Titles And Other Movie Options

[BDSolomon]

I have been experimenting from time to time with various software to burn VHS tapes to DVD. I recently tried it with Roxio Creator 2011, and now upgraded to Roxio Creator Nxt 2.

 

I have several editing/creation questions; I hope protocol here allows me to ask them in one post. It should be obvious I don’t have much experience burning videos.

 

I seem to recall some had the option to take multiple recordings and break them into titles, by putting a title marker in. As far as I can tell, the only way to make a single video into a number of titles is to edit the full tape, save each title as its own project, then import each project separately into MyDVD. I can then name the title for each one. (I accomplished this by saving one full project for the whole tape.. with a storyline for each title, then save one additional one for each storyline (deleting all the others)… then importing the individual ones into MyDVD. Is all that necessary, or does one of the components allow insertion of titles as it does allow insertion of chapters?

 

 

 

Separately, I found it annoying with small titles, to have to page through many menus (I think it put about 3 or 4 on one screen, then found a pretty empty menu background, moved so that I could fit about a dozen titles on the screen. Would this work? (I created a list of titles by moving them around which got rid of the empty levels.)

 

 

Finally, this may be a player option rather than a disk option, but is there a way to have separate titles BUT play them continuously? I think I was able to advance chapters to a chapter in the next or previous title, but when playing through it went back to the menu when one title ended. (It looks like I can drag the preview window anywhere I want, but the box that is in the background doesn’t move, so I needed a menu style that had that box mostly out of the way of a list of titles.

 

Hmmm, have a clue but it is only selectable from DVD mode. The project settings has two “movie buttons: “Play movie only” and “Play movie and all remaining movies in project”. That’d work, ‘cept that it doesn’t seem to be available for Blu-Ray. Just as the aspect ratio, which is only changeable in DVD mode. Yes, the help text shows that as exactly what I wanted – it also says “The options available may vary depending on the project type”. Why would this not be selectable for Blu-Ray?

[bimicher]

OK, first, and this is a major point, I do not have separate videos. I captured the whole video to a single huge mpeg. (No control about the format -- I use a remote viewing device (Hava, but similar to Slingbox and Vulkano) that allows me to watch, and record (DVR functionality) whatever is coming in.) I ran this unattended, so all programs are in the single file.

 

How long in time is that "huge mpg" file? Is it standard mpg or some HiDef format? If standard then forget about anything BD as the quality will get worse as Jim Hardin says in a post.

[Jim_Hardin]

Now that you explained it, I understand what "next" you are talking about

 

As Walt says, the Menu structures of DVD and BD are different! You will have to work with what is available...

 

Yes mine were separate movie clips, and then you get that option.

 

You can make separate movie clips but it is not a readily available feature. No Easy method

 

My preferred way would be through Scenes.

 

Load the clip into VW and Write Down the Times where you want the clips to start/end.

 

Then designate Scenes for each one ~ info Here

 

Lastly in a new project bring in ONE Scene and Export As.

 

I want to make sure you are not over analyzing this (analyze until you are paralized)...

 

I keep some DVD RW and BD-RE's on hand to make test projects... I often substitute still pictures for my Movies so that I can create, render and test on screen in 15 minutes or so to see if it is going to work as intended

[bimicher]

No I didn't preview it, but I'll do it since you suggest it will screw things up. I didn't think it would -- it's just links that you can click, so I didn't think it would make a difference.

 

What styles support more items? You mean two column format?

 

I really didn't think moving menu items on the tree view would hurt anything... nor moving the entry on the screen. But I certainly will keep that in mind and test it first. Especially since my Blu-Ray disks are not rewritable (so far I only burned one disk -- a rewritable DVD).

 

The files I have so far come from ~7 hour VHS tapes (I stopped them somewhere between 7:00 and 7:15 since they were unattended; content of one has no commercials, a little that can be dropped, and I can truncate it to the true end at just over 7:00).

