Chapter 7 : TMPGENC DVD Author

I know there are many DVD Authoring programs out there and some of them even do re-encoding for you. But I will just cover the basics for doing up a DVD when you have the DVD-compliant MPG or M2V+WAV files all ready.

You start up the program and this screen comes up as follows:

This program is really easy to use, even has a flow chart of the steps on the top bar for you.

Ok, we will start by clicking on CREATE NEW PROJECT on the right hand side.

Up comes this new window and the flow chart moves to the next box. At this point, you get to add the video files you have in what ever order you want them to be on your DVD.

Click on the ADD FILE button on the right, to begin selecting which files go on your DVD.

A browser window comes up and allows you to pick your video files. If you like you can pick them one file at a time or like I have above, selected two files at once.

Once you highlighted your file (or files) you want to load, then click on OPEN.

OK, this confirmation window pops up with lots of information about the video file you picked. Just press OK. If you selected multiple files like I did, you will be given multiple screens displaying the information about the files. Just press OK.

Ok, we are back to the main menu again, with your movies that you have selected. Now you may notice that I have two episodes of Top Gear here and that episode 8 is before episode 7 on the menu.

Well, you can click on the graphic for the movie file and drag and drop it to the correct spot on your DVD time line.

OK, so I am finished adding my movie files to this DVD. You may also note there is a file size meter at the bottom of this window. You will also notice that my DVD is already too big to fit on a standard 4.7G DVD-R. We will use DVD Shrink to deal with this problem later.

So now we will move on to CREATE MENU. Click the button on the flow chart and this new window will appear.

Ok, you can get fancy here and you can do your own thing and use your own templates. Go nuts.

But I will just use a basic template.

To change the things on the template you simply double click on them.

So in my example, I will double click on TITLE, and change it to TOP GEAR, as shown below.

I can also click on the word UNTITLED TRACK #1, to Season 5, as shown below.

So the final product for our menu screen will look like this picture below:

Now we are finished this page, we click on the button labeled, NEXT PAGE.

This will let us name the chapters on the DVD.

This second menu page will appear. This menu corresponds to the video files you choose. Chapter #1 and Chapter #2 correspond the 2 files I picked in the beginning. So in this example, I will relabel UNTITLED TRACK 1 to Season 5, and I will change Chapter #1 , to Episode 7 and Chapter #2 to Episode 8.

The fixed menu will now look like this.

So we are done fiddling with the menu, we can now click that last box on the flow chart labeled OUTPUT.

It will basically show us where do we want the file to be saved. You will need 5845 MB of hard drive space to author this DVD so you better have the room.

Click on BROWSE if you need to change the directory.

Click on BEGIN OUTPUT if you are ready to go.

Now remember I mentioned that the files I picked exceeded 4.7G so it will come up and warn me again that the DVD is too large to fit on a single DVD.

Click on IGNORE.

Yes, it likes to OVER warn us. Click OK again.

Ok, it will do its thing. There is a meter to tell you how far it has gone.

Now when we are all done, we will have a series of VOB, IFO and BUP files just like you would have if you used DVD Decryptor to rip a DVD.

So just like in lesson 1, if it is under 4.7G you can go straight to Nero and burn.

If you are over 4.7G, then use DVD Shrink to reduce the size so it will fit.