33 Mb
Distribution: shareware All programs for creating DVD menus can be roughly divided into two types. For most users, all-in-one solutions are suitable, where you can link a disc, make a menu, and burn a DVD. However, those who create menus professionally use programs that are designed solely for this purpose. Most of these applications are very expensive and difficult to learn, but they provide almost unlimited options for creating menus. In particular, you can create multi-level menus and establish links between each element. Such programs usually do not have ready-made templates, but they support the import of Adobe Photoshop files, including those that use layers. DVD-lab Pro stands in the middle between simple DVD authoring software and professional solutions. The developers of the utility did not focus on ready-made menu templates (although there are also quite a few of them), but on individual elements and effects. Therefore, even if you decide to use a ready-made button for navigation, but add a fire or metallic sheen effect to it, it will become original. In addition, the same button can be made based on any element from the program's extensive library, for example, an emoticon or an exclamation point. The program also has ample opportunities for creating animation effects. For example, it is not difficult to create the effect of moving buttons to the places specified for them from different corners of the screen when loading a disc. With DVD-lab PRO you can create a slideshow of photos. The program allows you to add entire folders of photos at once, determine the orientation of pictures (horizontal or vertical), add background music. In addition, you can choose the frequency of frame changes, add a drop shadow effect and caption each photo. DVD-lab PRO takes into account even such trifles as the location of menu items in the so-called safe zone. This is important if you plan to watch the disc on a TV screen. On a TV screen, unlike a computer monitor, a small portion of the image may be cut off at the edge. When creating menus in DVD-lab PRO, you can observe the safe area and refrain from placing menu items in it. One of the features that brings DVD-lab PRO closer to professional editors for creating DVD menus is to view links between menu items. When switching to this mode, the disk structure is displayed as a diagram, on which each element is represented as a separate icon and signed. Elements can be moved from place to place, as well as change the relationship between them. In addition, for each of them you can set your own command, for example, turn on the karaoke disc reading mode on the DVD player. To create commands, the built-in script editor is used, which can be used in text and graphical modes.
A special tool for trapping errors will help you check the performance of the DVD. It analyzes all links, scripts, menu commands and points out possible errors. The finished project can be saved as a video file, a PSD file, and also as a template for subsequent projects.
Developer: DimadSoftDistribution size: 33 Mb
Distribution: shareware Sometimes it becomes necessary to edit an already prepared menu for a disc. For example, branded DVDs often contain intrusive ads, license agreements, trailers for other movies, and so on. You can get rid of unnecessary content and make appropriate changes to the menu using the DvdReMake Pro program. The program allows you to view the contents of the DVD in a tree structure and remove unnecessary items. To start working with the program, you need to execute the File>Import DVD command and specify the path to the VIDEO_TS folder, which is on each DVD. Then you can view the contents of the disc and delete unwanted items. To do this, select an unnecessary element, then click on it in the preview window and select the Hide Block command. The size in megabytes is specified for each item, which can be useful if the purpose of editing the DVD content is to reduce its size from a two-layer to a regular DVD-5.
With DvdReMake Pro you can not only delete unwanted content, but also edit the disc menu. It's no more difficult than working with a visual HTML editor: you can move and remove buttons, edit links between menu items. Such a function can be useful, for example, to put a link to your favorite movie episode on the first page of the menu.
Conclusion
There are many solutions for creating and editing DVD menus. Of course, the choice of a particular program depends on the goal. With Super DVD Creator and Video DVD Maker Pro, you can quickly create a simple navigation menu, and DVD-lab PRO will be useful if you want to do something more original and more complicated. Finally, if you are not just transcribing video from a camera to DVD, but are using some kind of video editor to edit it, be sure to pay attention to whether it has the ability to create a menu. Many video editing programs include DVD authoring tools as a bonus.DVD is gradually conquering the market and the issues of using software and hardware solutions to work with DVD are becoming more and more interesting for many, many people. With the hardware component, everything is more or less clear - there are DVD burners of two competing standards, there are MPEG hardware encoders for those who cannot wait hours for the results of software encoders. It remains only to understand what programs can and/or should be used to create DVD-Video discs.
