It can be hard to evaluate DVD [& Blu-Ray] authoring software if/when you've never used one of the mid-range authoring apps to give you a basis for comparison. It occurred to me then that it might be useful if I took a quick step-by-step look at how to create a DVD &/or Blu-Ray video disc in more capable software. I'm going to focus more on the menus & such -- while you can very easily create a DVD &/or Blu-Ray disc without menus, the authoring app you use in that case is almost irrelevant. If you've only used an entry level app to create DVDs this will undoubtedly seem long & hard -- sorry.
It's kind of like if you buy one of those cheap, one-time use cameras -- can't do much so it's super easy to use, just point it and push the button. A DSLR OTOH lets you do so much more, but it's also more complicated. Just taking a picture with your cell is more complicated, & then you might have even more options depending on the app(s) you use. Software to create a DVD [& usually Blu-Ray] is just like that -- the easiest software is easiest because it very much limits what you can do. What I'm trying to accomplish is to show you what you're missing when/if you use the most basic DVD authoring app, and then you can decide whether it's something that interests you at all. Likewise if you've used something like Nero or Roxio or many other similar apps, you might decide you're putting in most of the work, yet getting only some of the benefits.
The 1st step to authoring a movie disc is to gather your assets, the audio & video & images that'll appear on your disc. The main menu(s) is where authors tend to get fancy, so you can hunt up a short video background on-line, piece together a clip made up of snippets from the video, use something you created with the Desktop Paint app etc., or just wait & use the bcakgrounds that come with most authoring apps. A menu clip should be 30-60 seconds long, & if you want to add a pro touch, include about 3-10 seconds of intro video that appears just before the menu. You can also use short clips to transition between menu pages, e.g. from the main menu page to the one with chapters, & if you're going to use those you often want to get them ready beforehand too. You'll also want to get any menu audio tracks ready, along with any sound effects for those short transition video clips.
If you're using an authoring app like Sony's DVDA [DVD Architect] you can create your own menu buttons or not -- it's up to you. It used to be popular to use short video clips [more like snippets really] for menu buttons, but that's gotten old & sort of fallen out of favor I think. Then it was in style to use fancy buttons & highlights -- the highlights are what tells the viewer which button is selected -- but that seems to have fallen by the wayside too. Nowadays it seems most menus use simple text for buttons with an underline for the highlight. Several apps, including DVDA, will create the video clip & text buttons for you -- being able to use custom buttons & highlights is more rare, & that's something you'd do yourself, often in Photoshop [because of the layers] beforehand.
Once you've got most or all of the stuff that you'll need it's time to fire up the authoring app & import all of the content you've gotten ready. If you're using menu backgrounds that came with the app you'll often set that first -- the software may even require you to set that first -- so that any menu pages you add automatically use the same background. A mid-range app like DVDA will let you drag and drop video onto the menu pages or just import them into your project, adding links later on. More entry level apps may make you use a file import dialog or drag and drop, without giving you much choice in the matter. Personally I prefer importing the file, adding links & such later, but that's me. Once I've imported the video I add the audio track(s) that go with each video, along with any subtitles. Each video opens with its own timeline so adding those tracks is pretty easy, & then as necessary I'll use that timeline display to add chapters where I want/need them.
Sony's Vegas lets you add chapters to the video before it's encoded, making sure that there's a key-frame there when the file's encoded, and also saving that chapter data in a separate file that DVDA will read -- as a result as soon as I import that video into DVDA the authoring app will automatically add or place those chapters for me. Chapters can only be located at key-frames [for DVDs they're called I frames], and apps like DVDA & Encore [Adobe] let me find the closest I frame I want to use for a chapter marker -- not every app will show you the I frames, so you have to go a bit beyond your intended chapter, double checking chapter placement in the preview. More entry level apps may make you enter a time for every chapter, or make locating them in the video more difficult, or in extreme cases, will only add chapters at a time interval you specify. Some really entry level authoring apps won't even let you add chapters.
As far as subtitles go, I've got some hearing impairment so they're important to me -- they may or may not matter to you. On a DVD or Blu-Ray subtitles exist as an image track that's overlaid on the picture -- before that they exist as a text file with special formatting. Some authoring software only accepts the text files, some only takes the graphics based subs, more entry level apps won't handle them at all. DVDA is a bit unique in putting text based subs on the timeline where you can edit them as well as adjust their timing -- that's why I first chose DVDA. There are tools to turn text based subtitles into the graphics based versions, & the reverse. There are also tools to adjust the timing of either kind of subtitle. If you're stuck using a less capable authoring app you can also create a non-menu DVD layout in the free version of Muxman, with several subtitle tracks & 2 or 3 audio tracks, then use the free Vob Blanker to replace the video in the DVD with menus that you created with your authoring app -- you can use multiAVCHD to do the same thing for Blu-Ray. It can be a lot more work, but if that's you're only option...
