DVD Menu Software, for "TV burned" DVDs

vbimport
#1

I’m using a Toshiba D-R410 DVD recorder connected to my HDTV and DirecTV to burn content off of my DirecTV DVR. That works just fine, but the DVD menus on each burned DVD are limited to a textual list of recorded content.

Note that the Toshiba DVD recorder allows me to eject DVDs with recorded content, without “finalizing” the DVD. This leads me to think this might be possible:

Does anyone know of a software product that I could use to create nice DVD menus on the DVDs that I’m burning with my Toshiba DVD recorder? I don’t have a video capture card in my PC, so I’d really just like to be able to take the burned, unfinalized DVD from my Toshiba burner in my living room, bring it to my office and put it in my PC’s DVD burner, then using some software product, add a nice menu & ‘finalize’ the DVD there. Anyone know of a product that could do this?

Thanks for the help!

#2

If the dvd is not finalized, the pc drive probably won’t be able to read the disk. This is why the software you are looking for isn’t available.

You can finalize the disk, rip the contents to the hard drive, then build a new dvd structure and burn to another disk. This is certainly possible, but a lot more trouble than what you had in mind.

There are commercial products that can take dvd-video as input and let you make a new menu. VideoReDo TV Suite, the Womble DVD Wizard program, and DVD Lab Pro can all do this. (Lab Pro is $$$).

The free authoring programs would most likely want mpeg2 or even elementary streams as input. DVDStyler can import the vob files in your dvd-video, but they have to be merged first…so an extra step there. You could use Vob2Mpg to combine the vobs into one large mpeg2 file to import to the authoring program without loss of quality.

#3

Kerry,

You’re right, I just tried it, and the unfinished DVD isn’t recognized in my PC drive. But I like your idea about finishing the DVD, then ripping content onto my PC and proceeding from there with a new DVD. Thanks for the suggestion and your expertise! Cheers!

#4

Use a R/W disk if you can, and save the +R or -R disks for after you author.

#5

Thanks olyteddy. Another excellent suggestion!