Hi All,

I am very new to this, I am able to RIP the DVD's using Smart Ripper, and later using tools like DVD2AVI and TMPGEnc I am able to create the MPEG files and burn them to make a VCD which plays on my DVD or VCD players, but I am unable to create menus , and how to link the menu titles , so when i click on for eg Song 10 in the menus list, it will jump to the song 10 on the VCD,

Some body pleaseeeee help. Thanks a lot in advance

-- Bostonian (boston_ka_badshah@yahoo.com), December 11, 2001

Answers

I have never made a menu personally as I have no need for them, but Nero (www.ahead.de) can do it. I think that there is a guide to making VCD menus at www.doom9.net. www.vcdhelp.com might also have a guide. Other burning programs may support making menus, but I know that Nero does. I don't know about any other burning programs. Please understand one thing - in your example, you would have to have at least 10 separate video clips in your VCD to jump to song 10 using Nero. Nero can not help you with entry points. Entry points are like chapters on a DVD. My experience has been that you can either have menus or you can have entry points, but you can't have both. None of the VCD authoring programs that I know of allow both on the same VCD. In theory if VCDimager ever supports menus, it might be possible to do both. I have not tried it, but I think that I-Author which is sometimes used to author SVCDs can do both, but it can't be used with VCDs.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), December 11, 2001.

Actually you can have both entry points and menu's. Roxio Videopack5.0, as buggy as it may be, will allow you to make menu's. It gives you full control over where you want what to go using a simple drag and drop principle. It also allows multiple entry points without cutting up the mpeg. One thing though, i wouldnt reccomend using it to encode the mpegs cause it uses Ligos LSX encoder, and its output quality is just so so. Tmpeg encoder is vastly superior. What a shame roxio didnt put a few more mpeg options in there such as better quality etc.

-- Batfink (batfink1@hotmail.com), December 12, 2001.

I know for a fact that Nero does provide you with an option of using a menu. I have been playing with creating Digital Photo slideshows that can be played in a VCD format on my DVD player. While preparing a VCD file in NERO, click on MENU and select Activate Menu. You then will be able to add a background picture. Your compositions will be printed on that menu screen with according number on the menu screen once the VCD is in the player. Press a button on the remote (1, 3, 3...) and voila. Forked pretty well for me. The tricky part is to make sure to name your MPEGs with the name that you wish to see as an option to select on the MENU itself. Make sure to name your MPEG prior to getting them in to the NERO.

-- Slavka (steveg@3cube.com), December 12, 2001.