The next step is to link everything together. Every video does something when it's done playing, whether that's just to stop, pause, go to a menu, or start playing another video. If I'm using transition clips I'll add buttons to the menu page that point to one of those clips, then set its End Action to open the target menu page or video -- if I'm not using transition clips I'll just have the button point to the target itself, then in the case of title video, have it return to a menu page when it's done. Adding a menu page may automatically create a button on existing menu pages -- depending on your project that may or may not be a good thing, & you may wind up deleting quite a few. If you want to use chapter menus, most authoring apps will create those for you -- that's why I added chapters 1st. Note that those chapter buttons may have nonsensical names, so you'll have to go through & edit them all. Using DVDA [& similar] I can edit the properties of each button, e.g. have a button also change the audio or subtitle track, or turn subs on/off etc.
You may set up things like playlists while you're adding buttons or you may set them up beforehand, just adding a single button for the playlist itself. Blu-Ray discs can, & DVD discs do use scripting. For common functions like changing audio tracks the authoring software will just use boilerplate scripts hard coded into the app itself -- add that function and the software will turn that portion of a hard coded script on or off in the DVD layout you create as a last step. Depending on your authoring software you may be able to add your own scripts, and they may or may not work only with the DVDs that app creates [not Blu-Ray]. It's common to attach scripts to DVD menu pages -- these menu pages may have no other purpose than to hold a script, & so will never be shown. You'd deal with that sort of thing while you're setting up the mechanics of your menus etc., adding pages and adding/removing buttons.
Once I've got the basic workings laid out then it's time to tackle the menus & buttons themselves. Menu backgrounds & any accompanying audio track can be easily inserted or changed [or it should be easy anyway], & the only reason I tend to let it go until now is that once all the menu pages are added I can concentrate on the backgrounds & get them all out of the way at one go, rather than one here, one there. Menus also need their end actions set, e.g. to loop a video background, & may need the timing of the point where they loop adjusted. Some apps let you set menu cells [think chapters], which can be used for intro videos for example -- a more complicated setup is to duplicate the main menu, have the 1st copy include the intro, & have it switch to the 2nd copy as it's end action [that gives better background looping, with a noticeably shorter delay]. Menu titles also need to be placed if you do that in your authoring app.
The buttons that have been added up until now need their display properties, highlight colors, and placement set or tweaked. If it shows a video clip, you might change the portion of the video that's used, e.g. you don't want to show black frames that might happen at the beginning, or at a chapter start, or before the credits. If it's a text button you might adjust the font & characteristics & colors. You also might adjust the size... If you're adjusting the size of a text or video button it's rather clearcut -- you adjust the size to what looks good & fits. If you're using a clipart button that came with the app, same thing. If you're using your own custom buttons & highlights, you're adjusting the equivalent of a web page hot spot instead. What you see as a button is going to be overlaid on the video permanently, so what's important is the rectangular area that denotes the clickable area if watching a DVD in Windows, & represents the area where the highlight will show up. Think of it as a transparent overlay the same size as the menu page, with black shapes drawn wherever you want a button highlight to appear. When a button's selected, anything black on that overlay that's within that button's rectangular boarder will be displayed, using the color & transparency you set for that menu page.
What's the difference? A quick & easy example would be a text button added by the authoring app that may have an underline for the highlight, or use the entire area the text takes up, or the text itself might light up. With a custom highlight you could show the same text, the same area would be clickable, but you could have a shape next to the text that lights up -- characters from some of the wing ding fonts can work well. At any rate once the buttons are the right size & placed where you want them, there may be a few more highlight related settings you can make, & you should be able to set the highlight colors used by that menu page.
You're not done yet... Since the menu has to be navigable with the 4 arrow buttons on a remote, you need to double check & possibly correct the button order. When the main menu's 1st displayed the default button is selected -- each menu has a default button that's automatically selected. And when a button's selected the viewer can press any one of four arrow buttons on the remote. You can set what happens when each of those 4 arrow buttons is pressed, & if you moved your buttons around a little, or didn't create them in sequence, one or more probably has this wrong. *Now* you're almost done... use the disc preview to check your project to see how it works, if everything looks good render your DVD or Blu-Ray to a hard drive, & then using a DVD/Blu-Ray player app, check it all again. If everything still works as intended burn it to disc, then, you guessed it, check it once again. [It's outside of the scope of this post, but where files are physically located on a disc matters -- it can create longer lag times if the drive has to jump from beginning to end -- so yeah, the only proof is using the disc you burned.]
