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Old 10-27-2005, 12:15 AM
MrCrowley MrCrowley is offline
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Windows Movie Maker
 
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MrCrowley
Default Automating menu authoring

Hi all,
I have yet to find a software that will do everything I need and no more. I tried some DVD authoring tools, but maybe I missed the one I need, so I'm asking you.

I grab my videos with scenalyser, from a mini-dv camera. I separate my scenes so that each different scene recorded with my camera is captured as a separate AVI. So, I have the date/time of every scene I filmed in the name of the avi file.

After that, I encode each AVI using TMPGenc, which does a very fine job.

After comes DVD authoring. What I want is basically an authoring software that will automatically build my dvd menus from the mpg's that I get from TMPGenc.

The best I have found to do it is Ulead DVD Workshop 2, but it still has a major problem. When I build automatic menus, DVDWorkshop adds a "play all" button that does not work pretty well. It plays all the files, but only if you never use the skip scene button on the player's remote, otherwise it would return to the main menu after each mpg. If I never use the skip scene button while viewing the films, it goes to the next scene after one is finished (with an annoying 2 seconds delay), but once I skip a scene, it will return to the main menu after the scene is over. I tried to add a "play all" attribute to the play all button, with no success.

I don't need to make complicated menus, and am satisfied with the pre-designed menus look. I don't bother about the visual aspect of the menu, but I need every mpg to be listed in the menu to have the date (it is in the mpg's filename) AND I need the player to continue playing the next scene after one is finished.

I know I could build such a DVD manually, but I would like an automating function in the authoring software to do it for me. I burn a lot of DVDs and I don't have time to build a custom menu for each of them.

So what's important to me is :
- having a software that will build the menus automatically
- being able to look at all the movies one after the other without returning to the menu each time one is over
- having a way of knowing the date/time of the specific scenes (I can have it in the menu, but in subtitles would also be an option)

Any ideas / suggestions?

Thank you very much!
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