how to select the button pictures for Video-DVD menus

[Joe_F]

Hello,

 

I am often creating Video DVDs from mpeg2 files. these files are direct DVB streams, but demuxed.

I want to have some nice menus for the VideoDVD

Toast has 2 problems to deal with mpeg2 files:

 

1st (most serious):

when creating a menu using an mpeg2 file, the button picture can be selected by using a small slider just below the button.

However due to the size of the slider the increments between two pictures are very big. In other words: very often I cannot select the picture (video frame) I want.

Example: I want to select the picture (video frame) at position 52 seconds, however I might be able to select only pictures at: 0 sec, 15 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 60 sec, .... as a small movement of the slider has a big effect on time especially on long video files (e.g a 2 hour video is mapped to a 1-inch slider). In this case every small mouse movement translates to a big change in time.

 

I could not find a different way to select the button picture:

- it does not react on cursor keys for fine adjustment

- no change when shift, alt, command, ... key is pressed during mouse move

- no way to enter a time via the keyboard

- no way to paste a picture over the button

 

Anybody having any idea, how to select the video frame (generally every I-frame should be possible)?

 

2nd (less serious):

sometimes Toast does use the mpeg2 files, but most times it wants to reencode the files.

This reencode takes long time and decreases the quality of the video.

Any idea, how to avoid the recode?

 

The only way I found to avoid the reencode is to use "MPEG StreamClip" and export the file buy "convert to headed MPEG". This works most time, but is an additional (I think unnecessary) step.

 

Thanks,

Joe

[tsantee]

Moving the slider on the thumbnail image is the only way to select the menu picture with the MPEG 2 content. Some video sources can have the image selected by selecting the title and clicking Edit. In the Edit window there is a larger thumbnail for scrolling. However, I think that it does not scroll there with MPEG videos.

 

To prevent re-encoding click the More button near the bottom left of the Toast window. Then Click the Encoder tab and then the Custom button. There you'll see the option to for Re-encoding as Never. Some MPEGs still will get re-encoded if they are far out of the video DVD spec.