 

I recorded them using a Hava box (like Slingbox, includes the ability to record, and I have made a test DVD with some of the content -- at EP it fit around 3 hours or so). Windows shows about 22-25 GB (that's Gigabytes, not GibiBytes, or 22,000,000,000) for a few 7 hour samples. That sounds high so I can't say what they did with it to make a simple VHS input so large -- I thought it should be 1GB/hour. The file is .mpg, I had no control over how it's recorded, and consider myself lucky they didn't use something proprietary. I played it in VideoWave, in Windows Media Player, and from a DVD I created (with Creator 2011). I had bought the new version mostly because I figured (apparently wrong) that a BD would hold 5x the length. DVD-DL is not an option because my player doesn't support it... and BD is more common anyway.

 

Have you looked at any of the dozens of menu styles that are available. Good luck with trying to add extra menu items to a menu page, I wasted to much time trying to fit and/or position them on the page and have the navigation work the way I want. You have to make sure that menu items don't overlap plus a number of other considerations. Too me it is just not worth the hassle. What is a couple of extra click? After all, nobody watches a DVD to look at the menu.

 

You can completely forget about putting 7 hours of video on a DVD, it will be totally unwatchable if you could even do it. You may be able to get a couple of hours on a DVD if you don't care about quality.

 

60 minutes of mpg video at the best quality setting will create a video that fills a DVD depending on the complexity of the menu. 1Gb per hour of video is low quality.

 

I don't bother with creating any BD discs, consider them a waste of money. BDs are not really catching on as more and more people create the video for streaming to HD TVs. Converting low quality VHS video to BD quality video just magnifies the poor quality when watched on a HD TV.

[BDSolomon]

No I didn't preview it, but I'll do it since you suggest it will screw things up. I didn't think it would -- it's just links that you can click, so I didn't think it would make a difference.

 

What styles support more items? You mean two column format?

 

I really didn't think moving menu items on the tree view would hurt anything... nor moving the entry on the screen. But I certainly will keep that in mind and test it first. Especially since my Blu-Ray disks are not rewritable (so far I only burned one disk -- a rewritable DVD).

 

The files I have so far come from ~7 hour VHS tapes (I stopped them somewhere between 7:00 and 7:15 since they were unattended; content of one has no commercials, a little that can be dropped, and I can truncate it to the true end at just over 7:00).

 

I recorded them using a Hava box (like Slingbox, includes the ability to record, and I have made a test DVD with some of the content -- at EP it fit around 3 hours or so). Windows shows about 22-25 GB (that's Gigabytes, not GibiBytes, or 22,000,000,000) for a few 7 hour samples. That sounds high so I can't say what they did with it to make a simple VHS input so large -- I thought it should be 1GB/hour. The file is .mpg, I had no control over how it's recorded, and consider myself lucky they didn't use something proprietary. I played it in VideoWave, in Windows Media Player, and from a DVD I created (with Creator 2011). I had bought the new version mostly because I figured (apparently wrong) that a BD would hold 5x the length. DVD-DL is not an option because my player doesn't support it... and BD is more common anyway.

[bimicher]

First, what is a "clip" that gave you the option of multiple movies or one single one? If it's separate files, then it doesn't help me make one tape into multiple titles. If one file, then HOW did you get it to call it multiple clips?

 

The NEXT I was talking about is in the options in your last paste. Choose a title, and the Link box has "Go to", "Play from" and "After playing". For a DVD, I could choose in the "After playing" the next title, and presumably it would play thru. In BD that's greyed out, and it seems it must go to the menu. BTW, going to the menu is the default action for DVD but you can change it.

 

The Next buttons to which you referred are what I am trying to avoid. If they can fit on the screen, why go through that menu hierarchy? To get to your 00267 you must click through two Next buttons. If all 7 fit on one screen, why go through all those clicks? (They would fit on one screen if you made the titles go top to bottom across that screen... more so if you could move that preview button to the left. (I can move the preview, but not the box in which it was enclosed... they do have samples that have it more to the left... guess if I wanted by own background I could do that too.))

