DVD menu re-authoring, anyone?

[Patrick M]

Do any of the 4 people that actually read this board have any experience re-authoring menus for DVDs? I've installed TMPGEncDVDAuthor and DVD-lab, but this apparently isn't quite as straightforward as I'd hoped.

Some of the menus I'm getting on the DVDs I've downloaded are hideous. Like this:



I don't want to change any of the chapter timings or anything, I just want to change the background images and maybe the images associated with the individual chapters.

[Gee Oh Are Tea]

Patrtick, I'll be the fifth person here .

Unfortunately, you require the original TMPGEnc DVD Author file that was used to create the menu, and ultimately to generate the DVD. I use this software all the time. The person here has just been lazy using that background image. They haven't even changed "Untitled Track 1"!!

You can only change things by reauthoring the DVD. You can use TMPGEnc DVD Author to extract the MPEG-1 (720 X 480) file and then do as you wish. I could be wrong but believe you can retain the chapter stops still (but you may have to manually go back and put them in, I'm not sure).

Cliff

[Xenu]

You can, indeed, retain the chapter stops. Simply rip the entire program chain with DVD Decrypter (putting it in its own little VIDEO_TS ghetto) and load that with TMPGEncDVD. TMPGEnc will ask you to choose the video and audio stream you want, and will import the chapter stops if you request. You'll have to re-make the menu from scratch (using their templates or creating your own variation), but from the looks of the above that wouldn't be a huge problem. Of course, TMPGEnc only allows you to have one audio track, which *can* be an issue.

Any particular reason why we're ressurecting this thread so late?

[Crummy Old Label Avatar]

In Mac Land, Toast allows you to create a menu. Initial problem for me was that their default (and only) menu background was a tacky computer graphic "ocean" theme. I did some poking around, found the "Themes" folder buried deep inside the Toast application folder. All I had to do then was import the .psd template into Photoshop -- and from there you can customize each layer (I believe there are around 28 layers) any way you like (backgrounds, fonts, colors, etc.).

I'm probably making this sound more complicated than it really is. It's merely a layered .psd file anyway.

There are probably DVD menu templates online for the taking, I would guess.