This question is not as simple as it seems. A few years ago there were very few programs for DVD Authoring, they cost a lot of money even in Western terms (up to $ 30,000) and their use was the lot of only a few thousand people, 90% of whom worked in the USA. With the advent of computer DVD recorders, the situation has changed, but now there is an inflection in the other direction. The release of a program for creating DVD-Video discs has become, as it were, a matter of honor for all companies that have at least something to do with video. Manufacturers' promotional press releases are now touting any DVD-Authoring program as a universal tool, ideal for creating Hollywood Video-quality DVD-Video discs. Some of these programs even have menu templates that are modestly called Hollywood Quality. In fact, of course, this is far from the case. The list of programs that can actually create Hollywood Quality DVD-Video discs would be enough with the fingers of one hand. The inviolability of the DVD-Video standard also contributes to the mass development of DVD Authoring programs, and changing this standard is hardly possible in the foreseeable future, since tens of millions of DVD players are already installed in tens of millions of apartments and it is impossible to ignore such a number of users with a hypothetical change in the standard.
But there is one distinguishing feature that allows you to separate one group of programs from another - this is the approach to creating DVD-Video disc menus. The vast majority of new programs created for the mass user make it possible to vary both the design of the menu and the methods of choice in it only to a small extent, and most importantly, they do not allow using a video clip as a menu. This limitation significantly reduces the creative possibilities of the author of the disc.
But, unfortunately, we will not be able to discuss further the pros and cons of programs for creating DVD-Video discs without at least briefly getting acquainted with the requirements for a DVD-Video disc.
The table below shows the most important initial data parameters for the further creation of a DVD-Video disc (hereinafter, we assume that PAL is used as a television system):
| Name | Meaning |
| Frame size | 720x576, 704x576, 352x576, 352x288 |
| Frame frequency | 25 fps |
| Screen aspect ratio | 4:3 or 16:9 |
| GOP parameters ** (header required). | 30 fields, 15 frames |
| Maximum bit rate (video+audio) |
9.8 Mbps |
| Minimum Bit Rate (Video+Audio) | Not **** |
| DVD the project is used PCM sound. | 8 Mbps |
| The maximum video stream rate, if DVD the project is used Dolby Digital Stereo sound. | 9.4 Mbps |
| Audio Format | PCM (uncompressed audio), Dolby Digital Stereo or 5.1, DTS (Digital Theater System) and MPEG-1 Layer II *** |
** GOP - Group of Pictures - literally "group of pictures". An MPEG stream always consists of consecutive GOPs. Each GOP begins with a reference, or I-frame, the image in which is compressed without taking into account the video information in adjacent frames. All other GOP frames contain only information that is not in the I-frame. DVD compatible MPEG must contain only GOP with headers. The GOP header specifies parameters such as bit rate, GOP size, image aspect ratio, and so on.
*** Not recommended format. Playable only on PAL DVD players.
**** Many encoders or DVD authoring programs limit the minimum bit rate. In particular, ReelDVD does not allow you to encode static (still) menus at a rate of less than 1Mbps. Scenarist has no such restrictions.
If you carefully look at the permissible video and audio parameters for DVD-Video, it is easy to see that the video quality depends on the format in which the audio is recorded, for example, the quality of the video - if the audio is in PCM, then the maximum bitrate of the video should be much less than with Dolby Digital audio encoding. Encoding audio in MPEG-1 Layer II format gives a sound bitrate comparable to Dolby Digital, but the compressed sound quality itself is inferior to Dolby Digital at the same bitrate.
A lot in short
We can now move on to a brief analysis of the most popular DVD authoring software. Like any other similar analysis, it is partially subjective, but nevertheless:
Programs for those who do not want to spend time creating a DVD-Video discUlead MediaStudio Pro 6.5- in terms of creating a DVD, it is very simple, it practically does not have any degrees of freedom for the author, but therefore it does not have a mastering stage and any beginner can make a DVD disc on it.
Advantages:
No skills or knowledge required to create a DVD.
Speed of work - it will take 10-15 minutes to prepare the menu and you can burn a disc.
Support VCD, SuperVCD, XSVCD.
Flaws:
The movie must consist of only one file (not counting the short introductory file), and only the MPEG Program Stream format (video+audio in one file) is supported.
No other video and audio formats are supported.
The menu cannot be spoken.
The menu can only have frames from the movie as buttons, and only to the place where these frames are taken from, there can be a transition.
SpruceUP- entry-level program. There are also few degrees of freedom, but somewhat more than Ulead MediaStudio Pro 6.5. But with this program, it is impossible to make a DVD disc only by mechanically pressing Next, and you will have to perform several independent actions. Unfortunately, the developer of the Spruce Technologies program was acquired by Apple in 2001 and there will be no further development of this and a number of other Spruce line programs.