 

The menu creations for DVD and BD are different.

 

Have you created a menu page with more then the default menu items and run it through the preview? As we have posted several times, having more then the default items and moving them around can create all sort of navigation problems. You are welcome to create your own custom menu styles but do not expect much help when you have problems there. There are a few menu styles that allow more items.

 

Could you also please answer the questions I asked in post #10?

[BDSolomon]

First, what is a "clip" that gave you the option of multiple movies or one single one? If it's separate files, then it doesn't help me make one tape into multiple titles. If one file, then HOW did you get it to call it multiple clips?

 

The NEXT I was talking about is in the options in your last paste. Choose a title, and the Link box has "Go to", "Play from" and "After playing". For a DVD, I could choose in the "After playing" the next title, and presumably it would play thru. In BD that's greyed out, and it seems it must go to the menu. BTW, going to the menu is the default action for DVD but you can change it.

 

The Next buttons to which you referred are what I am trying to avoid. If they can fit on the screen, why go through that menu hierarchy? To get to your 00267 you must click through two Next buttons. If all 7 fit on one screen, why go through all those clicks? (They would fit on one screen if you made the titles go top to bottom across that screen... more so if you could move that preview button to the left. (I can move the preview, but not the box in which it was enclosed... they do have samples that have it more to the left... guess if I wanted by own background I could do that too.))

[Jim_Hardin]

I actually have a project like that up my sleve... 3 DVD's from LaserDisc that I want to put onto one BD

 

Let you know when I get that one done

 

Don't follow what you are saying about 'next' buttons on BD???

 

Keep in mind BD's and DVD's ARE Different!

 

But if I add more than it will allow, I see this AND have Next buttons:

 

 

 

[BDSolomon]

OK, I was right clicking on the title in "Project view" on the left rather than in the screen. DIfferent options. Still remains true that if the project is BD the option that can go to the next movie is greyed out, it is there for DVD. So maybe there is no way to "play through" other than add another title that plays the whole thing? (THAT checkbox is still there in BD.)

 

Missed one thing. If I start with VHS, in spite of the fact that the resolution is higher even in EP on DVD, and much higher on BD (and takes more space), it will be worse quality than VHS?

[Jim_Hardin]

Yes, I checked mine too

 

[bimicher]

Thanks. I think you must be looking at a different version as I can't find the "show settings".

 

The right-click menu for a title is cut, copy, delete, edit movie, edit chapters, go to linked movie/menu, and rename.

 

Same menu for "Your title here" which is above that menu, is delete (grayed out), add text, add overlay, add submenu, set background, change menu audio, edit menu background, change menu style, and rename.

 

Same for the whole disk is save, preview, validate project, add root menu, burn, properties. And properties is not that, it's format and encoding settings.

 

OK, just found what you mentioned... in this version there is a "more options" button on the button bar on top. That has "go to" where you choose the title, "play from" where you can choose the chapter, and "After playing" which may be what you said to see, but that box is greyed out for some reason. I DO see that "go to" allows you to choose all movies in the menu or all movies in the project... but I wanted the end of each movie to go to the next movie (I can always go to the menu if I wanted to go elsewhere).

 

 

OH, that "after playing" is available in a DVD project but not a BD project. Do BDs not allow that???

 

I just ran NXT 2 and the "Show Settings" is exactly where I posted it was. Did you right-click on aTitle on the Menu window (not on the title in the menu tree structure)?

 

There is no difference between C2012 and NXT 2 when creating/modifying the menus as far as I can see.

[Jim_Hardin]

You are WRONG about quality... It works like this if you start with Poor it will remain Poor ONLY if you output it at HQ!

 

If you take Poor and go to EP it will be much much worse!!! Color will all but disappear and it gets really blurry...

