Introduction to DVDAuthorGui

At last there is an easy to use open source DVD creator. Unfortunately it is only for windows. 

 It uses a series of open source command line tools to do the back end work and presents you with a basic but simple front end.

Amonst other features It has the ability to to the following.

• Create a simple DVD with no menu which can loop with one or more Mpg2 encoded files or streams.
• Add chapters to each video file (refered to as title) 
• Create a DVD menu  and navigation system with an imported image or video file.
• Add multiple subtitle files to each video title you add 

 

Installing DVDauthorgui 

Go to the following location http://download.videohelp.com/liquid217/dvdauthorgui.pl?p=download

 Click on the latest 'DVDauthorgui Installer' to download it to your computer. When the file has downloaded open it by locating it in Windows explorer and double clicking it.

 Select only the first box from the first screen of the install.  click Next.

 Select a location to install the program, or just click Install if you are happy with the default provided.

 The program is then installed and will appear in your program menu.

 

 

 

Basic DVDAuthorGUI use

This chapter covers  adding a couple of mpeg2 files and creating the from them. The start up screen of  DVdAuthorGUI shows us a box and a graphical menu and a standard menu at the top.

Choosing your format PAL / NTSC

 Before you start anything you need to choose your format from the  DVD format on the right  of the main window. Most parts of the world use PAL apart from North America and Far East Asia.

 Adding a files to the DVD

When you add an mpeg2 file it must be valid. If you do get errors try using the DVD preset in Avidemux programme to re-encode your file. You can also add separate audio and video streams  (mpv and mpa streams) if you have an encoding application that creates those.

Click on the add title button.

Browse for a suitable video file

If you have a mpg file or a VOB file then you will need to select that option from the Files of type drop down menu. If you have separate ( elementary) audio and video files then select the mpeg elementary stream option.

You will see that that file appear in the main window. Each of these additions is called a title.

Repeat the process for another Mpg file / VOB / etc.  

We now have 2 titles in the main window.

Alterations to the playing order

If you decide that you want to change the order of the files you have added in the DVD project you are creating you can select the file/ title you want to move and click on the up or down arrows to the right of the box.

Now click on the nav cmds button.

In the window that appears, Navigation commands editor,  you'll see the names of the files you added in a column called Title name.

At the bottom of the window is a section first play. It will read default. This means that it will play the first title in the list. You can change this if you want to by selecting another one from the drop down list. The files indicated by their numbers. So if you want the second one listed in the main menu to play first, select jump title 2.

Creating a DVD that loops

To create a dvd that loops you should look at the last entry in the Navigation commands editor main window. Select it and its' details will appear in the box underneath. Change the enty in the right hand column drop down box from exit to title 1 

Then Click on the button accept

Burning the DVD image to your hard drive

To save the DVD image to your computer ready to be writen on to a DVD disk, click on the author DVD button.

You are then asked to ener a folder into which to Save the DVD project. Browse to a suitable folder on your computer and enter a name for your DVD folder and click on Save.

You will then see a progress screen.

 

When your DVD has finished you should probably test it on your computer with VLC before writing it to a disk.

 

 

Creating Chapters

You may want to create chapters for a longer film so that viewers can skip forward and back to certain parts of the film without having to scrub fastforward throught the whole film. Also if your film is episodic, by creating chapters you can link to different parts of the film from the menu.

 To add chapter first select the Video title you want to add the chapter to in the main menu.

 Then click on the add chapters button

The Chapters window then appears

If you know the times that you want the chapters to appear in your video file, perhaps you have made a note of them when playing it in VLC,  you can enter them directly by clicking in the main white window and altering  the time. The next still shows a chapter time of 1 minute 30 seconds.

 

 To add another chapter then press return and add another line in the same format.

If this manual method doesn't suit you then you can set the times of the chapters using the visual editor.

In the chapters window press the visual editor button

Click OK when the error message appears.

Use this interface to set you chapter times by playing the video and clicking on the add chapter button at the point in the video you wish to add a chapter.

If this features is unstable you may want to play the video file in VLC , pause the video when you want to add a chapter and make a note of the time.

 

 

 

 

Adding a simple Menu

This chapter tell you how to create a simple menu for you DVD from an image.  

Preparing your Image 

The Image you prepare in GIMP or other suitable image manipulation programs should be of the following size,

720 x 576 pixels for PAL
720 x 480 pixels for NTSC 

The image for the DVD menu that we are going to use for this tutorial looks like this.

We now need to import it into DVDAuthorGui so that it can convert it into a format that the program knows how to work with, which is a M2v still format.  To do this select from the top menu Menus > Create M2v Still

Browse for the Image you have created on your hard drive, select it and click on OK

Then if the image is the right size and format you should get a message telling you that it is compliant and asking you where to save the M2v still.

Choose a location to save it and make a note of it. Then choose what shape or aspect ratio your DVD menu will be. This should match the aspect ratio of the videos you have been adding. Normally for self shot footage this has been 4:3 however increasingly video makers are suing 16:9, a widescreen shape.