Advantages:
Dolby Digital (AC-3) audio support. The program does not have its own encoder in Dolby Digital, but it allows the use of ac3 files.
It is possible to use control buttons of your own design.
Any frame of the movie can be used to indicate a chapter.
Flaws:
The movie should consist of only one file, since the sequence of playing files is not set. At the end of playing each file, you return to the menu.
It can make a disc that is incorrect for a consumer DVD player and will only play normally on a computer DVD-ROM.
It is not possible to watch a movie without entering the menu.
Ulead DVD Movie Factory- more "advanced" version of DVD Plug-in to Ulead MediaStudio Pro. Allows the use of multiple files, allows you to voice the menu. Has a built-in MPEG encoder. Otherwise almost identical to DVD Plug-in.
Programs for advanced amateurs
Sonic DVDiT Professional Edition 2.5.2- this program, despite its simplicity, has a number of significant differences from entry-level programs.
Advantages:
No serious knowledge is required to create a DVD.
Dolby Digital Stereo sound support. Has a built-in audio encoder for this format.
A movie can consist of many files, and the playback sequence is easily determined by the user when creating a disc.
A hierarchical structure of several menus is allowed.
Watching the entire movie, including the intro clip (First Play), is possible without going to the menu.
Ability to specify the coordinates of chapters (chapters) through timecode.
Flaws:
Does not support Dolby Digital AC-3 (i.e. 5.1) six-channel audio.
Does not support motion menu.
Ulead DVD Workshop 1.3- outwardly it looks like a program that has many features of professional products, but in fact it can in no way be attributed to programs of a serious class.
Advantages:
Intuitive interface.
Support for LPCM audio.
Each menu can have its own soundtrack.
Built-in MPEG encoder.
It is possible to use control buttons, backgrounds, text, etc. own design.
To indicate the chapter (chapter) it is possible to use any frame of the film or any other picture.
Motion menus are supported.
Dolby Digital Stereo audio compression is supported when upgrading Workshop to AC-3.
Flaws:
After playing the intro clip, it always jumps to the menu.
On some DVD players the menu does not work.
The appearance of the menu can only be rather monotonous - rectangular windows for video fragments/film stills. A different look requires a significant amount of manual work from the author.
Dazzle DVD Complete- the program practically corresponds to Ulead DVD Workshop 1.3, but differs in a few more options for menu design. On the other hand, DVD Complete is more difficult to understand than DVD Workshop.
Programs for professionals and very advanced amateurs
Sonic (formerly Daikin) ReelDVD 2.5.1/3.02- semi-professional level program. Operates with subpicture, so the possibilities for disc design are great.
Advantages:
Does not require serious knowledge to create a DVD.
Intuitive interface.
Built-in Dolby Digital Stereo encoder and Dolby Digital 5.1 capability.
Since the menu is created either in a graphical or video editor, the menu design is limited only by the author's imagination.
A movie can consist of multiple files, and the playback sequence is determined by the user when creating the disc.
Flaws:
Requires an understanding of how a DVD player works.
Mastering the program only by the description to it is very difficult
Sonic (formerly Daikin) Scenarist NT 2.5/2.7- professional level program. In a nutshell, everything can be done. There is only one drawback - the program is somewhat difficult to understand and master.
So what is there to work on?
This brief overview of DVD-Authoring software certainly does not pretend to be complete, we have only covered the most well-known programs on the market. A reasonable question arises - what program to choose to create your DVD-Video discs? In our opinion, there are 3 options for this choice:
There is no desire to spend more than 15 minutes on creating a DVD-Video disc- in this case, the most appropriate choice would be to use Ulead DVD Movie Factory. Everything is simple and clear, you don’t even need to think about anything.
I want to make just a movie disc, no menus need to be made, but the disc should be played in its entirety, without going to any menus- in this variant it is easier to use Sonic DVDiT Professional Edition 2.5.2. Oddly enough, this program is no more complicated than entry-level programs, but allows you to simply link several different clips and, having made one symbolic (phantom) menu, simply put your movie on a DVD disc, easily ensuring its continuous viewing.
I'm not looking for easy ways, I want to make my DVD disc as interesting as my movie on this disc.- in this case, only ReelDVD or Scenarist NT will allow you to create any design for your disc.
Regarding the last point, I would like to tell you a little more - in our opinion, ReelDVD covers 95% of the needs of both amateurs and a number of professionals for creating their projects. Of course, Sonic Scenarist NT can do more, but its interface is a bit less visual and the features that make it different from ReelDVD may never be needed. Mastering ReelDVD, if necessary, will greatly facilitate the transition to Sonic Scenarist NT, since these programs are similar in many ways and you can easily transfer your project from ReelDVD to Sonic Scenarist NT, and this possibility is provided by the authors of both programs.