 

Don't believe me? TRY it! (Empirical beats Deductive every time )

 

Markers - useful to add in VideoWave IF you want to convert them into Chapter Marks later in MyDVD. Only works if you save a VW Project (dmsm) and add that Project to MyDVD as a Title.

 

I would pull each "movie" into VW and edit out commercials or whatever there then do a Save As. You will find a 1 hour show will reduce to about 44 minutes without commercials.

 

What I like to do with Chapters is add them in MyDVD every 5 or 6 minutes... It is automatic with the click of check box and gets you close to where you want to be. I detest Chapter Menus so I don't use them! But be careful, as every time you open Chapters in MyDVD, it always turns the Menu Check mark On

 

Number of Titles (buttons) on a page has always been a limited feature of Roxio... You can Force more than 4 on a page but you do so at the risk of erratic behavior during navigation...

 

Sorry don't have more time right now

[bimicher]

Thanks. I think you must be looking at a different version as I can't find the "show settings".

 

The right-click menu for a title is cut, copy, delete, edit movie, edit chapters, go to linked movie/menu, and rename.

 

Same menu for "Your title here" which is above that menu, is delete (grayed out), add text, add overlay, add submenu, set background, change menu audio, edit menu background, change menu style, and rename.

 

Same for the whole disk is save, preview, validate project, add root menu, burn, properties. And properties is not that, it's format and encoding settings.

 

OK, just found what you mentioned... in this version there is a "more options" button on the button bar on top. That has "go to" where you choose the title, "play from" where you can choose the chapter, and "After playing" which may be what you said to see, but that box is greyed out for some reason. I DO see that "go to" allows you to choose all movies in the menu or all movies in the project... but I wanted the end of each movie to go to the next movie (I can always go to the menu if I wanted to go elsewhere).

 

 

OH, that "after playing" is available in a DVD project but not a BD project. Do BDs not allow that???

 

Sorry I am using C012. I do have NXt2 installed on one of my partitions, I will have to look at that. I used NXT for a short time but found it to be "downgrade" from C2012.

 

I don't do anything with BD since I don't have a BD burner/player and don't really need one. In fact I hardly ever do any DVD burning since I normally "stream" my video to a TV.

[BDSolomon]

Thanks. I think you must be looking at a different version as I can't find the "show settings".

 

The right-click menu for a title is cut, copy, delete, edit movie, edit chapters, go to linked movie/menu, and rename.

 

Same menu for "Your title here" which is above that menu, is delete (grayed out), add text, add overlay, add submenu, set background, change menu audio, edit menu background, change menu style, and rename.

 

Same for the whole disk is save, preview, validate project, add root menu, burn, properties. And properties is not that, it's format and encoding settings.

 

OK, just found what you mentioned... in this version there is a "more options" button on the button bar on top. That has "go to" where you choose the title, "play from" where you can choose the chapter, and "After playing" which may be what you said to see, but that box is greyed out for some reason. I DO see that "go to" allows you to choose all movies in the menu or all movies in the project... but I wanted the end of each movie to go to the next movie (I can always go to the menu if I wanted to go elsewhere).

 

 

OH, that "after playing" is available in a DVD project but not a BD project. Do BDs not allow that???

[bimicher]

Just a quick note regarding menu settings. Right click on a Title on the main menu page and you should get a drop-down window. Select "show settings" and a window will open where you can set up what you want to happen after a Title completes.

 

There are several menu styles that contain more then 4 menu items. You have to be careful when adding your own menu items to a default menu or shifting around menus. Your menu navigation will often not be the way you want it and even crash the program. Also make sure that none of the menu items overlap which will cause errors or crashes. I would never consider putting 10 menu items on a menu page.

 

Unfortunately since your video is one long file then there is no way to directly create Titles. You have to do it the way you did.