You will also see a section about Frame count. For PAL projects if we don't add some frames to it. This makes it more like a video and easier for the application to understand. If we don't do this it can cause problems of the image looping and going black when we try to add buttons.

Click on the down pointing arrow to add more frames 100 should be enough.

Then click OK 

You will get a log message which will probably mean nothting to you. Just click OK and close the log window when it appears. 

Creating the Menu

We can now add this M2v still to our project. Click on the Menus Button.

Click on the Add New Menu button.

Then select the M2v file you have just created. Click OK

You will then see a similar menu which asks if you want to add an audio stream for the menu. Often there is a bit of audio on a DVD menu that loops when you are shown the options. Browse and select your audio file if you have one. If you don't have a suitable audio file then click Cancel

You  should then see the title set menu window.

Click on the Add Menu button.

You now need to set the area that the button is activated by. To do this use the location sliders at the bottom and right of the menu and the width and height sliders to the right of the menu.

The location slider for the first button should be adjusted to starting point of  text. Then the width button can be adjusted so that the black area show an the bottom of the screen matches the width of the text.

Then the process can be repeated for the height and vertical position of the button. When you start increase the height slider you will see a guide box appear, which makes the process easier.

You should then set the action for the button. In this case the button should play the first video added to the project. In order to do that. choose Title 1 chapter 1 from the drop down menu.

By doing this you can see that it is easy to choose either different video files ( aka titles) that you add to the project, or different parts of those files by creating chapters within them.

Changing the Navigation order

When viewers select a film in the menu, you may want to return to the first video when this video ends or you may want to continue watching the next title. These kinds of options are set by changing the Nav Command options. You can access those by clicking on the nav cmds button.

 When the nav command window appears select we are going to set the first film to return tohe menu instead of playing the next video title. To do this select the film and change the drop down menu at the bottom to call menu.

You could also change the "first play" option. This would be handy if I wanted the dvd when it is first played to (for example) play an intro video first, and then goto the menu. For this example though, i will leave it default. ( means that the first title is played, or if there is a menu, the first menu is played). 

Adding subtitles

This stage assumes you have already got your subtitles in the languages you want to add them ready in formats which are supported.

The formats supported are *.sub, *.srt,  *.ssa, *.smi, *.rt, *.txt, *.aqt

Our aim is to add several subtitles for each film.  

Adding Subtitles 

In the main menu of the program select the video title that you want to add a subtitle file for then select  from the  top menus Extras > Add / Edit subtitles.

 When the subtitles window appears click on the add subtitle button.

Browse for the relevant subtitle file and click Open to add it.

 You should also choose the relevant ISO standard for the text, Western Eupopean languages are normally ISO-8859-1, Eastern European ISO-8859-2.

You can also alter the text font and size in this window, although the defaults seem to be quite clear.

You can add other subtitles in the same way. Keep a note of the order you add them for the next step.

When you have add  all the subtitles then we need to define what language they are. 

To do this select from the top menu Extras > Edit Language Tags

When the language tag window appears, click on the add sub tag button.

Then you need to select the language of the subtitle files you added in the same order. To start this process select the language of the first subtitle from the drop down box on the left of the window.

Repeat this process with the rest of the subtitle languages until the language tags are lined up in the same order as your subtitle tracks.

Then click the accept button

You are now ready to author the DVD see the main help section for this software for help on that.

Advanced Subtitle settings

Advanced settings are achived by manually editing the XML file.
   DVDAuthorGUI is of course, based on DVDAUTHOR, which by default uses a XML document to define how the dvd is arranged. It would be impossible to add all of the features that DVDAUTHOR supports, so I added a simple XML editor which would allow the user to fully customize how the dvd is created. This could be anything from creating multiple titlesets, to defining whether a subtitle is on or off by default, to practically anything defined in the DVDAUTHOR documentation.

This includes Controlling if subtitles are on or off by default and altering menu items to play subtitles in a particular language.

To enable this feature, goto "file".."Edit XML prior to Authoring". Now, when the user clicks the Author button, the user can select a folder to save the dvd-fileset. Then the gui will display a simple xml editor. After making the changes, click "close". The gui will ask the user if they want to save. Then, the gui will give the user the option to either continue the authoring process, or to not. Either way, the XML changes are recorded, and will stay that way, unless the user alters the project (adding/removing/editing any titles/menus will discard the changes). As mentioned in the loading/saving project section, these changes will be saved in the project file, when the user saves the project.

 

License

All chapters copyright of the authors (see below). Unless otherwise stated all chapters in this manual licensed with GNU General Public License version 2

This documentation is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this documentation; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

Authors

ADDING SUBTITLES
© mick fuzz 2007
Modifications:
adam hyde 2007

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ADDING SIMPLE MENUS
© mick fuzz 2007

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BASIC USE
© mick fuzz 2007

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CREATE CHAPTERS
© mick fuzz 2007

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CREDITS
© adam hyde 2006, 2007

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WINDOWS
© mick fuzz 2007

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INTRODUCTION
© adam hyde 2006, 2007
Modifications:
mick fuzz 2007

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_{Free manuals for free software}

 

 

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