Based on materials from the site radiolocman.ru, 2004.
Making a DVD disc from existing video files in AVI, MPEG, MP4 and other formats seemed to me a simple task. But I did not assume that you also have to pay for the conversion to the de facto standard. But from the videos that are shot by a smartphone or tablet, an interesting video may well turn out.
1. Windows DVD maker
Included with Windows 7, no additional cost. It understands a bunch of file formats, you can make both a disc from video files and a presentation from photos, you can create a DVD menu. But a huge minus - the program immediately writes to disk. In my case, this turned out to be impossible, because. the drive in a laptop has long outlived its usefulness. I only wanted to make a DVD project, but I wanted to burn the DVD on a desktop computer.
2.WinX DVD Author
WinX DVD Author is found by Google when searching for free DVD authoring software. And she even works for free. You can create a menu in it. Only now the logo of the program and the message that the DVD was made a free version nullify all the possibilities of the program.
3.DVD Styler
It turns out that there are still programmers who just do good to other users. Alex Thuring has released a DVD Styler program with which you can create a DVD from a set of video files in different formats. The program contains several nice menu templates.
For this, there are programs for creating DVD-video, or, in other words, DVD-authoring. Currently, there are a huge number of such programs on the shelves (a law-abiding citizen will choose the right counter himself) and on the Internet, but this article will focus on only one of these products called DVD LAB Pro. The Canadian company has made considerable efforts in creating this program, as a result of which this product can be attributed to some extent to professional solutions. In this article, we will be able, using both the built-in techniques implemented in the program, and connecting our imagination and creative fervor, to create a full-fledged DVD-video disc. So, let's begin.
to
1. Launching the program and creating a new project
Launching the DVD-lab PRO shortcut will open a program window with a choice of parameters for our future DVD.
In the first line you need to select the color system of the project (PAL or NTSC). In Russia, as you know, PAL is used (installed by default). Now you need to select the type of your project. To create a regular DVD video, just check the box Normal. What is different Advanced from Normal, what VTS and VMG and why we considered sufficient type Normal? Each DVD disc consists of a set of films (clips) and a menu, this is VTS, that is, a kind of container in which clips and menus are stored. In DVD LAB, each VTS can contain 99 movies (clips) and 250 menus. However, all menus and all movies (clips) in one VTS must have the same settings, and if you set, say, 4:3 aspect ratio, then all clips and menus in the whole project will have the same aspect ratio, however, if you want to watch the same movie also in a wide format, for example, 16:9, then you need to create an additional VTS with 16:9 parameters. But in order for the DVD player to understand that your disc includes two VTS (4:3 and 16:9), and you need to create VMG- Video Manager (Video manager) menu. From the above, it can be assumed that the average user is unlikely to create a DVD disc with a movie about how he had fun in Turkey in two or even three formats, so only the project type is used in this tutorial Normal, which is quite enough to create an amateur DVD-video disc.
The next project property item to consider is - simple. Selecting this item will create a project with space only for the video clip ( movie).
Other items can be added by yourself, but more on that later. Paragraph Template creates an empty project, but the meaning of the phrase open project(Open project) is clear to everyone without exception. 2. Import video, sound fragments, pictures
So, in stock - an empty project for now. Pay attention to the lower part of the open program window.
It is called Asset window(the window in which our "property" will be accumulated). Here, namely in the tab Video & Audio, all video clips, pictures and sounds needed for work are imported. The rest of the tabs are various default built-in objects: Backgrounds(background pictures), Objects(objects), plug-ins(plugins), Clips(clips), music(music fragments), Images(Pictures). Import is performed in several ways, the first way is the easiest: just drag the selected file from Windows Explorer to this window. Second way: press the button Import Files and select the desired file.
The third way is to open File Browser by means of DVD Lab, to do this, click the appropriate button.
The file browser will start, from which by simply dragging it into the window Assets Window files can be imported.
However, you may notice that the file import button is present not only in the tab Audio & Video, but also in other tabs, respectively, the import will be made in the tab that is currently open. The difference is that in the tab Assess Window there is a link to video and audio fragments and pictures located in any folder you created, and when importing, say, to the tab Images, the image file is copied to the Images folder located in the directory where the program is installed. Therefore, when loading a new project, the window Assets Window will be empty, and in the tab Images you will find the pictures that are there by default, as well as pictures imported earlier (if they were imported).