[BDSolomon]

OK, first, and this is a major point, I do not have separate videos. I captured the whole video to a single huge mpeg. (No control about the format -- I use a remote viewing device (Hava, but similar to Slingbox and Vulkano) that allows me to watch, and record (DVR functionality) whatever is coming in.) I ran this unattended, so all programs are in the single file. I found that I COULD make separate titles by breaking it into one project per program, however I was hoping I could instead break it into titles without doing that. I ended up creating one project for the whole thing (so I could go back and still have the whole tape), PLUS one project for each program (opened the main one, deleted all but one segment, and saved it). THAT is why I was asking if there was any way to put in a title without doing that... a marker, or maybe in MyDVD, put part of the video into a new title.

 

I did find that if MyDVD adds a project OR a video, it became a title. I was hoping through one of those programs, I could get 10 titles from ONE import instead of breaking it into separate projects for each program.

 

Your option 2 (MyDVD only) seems n/a UNLESS there is a way to break one video into multiple titles, as I don't have separate videos; I have one per tape.

 

As for saving, I found that projects only store meta info and leave the original video untouched. IF I have to save all those pieces, I'd much prefer to have small ones, rather than doubling the size of my video data.

 

I also don't think I said I didn't want chapter marks. I don't want, and don't use, a chapter MENU. I put chapter marks at significant places (maybe commercial breaks, since those are good breaks), so I can jump to the next one... or if I wasn't paying attention, a good point to skip back to. It's just not worth adding a menu for that and thus having an additional selection to get into my video. I figured out how to insert chapters (with or without the menu) from MyDVD. Reading the above link I found out that I could put in markers with VW and have MyDVD convert them to chapters; unless it's much easier to find the place for that, I don't see a reason to do the work twice (insert markers, then convert each one to a chapter).

 

Finally, several items based on what yo usaid about menu navigation.

 

I think MyDVD put up to 4 titles on one menu -- more than that and it replaced #4 with NEXT (and PREV/NEXT on the next screen). I preferred to have maybe 10 on one screen, and didn't see a way to create that. Simply adding #5 created the submenu. I did find that I could drag (in the tree window) the titles under the main index (since I was able to fit about 10-12 titles on one screen if I moved the names all the way to the top/bottom over the full window) and I think the empty menus went away. Have I broken anything by doing that?

 

Are you saying that titles automatically continue into the next one? I DID discover that jumping to the next chapter from the last chapter in one title would go to the next title (as was stated at that above link), but playing through to the end instead went back to the menu. Is there a way to play through to the next one, and did I maybe break that by doing the move? Is there an option somewhere to set the action upon playing to the end?

 

 

Finally, I use the lowest quality I can -- EP I think, since the VHS data is so much less than is in even the the lowest quality. I didn't think I would lose anything, and choosing better quality couldn't improve the video since it's not there. This way I could fit more on a disk. Already I'm massively expanding it just because BD worst resolution is apparently 2-3 times the size of DVD worst resolution (which STILL is better than VHS).

 

Tnx,

Brad

[bimicher]

You talk about so many “topics” it is difficult to be really clear what you want. Let’s see if I understand correctly what you want.

 

You have VHS tape that holds recordings of various programs (taken at different times and so is not one continuous video). You have somehow captured the recordings to you hard drive. Each program or episode is a separate video file on your hard drive. You now want to create a DVD that will hold one or more of these captured videos. Each video is to be a separate Title on the DVD. You want to be able to select any Title on the DVD, play it and then continue to play all other Titles to the end of the DVD.

 

If this is correct then there are several ways to proceed.

One method involves both Videowave and myDVD especially if you want to do some editing in each video. In this method I would create a Videowave project for each capture video file. In Videowave I would do some editing such as removing commercials, trimming off the some of the start and/or end, etc. Now you can either save the project as a Videowave project file; it will have the extension dmsm. You canalso render (Output or Export) each project as a mpg video file at best quality. You would do this for each video file you want to use as a Title. Next you would launch myDVD and then add each dmsm project file or mpg file. Each “add” will create a Title on the main menu page. You can then edit the menu navigation so that the next Title will be played after the current Title finishes.

