DVD Authoring, Menu Creation, ...

[b4u]

Hi,

I'm working on a small family video I've made with my sony handycam.

I have access to a computer equiped with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, which I think it's a great software.

Now I've successfully imported my videos, and joined them together to make a nice looking movie, but still I need to output it to a DVD, with some nice looking menus.

I want to create a menu with a custom background (from a jpg digital picture I took), add a nice mp3 music repeating itself, and some scene selection, all nice and custom.

The thing is ... even though Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 is great for movie "construction", I believe it lacks on DVD menu authoring. All it has is some templates, which though they look nice, I would prefer to have a custom menu made by myself.

So my 2 questions:

1# Shouldn't this software be provided with advanced features for the job? Or does Abode sells another separate product for that? If yes, which software?

2# What program would you recomend for the menu creation job I described? I was thinking of maybe exporting the final video to disk (what format?) and then import on another software, add some menus and re-export to a final DVD format to burn and see with the family.


Thanks for the help.

 

[marmasatt]

Not an expert here by any means, but my experience with Intervideo Windvd2 (which is middle of the road software at best) there is a real easy guide for this. It's simply transfer/edit/author/burn. I believe they are all like this? Adobe Premiere is a pretty reputable software too. I'd be very suprised if there wasn't some type of "browse" button or icon where you can go and grab you photo (or even video) and add it to the menu instead of using their provided templates. You sure you're not missing it? There's probably some free software out there too if you can find it. Head over to videohelp.com

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Try TMPGENC DVD Author (pro) or DVD Lab Pro. Both are very good.

 

[Wheezer]

#1- Adobe has Encore DVD which is a great peice of software and has a lot of features, it does however have a learning curve.

#2- For ease of use and efficiency I would reccomend TMPGEnc 1.6 (TDA 1.6) The newer version is not all that great (or so I have read) You can import your mpeg or .VOB files, add chapter points easily and either use thier menu templates, or create your own. I use Photoshop to create my menus and import the image to TDA.

 

[gsellis]

The only complete package I know of ingest/edit/author is Avid Liquid. I have not tried Adobe since 6.5, so cannot comment on 2.x, but if it does not create M2V and WAV/AC3 files, get Tsunami Xpress 3.0. It uses the same engine as 2.5 IIRC, but has a feature rich interface. It will even convert PAL -> NTSC and vice versa. That allows you go get AVI to M2V and AC3 (Dolby Digital Stereo only) and can be bought over the counter at Fry's and other B&M stores or online. Mediachance DVDLab is easy to use and is what I use to actually create the DVD.

Both Tsunami and DVD-Lab are available as 30 day trials, so you can try before you buy. Otherwise, if you want it "integrated" to a degree, you will need Encore.

Edit - Just noticed that Pegasys has released v 4.0 of Xpress.

 

[akugami]

Just noticed this thread. Anyone know of one that supports unicode for the menu system? I noticed unicode (chinese) that I type in gets saved as question marks in some of the more common DVD authoring software.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: akugami
Just noticed this thread. Anyone know of one that supports unicode for the menu system? I noticed unicode (chinese) that I type in gets saved as question marks in some of the more common DVD authoring software.

Since it is a free trial, try Mediachance.com for DVD-Studio and DVD-Lab. It uses the Windows font system, so should support Unicode. It has broad international appeal, so there is a chance.

 

[akugami]

Will do gsellis. I've actually looked on the Mediachance page about DVD-Lab but not recently and never recalled seeing if it supported unicode.

It's kind of a pain finding the english titles to some of the tv shows I download. Not only that but the people that I lend it to have no clue what the english (or engrish) titles represent and have to press play, or take the disc out to read the writing in sharpie. Not a huge deal but it's a matter of elegance and style. Alternatively I could just make a photoshop image of the title but it never quite turns out as good as I hope on the first try and I find I spend excessive amounts of time tinkering with the image to my satisfaction.