Unfortunately, DVD LAB Pro can only work with certain types of files, in particular, .mpeg, .mpg, .mpa, .wav, .m2v (see ), and you need to use third-party programs to convert your video to these formats (e.g. TMpgenc, Canopus ProCoder). Importing files is done by simple transfer. In our case, these are files with the extension .m2v and .mpa. If the parameters of the files that you try to import do not match the supported ones for some reason, a window will appear with a list of errors or warnings. If you try to import one video file containing video and sound (.mpg) into the program, a window will appear containing two items: Demultiplex to Elementary Streams(Demultiplex) and Quick mode without demultiplexing(Quick Paste).
Let's talk briefly about demultiplexing. Simply put, this is an ordinary splitting of an .mpg file into its component parts, video and sound. The process of demultiplexing from one .mpg file makes two files, a video file and an audio file, which are then imported into the project. It is recommended to select demultiplexing (otherwise the program will do it for you when compiling the project), after which you will also receive 2 files, video and audio, in the Window Assets window.
Let's continue working on the project. Go to the window movie by double clicking on the tab movie in the window project.
By simply dragging files from the Assets window to the Movie window, add sound and video files.
Now in this window you have a movie track and an audio track. 3. Creation of chapters of the future film.
There are two ways to create chapters. The first is automatic chapter detection by means of DVD LAB Pro. Why do you need to select the menu item Movie>AutoChapters…
A dialog box will appear Add Chapters by Scene Detection.
In this window, you can set the sensitivity to scene changes - Scene Detection Options. The larger the value in the paragraph Sensitivity(Sensitivity) the more chapters you get. In field Chapters Distribution Type(Chapter Distribution Type) There are two options. By choosing Add X Chapters in whole movie, you will specify the number of chapters into which the movie will be divided, and the choice of the option Find all possible chapters specifies the minimum length of one chapter in minutes. Thus, if you specify a chapter duration of one minute in this field and set the maximum sensitivity to scene changes (255), then the number of chapters will be equal to the length of the movie in minutes.
The second way is to distribute chapters manually. For this you need a window preview(View).
The buttons at the top of the window mean (from left to right): play the movie in normal mode, fast forward, stop, frame left, frame right, add a chapter, open the automatic chapter splitting mode and show or hide the timecode display. Therefore, having selected the desired frame in this window, click on the add chapter icon and it appears in your movie.
What if you installed the chapter in the wrong place and want to delete it or move it? To do this, select a chapter by clicking on the green rhombus or the red arrow (the arrow or rhombus means, respectively, whether the clip frames are indexed or not. Indexing is used for a more accurate distribution of chapters).
In the square under the diamond, the sign will change from plus to minus, clicking on which you can delete the chapter. You can also use the Eraser tool in the toolbar, just click it on an unwanted chapter and it will be deleted. To move a chapter, activate the move tool , hover over the chapter and move it to the desired location. 4. Creating the Main Menu
To create a main menu (or root menu), you need to open the menu itself. Double-click on the corresponding tab in the project window.
The Movie window will change to a blank black background. First of all, add a background image to your menu. To do this, you need to import the picture you are interested in in advance into the Assets Window tab and add a background by simply dragging and dropping. You can also use the available pictures in the tab Backgrounds Assets Window.
The background is ready. Now let's create the menu itself, let it consist of four items: Start browsing, Scene Selection, Sound setting, Setting subtitles. To create inscriptions, click on the button Ah and click where you would like the text to be placed.
A text entry window will appear, as well as its formatting (changes in font, location, etc.).
Repeating the operation four times (since you have 4 menu items) you get the following:
The text can be moved. Click and hold it with the mouse, arranging it as you like, it all depends on your imagination. Or place the rows one below the other, select them and click on the selection with the left mouse button. A menu will appear that contains additional tools for arranging your text in the window. In this case, justify the lines to the left by using the command Align Left.
Next, using the knowledge already gained, decorate the menu a little with pictures. In our example, the pictures were cut from the frames of the movie and imported into the tab Images Assets Window so that you can later use these pictures in other projects. Pictures were imported in .psd format and created in Adobe Photoshop - DVD LAB Pro allows you to work with layers. You can change the direction of the picture using the toolbar to the right of the window Menu, in the same place as the button for creating text.
As a result, you can get something like this:
Now create links for lines with text. For now, you can only link to the first menu item "Start Watching", since the movie already exists and you can find it in the following way: right-click on the text, select Link>Movie1>Chapter 1(Movie Start). Everything is simple.
