Keeping DVD menus

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
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Leo
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Keeping DVD menus

Post by Leo »

Hi, I remember seeing somehting similar asked ages ago but I was wondering if things has changed: Is there any way of keeping the DVD menus? I'm using a PC.

Is it possible to just encode the DVD menu as an x264 avi? (Even losing the functionality, just because the menu video clip that is played before the movie starts is often quite cool. Can HB/MF do it? Is it possible to prepend once cycle of it to the movie?)
rhester
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Post by rhester »

In general, no. Menus on DVDs are code, not video (though they do contain visible elements). In short, without doing something like a vidcap of the menu playing back in DVD software and then transcoding it, this cannot be done.

Rodney
broaddd
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Post by broaddd »

It seems to depend on the DVD. The last couple I looked at had simple menus with a video playing behind static buttons - this whole thing was stored in one of the vob files, and I converted it using ffmpegx.
Neil
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Post by Neil »

broaddd wrote:It seems to depend on the DVD. The last couple I looked at had simple menus with a video playing behind static buttons - this whole thing was stored in one of the vob files, and I converted it using ffmpegx.
But, those buttons wouldn't be functional in a MP4 video, right?
cbud
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Post by cbud »

Neil wrote:
broaddd wrote:It seems to depend on the DVD. The last couple I looked at had simple menus with a video playing behind static buttons - this whole thing was stored in one of the vob files, and I converted it using ffmpegx.
But, those buttons wouldn't be functional in a MP4 video, right?
Of course not.
Neil
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Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2007 3:15 am

Post by Neil »

cbud wrote:
Neil wrote:
broaddd wrote:It seems to depend on the DVD. The last couple I looked at had simple menus with a video playing behind static buttons - this whole thing was stored in one of the vob files, and I converted it using ffmpegx.
But, those buttons wouldn't be functional in a MP4 video, right?
Of course not.
I've heard, although I don't know first hand, that a video can be encoded in mp4 yet still have menus if it's in a .mkv container and played in a compatible player.
jbrjake
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Post by jbrjake »

mp4 video == video in the .mp4 container, not mpeg-4 video

HB doesn't support Matroska anyway. I eagerly await someone implementing it, because it would be very awesome.

However, the menus Matroska uses are not the same as the menus on a DVD and you can't just copy them over, to the best of my knowledge.

BTW, .mov can have menus too. See Metadata Hootenanny.
Neil
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Post by Neil »

jbrjake wrote:mp4 video == video in the .mp4 container, not mpeg-4 video...
Thanks for the correction. So, m4v=mpeg4 video?
...HB doesn't support Matroska anyway. I eagerly await someone implementing it, because it would be very awesome...
Agreed.
...BTW, .mov can have menus too. See Metadata Hootenanny.
Yeah, I've used that for a couple instuctional videos that I view on my Mac, but those tags aren't supported by the iPod nor ATV, afik.

So, I've ripped some other instructional DVDs to my iPod one chapter at a time. That's extremely tedious the way HB require us to go in a change the all the settings for each chapter individually. Some times there are more than 50 chapters.

It would be nice if HB could rip them all individually with one command, but there are other very simple things that could make it easier. Presets would be nice. It would also be nice to have a button to change to the next chapter instead of having to go through two pop-up menus every time.
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