The 2^nd method involves only myDVD. You “add” each captured video file and it becomes a Title on the main menu page. You could then select each Title and then do any desired edits on that Title. The menu navigation is the same as in method one.

 

You stated you are not interested in creating chapters. There are no chapters or chapter markers involved in these methods. (Actually not quite true since each Title must have at least one chapter which is the beginning of the video Title but this chapter is automatically created and involves no user interaction).

 

I believe this is basically what you are doing.

 

You are correct that there is no such thing as “Title markers” since they are not needed.

 

You can create create “chapter markers” in Videowave. Then when you add the videowave project in myDVD you would have to right click each chapter marker and convert that chapter marker into a chapter point. If I want chapters for a Title I would do all the chapter creation in myDVD and not use Videowave at all. myDVD has 3 ways of creating chapter points: by scene selection, by setting chapter times or by manually setting the chapter points. Manually setting the chapter points is the same in myDVD and Videowave.

 

You seem to be still confusing Chapters and Titles. Chapters only exist for Titles., they are simply “sub-divisions” of a Title. Selecting the “next” chapter does not take you to the next Title.

 

Moving around the "menu items" is actually a bad idea since it will corrupt the menu navigation

 

A standard 4.7GB DVD can only hold 60 minutes of video at the HQ (best quality) setting. Any longer and the video has to be compressed and you lose quality. Since VHS is usually not that high quality I always stick to the HQ setting.

[BDSolomon]

OK, first I think this is pretty simple. Let's say I have a tape with multiple programs on it, and want to burn it to a disk. Oh, and apparently I was using VideoWave and MyDVD.

 

Titles would be for the individual programs... or individual episodes. Chapters might be for commercial breaks. YES of course I'd be removing the commercials, but it is a good jumping point... or rewind point to go to the next or previous commercial. I agree with the link you sent me to -- I generally wouldn't wnat chapter menus. Mostly because it's an extra step to get to the content -- once I select the title I want it to play, not have to then select the first chapter.

 

For titles, I saw nothing in what you sent me to, to believe that I can do anything other than what I figured out so far... have to save a project for each program, and import all the projects to make the disk. No way to mark titles like you can mark chapters. Did I miss something or is that the case?

 

I don't understand the difference between chapters and markers... other than I guess you put markers in with VideoWave and chapters with MyDVD. I did some experimenting with MyDVD chapters -- not the easiest thing to find them but doable. Is it easier in VW? OR maybe it's a little easier if you are deleting commercials because you already have a marker where you are deleting the content, so you might as well use that? (As I recall, I just marked scenes and moved them into the storyline, rather than explicitly deleting commercials.)

 

 

So unless you have some other method, it sounds like I do need one project per title. As I said, I made multiple storylines, one per "program", saved the whole thing, then one-by-one went back and saved a project with all but one program deleted for each, then added each program as a title to MyDVD. Is that it, or is there a simpler way?

 

 

I did see the "play all" title, which at one reading wasn't clear how that worked separately. BUT that's not quite what I wanted. I wanted to be able to jump to any title, and play forward from there. It seems my test was right, that I can skip to the next chapter which will take me to the next title, but if I play through to the end of one title it returns to the menu. Short of using chapters instead of titles, is there a way to jump from the end of one title into the other simply by playing through?

 

Tnx.

[Jim_Hardin]

??? You didn't even mention which one of the 30 or so applications in the Suite you are even talking about

 

Aspect Ratios -

 

ALL

BDs are 16:9

 

ONLY "choice" (MyDVD) is for aspect ratio of the MENU's

 

VideoWave has an option of how you want to handle NON-16:9 files in a 16:9 project

 

So your questions about them make no sense... But I have some idea what you are getting at

 

Chapters Scenes and Things - Look Here

 

But overall your Project is pretty complex and does not lend itself to a simple solution... You might consider rethinking your menu structure but keep in mind - No One remembers how clever the Menu was... I try to keep mine Very Simple and concentrate on the Movie