Now create three more empty menus in which we will have the chapter menus, and sound and subtitle settings. Click in the project window on the right mouse button and select the item Add Menu, or use hotkeys Alt+N.
Let's say that you have not four menus, but a whole hundred. Of course, it's hard to remember which material is where, so you need to assign names to each object. To do this, select the desired menu in the project window with the left mouse button and click F2. Now you can rename your menus. These names are displayed only in the program itself and nowhere else.
After all links are set, numbers will appear next to the lines, indicating that this line has a link with a certain serial number. If you select a line, then under it you will see where the link is set. For example, number 1 "Start Watching" will start showing the movie, and the link number 2 "Select Scenes" will take you to the scene selection menu.
5. Menu testing and improvement.
Test your menu to see how all this beauty will work and look. To do this, select the command Menu>Simulate.
The menu simulator will start with a nice control panel. Move the mouse over the links, press the button on the keyboard or on the remote control.
Note that when a particular menu item is selected, the color of the line changes. Exit menu test mode and pay attention to the window Properties(Properties) to the right of the menu window.
This property window provides a wide range of control over colors, textures, links, and more. Open a tab Map.
In this tab you can see the fields Button Hi-Lite group and color map. In the first field, check the box Antialised(Smoothing), and go to the second field, which has the default option Selected. Click the arrows to the left and right of the option name. It is easy to guess that this function is responsible for the state of the menu buttons at a certain point in time. So, Normal- the normal state of the button, Selected- the state of the button when this menu item is selected, and activated- the state of the button clicked on the link. For each position, you can select your own color options - for this, use the slider. If the slider is moved all the way to the left, then there will be no color. Remember that these three modes do not apply to each button individually, but to the entire menu, and you need to configure them once for each menu. Now complicate your menu. Make it so that when you hover over the desired menu item, it is underlined, and it does not matter what and from which side. To do this, draw a line under one link (for example) using the menu toolbar. Select the rectangle icon.
Copy it and paste it under each menu item (use hotkeys ctrl+c and ctrl+v) . Then in the properties window, in the tab color(Color) Change the color of each line.
Notice that in the screenshot, the dash under the "Start browsing" menu item is highlighted with an orange dotted line. This means that the dash is not normally visible. This is set again in the properties window, but already in the tab Link(pictured right). In addition to setting the visibility of buttons in this window, you can also set links, as you did by right-clicking on a dash or text and selecting the link. Click on the item to select the visibility of the buttons.
In principle, everything is quite simple: visible- the button is always visible, regardless of whether it is selected or not; Invisible Normal- the button is not visible in the normal state, but when you select it ( Selected) it becomes visible; Invisible Selected- reverse Invisible Normal, the button is visible when it is not selected; Invisible All— the button is not visible in all cases. Set the mode for all created lines Invisible Normal and test your menu. There are no lines, but hover over the dash, where it should be, and it will appear. However, you won’t look for this dash before viewing, and you never know where it can be located - from below, to the right, to the left, from above, or maybe it’s not a dash at all. It's easier to click on the visible text and start viewing. Return to the toolbar and select a tool Group HotSpot.
In the workspace of your menu, circle the line "Start browsing" and your dash.
Thus, you have grouped both objects - text and line. Do the same for the other four items, test the menu. At the same time, enjoy the resulting beauty. The main menu is ready. 6. Create a menu of chapters.
First of all, go to the editing menu "Select Scenes". Give the menu any background and create 12 text links for each chapter.
The second option is to create a beautiful menu with windows that play video clips from the beginning of your chapters. In DVD LAB Pro, you need to use the function motion menu. Import the background and take a look at the toolbar in the menu editor.
Click the button Insert Chapter Still(Insert the first frame of the chapter). You will get a list of your project's films and a list of all the chapters in the film. Just select the desired chapter and click on it with the mouse, for example, Chapter 2. A video fragment will appear in the center of your future menu, the frame of which will coincide with the frame of the beginning of the second chapter. Arrange its window to your liking, including using the parameter Change Size(Resize), which can be found by right-clicking on the frame itself.
In the window that appears, arrange the objects on the menu screen as you like. So, after importing 6 fragments, you will have the following menu, and in each picture there will be a link to each chapter, starting with the second:
And here is the first drawback: we do not see which menu item the cursor is currently on. We'll fix it now. In the case of text links, we used underlining, but here it would be more appropriate to use frames, that is, appearing frames. To do this, you first need to remove all links from your snippets. Then find the shortcut in the toolbar frame and, having selected it, draw a frame of arbitrary size.
Then again use the options for resizing the window and its position. Enter the same values as the first clip in our menu with a link to chapter 2. It will come out something like this:
Next, each frame must be assigned a link according to the frames, and in the properties window, select the parameter for each frame Invisible Normal as in the main menu. Test the menu, if everything is done correctly, then when you select the desired item, it should be highlighted with a frame of the color specified in the tab Map menu properties window. It must be remembered that in the same tab, the color value for the button in the Normal must be set to zero, otherwise all frames will be highlighted normally. Now proceed to create not static pictures, but a moving menu, for which select the item Menu>Render Motion.
A window for creating a sliding menu will open.
What do we see in this window? The first is a picture of your menu, the second motion objects, that is, those objects to which the movement applies. There is a checkbox next to each name, unchecking which will disable the creation of a moving menu (in this case, a red cross will appear in front of the name instead of a checkbox). Next for motion objects field for setting dynamic effects ( Dynamic-FX Objects)? responsible for setting up special effects used in addition to motion menu. The frame at the bottom of the window shows the frame from which the menu playback should start. Click on the window motion objects by name, and you will see that the start frame also changes in this window. To the right of the menu window there is a slider, by moving which you can select a different starting frame. This can be useful when you don't want the first frame of the chapters to match what will be shown on the screen. Well, the last part is Global Settings and Outputs, i.e. general settings along with output parameter settings.
In the window motion menu nothing more than a video file is created, which is played while viewing the menu on the screen. After carefully reviewing everything, decide on the settings for the duration of playing clips Total Clip time(set it to 10 seconds) intro effect- this is the effect of the frames appearing when you go to your menu, leave it empty. Check the box Cross-fade the End for looping in 50 frames. This will mean that when the clip finishes playing, it will start playing again, and to avoid mismatch between the start and end frames, we created a smooth transition for 50 frames from the end of the clip to the beginning. Now click Render and wait for the rendering process to complete, after specifying the file name, which will be contained in motion menu. Note that after rendering, you have another clip in Assets Window, and 2 tracks appeared at the bottom of the menu window, audio and video. The video track contains your video file, just created. But in Audio, you can add any audio track that will be played while viewing the menu.
So, the menu you created contains frames with links to scenes from the movie. If desired, each frame can be provided with a brief text commentary. But, since this example contains 12 chapters, it is unlikely that all of them will fit in one menu, so you will need to create a second menu of chapters, remembering to provide all menus with buttons Further and
A free program for creating DVD video images and burning them to disc.
Everyone has probably seen professionally made DVDs with all sorts of transitions and navigation menus. Have you ever been asked how these menus are created? Wouldn't you like to try to create something like this yourself? Probably wanted (and more than once :)).
Today we will learn how to create and burn our own DVDs, which will not be inferior to their professionally made "brothers" in anything. And one very good free program called DVD Styler.
The program combines everything you need for DVD authoring (as the menu creation process is called) from scratch. And although it still falls short of professional solutions, a decent-looking disk allows you to create it with minimal time and effort. If we compare DVD Styler with paid counterparts, then ZC DVD Creator Platinum will be closest to it in terms of functionality.
Comparison of the free DVDStyler program for burning DVDs with the paid analogue ZC DVD Creator Platinum
With relatively the same functionality, DVD Styler weighs five times less than its paid counterpart! Another plus is multilingualism, which greatly facilitates the work of a Russian-speaking user.
DVDStyler Installation
Download and install DVD Styler. In principle, the installation proceeds according to the standard scenario, but there are small nuances in it. The main hitch will be associated with the proposal to install a plug-in for Internet Explorer and / or Mozilla Firefox - kikin.
If you agree to the installation of this plug-in, then your browser, based on the history of visited pages, will begin to offer you the "most interesting" information from various online resources. If everything you are interested in you can find yourself, I advise you to refuse to install kikin.
DVDStyler Interface
When the installation procedure is completed, the program itself will start. The first (and, in principle, the only) thing you need to configure is the interface language.
Select "Russian" from the list and click "Ok". After that, you will see the program itself, which will offer to create a new or open a finished project.
We choose to create a new one and set the required information: Disc name (optional), disc size (standard DVD or dual layer), video format (PAL / NTSC), aspect ratio and sound format of future films. Install as needed and click "Ok" to get started.
Let's take a closer look at the working window of the program:
The menu bar at the top is hardly needed, as the toolbar (below) contains all the necessary buttons. On the left is the program's file manager, with which you can manage downloaded pictures and videos. Below - a kind of storyboard for navigating through the sections of the upcoming DVD. The main space is occupied by the work area with the display of the current active menu item.
Creating a Menu for a DVD
When creating a new DVD, we have one ready-made menu on the storyboard. Indeed, it is empty. Let's add some background image to it. Go to the "Background images" tab and double-click on the picture you like. If the standard ones do not suit you, you can add any image from your computer.
To do this, go to the "File Manager" and find what you need. The drawing can be prepared in advance in any graphic editor so that it contains ready-made inscriptions and / or additional fragments that correspond to the general theme of the future DVD.
Adding Movies
When we decide on the picture, we can start adding movies to the project (although this could have been done before choosing an image for the menu). This is done simply: press the "Add file" button and select the desired movie using Windows Explorer. It is better to do this by expanding the program window to full screen.
Why? Because in this case, in the lower right corner, a scale for filling the future disk in time will be visible. Be careful not to overdo it with the number of films!
So, the films have been added, they have met within the allotted time, now it's time to think about the menu. Right-click on it and select "Properties".
Sound design in the menu
Here we can add a soundtrack to our menu (if we want, of course). Click on the button after the "Audio" field and select the desired music in the Explorer window that opens. It may scare you that only MP2 and AC3 files are listed in the formats. Just set this field to "All Files" and you can add any MP3 or WAV melody.
Typically, a DVD consists of several menus: a main menu, and an episode menu for each movie (although the latter are not the main attribute). We will create a disc with only one main menu as an example.
Creating buttons
We go to the "Buttons" tab and we can add navigation keys to our menu by simply dragging the button we like directly from the list. I note that among the buttons there is a frame in which arbitrary frames from the movie "attached" to it will be displayed. Adding these borders greatly improves the overall look of the menu.
The first button is "linked" to the first movie added by default. Let's see what we can do with it. Call the context menu of the button by right-clicking the mouse. Here we are interested in two items: "Add" and "Properties". Thanks to the first one, we can add a nice inscription (for example, the title of a movie) using the "Text" and "Text with shadow" options.
There should be no problems here, so let's take a closer look at "Properties".
Here are all the settings for a particular button. In the first section, we can set the action that will be performed when the button is clicked. This can be either a transition to a certain part of the DVD, or, for example, playing a certain melody or moving to another menu. The "View" section is responsible for the design of the button.
In the case of a frame, we can install any image from the computer into it or allow us to set an arbitrary frame directly from the movie (you can also manually specify the time of the desired frame). Here we also specify the transparency level of the inserted image, the width of the frame and its color. The location and size is best adjusted with the mouse.
Above, we looked at how to add text with the title of a movie. However, the name can also be written on the button. Select the appropriate one, drag it to the working window and write the desired name in the properties. Then we "bind" this button in the "Actions" to one of the films, and the job is done!
Similarly, we create buttons to go to the rest of the films, and we will get a pretty beautiful and functional menu:
Since all the films may not fit on one page, it is sometimes very useful to make another one by linking it with the first cross-reference. You can also add additional images if you have not taken care of this in advance.
Saving a project and burning a disc
Now that everything is ready, you can proceed to the last step - saving. You can save a project, a disc image, or directly burn a DVD. If we do not want to stop there, we press the "Burn" button on the toolbar and move to the following window:
This is the "last bastion" DVD Styler "a. Whatever you choose, in any case, you will have to wait (and quite a long time). After all, all files are first converted to DVD format, and only then can be burned to disc. For processing video, you will need free space on your hard drive (about half as much as a DVD project takes up).
You can reduce the size only if you select the "Create ISO image" item (probably, the word "image" was translated incorrectly). If you choose this option, you will also need to specify a folder to save the image. It is also possible to activate "Preview" after DVD generation by checking the corresponding option.
After all the settings, we finally press the "Start" button and wait for everything to be ready:
conclusions
As you can see, creating your own DVDs is not that difficult if you use good software. Although DVD Styler does not have some of the features that paid counterparts have, it is quite convenient to use, and there are a lot of functions in it.
Another plus is that DVD Styler allows you to carry out all the manipulations for creating a disc within a single window, which significantly saves time and effort when looking for the right tools. I wish you successful and beautiful projects that will give you joy at every viewing!
P.S. It is allowed to freely copy and quote this article, provided that an open active link to the source is indicated and the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny is preserved.
