Hello all I'm a newbie at this. I have a bunch of audio files arrainged in folders (or the like) as follows: Two main folders seperate the folders/files into two groups (lets call them A and B). Each group contains a dozen or more folders in a particular NON-alphabetical/numerical order (lets call them a, b, c, etc.) that have up to 150 (usually 20 or so) audio files in alphabetical/numerical order (1,2,3,..). The user puts the disk into their home dvd player (not computer) and using their remote, selects folder A or B. The screen is replaced by a screen showing folders a, b, or .. They select the desired folder, and the screen comes up showing that folder's files (1, 2, ..) . They select the desired file and hit play. When this file completes playing, the next file in order plays until all of the files in at least that folder have been played (although playing all of the following files in all of the following folders in the correct orderwould be nice). The object here is not for any particular presentation (screens) as long as the user can easily go through the tree which is presented in the described order. The users should be considered technology impaired and maybe elderly (poor eyesight) so it has to be easy for the user to use and highly readable. Screen images would be nice but not required. Freeware best, but will pay for good product. Which software do you recommend? Which audio format is best? The audio files are spoken words (no music) so sound quality is not an issue. Compatibility with most any player in the US is required. These disks would be free gifts. These thing always make sense when I write them, but later realize some things aren't clear, so please let me know if you are confused. Thanks Dave
Hello... Is there anyone there? Is that crickets I hear? I might end up with rejection issues pretty soon... Please!
From what your requirements are it sounds like you need to author it as DVD-Video. This will mean you need to have your audio in one of the supported formats. For NTSC discs you're supposed to always have a Dolby Digital stream (or maybe it's either DD or uncompressed - don't remember for sure). If you're in PAL country you could substitute MPEG Audio. The folders could be the graphic used for the buttons, and in fact, depending on the software you use, you could make the entire disc nothing but menus. I have the week off so if I get the chance tomorrow I'll see if I can put together a quick and dirty disc like this in DVD-Lab Pro. It should be relatively easy.
Thank you for responding soberfree and vurbal! I think vurbal is on the right track for what I am looking for. I already know how to burn a dvd with just the folders and files, but the "menu" shown on the TV screen is not exactly user freindly for non-technical users (probably should have mentioned this). Plus, I don't think the mp3 files will work on all home dvd players, will they? Am I correct that the NTSC controls the file formats and is the standard and will work on all US dvd players kind of like the .cda audio file format will play on any cd player? Or does it only assure that it will display properly on US tv's? I have a demo version of Nero that I'd buy if it works welll for this. I think dvd's have a limit of 1024 files. When I simply burned the files and folders to the dvd, only exactly the first 1024 would show up on the screen. I am willing to break this up into 2 dvd's by having the first 2 folders contents on separate dvd's. If it makes any difference, the first dvd would have 39 folders with a total of 929 files for a total of 698MB. The second dvd would have a total of 27 folders, 260 files and 217MB. Of course, if it is possible to get all of the files to be recognized on the dvd, it would be 68 folders (2 more for the 2 start folders), 1189 files, and 911 MB or so. I looked at the dvd-video option in Nero and other software I have, but couldn't quite figure it out. Please don't go to a lot of effort; I try to figure things out on my own as much as I can so that I don't use up my welcome. For what it is worth, I am an engineer for a living and work almost entirely on computers, but I don't know much about this stuff. Hopefully I'll only need a little help to get pointed in the right direction. Thanks Dave
Basically what you need to do is think in terms of creating menus that just look like windows explorer. You could either make a background with the folders in it and define the area of the buttons to be where the folders are in the image or they could be separate graphics you add for the buttons. I haven't used Nero so I can't really tell you how to do it with their DVD-Video authoring, but I would think it could do this. If not I know DVD-Lab can do it and most other authoring software should be able to as well. As far as the music itself goes, you're correct that MP3 won't work on DVD-Video. Pegasys sells an AC-3 (Dolby Digital) converter for a reasonable price. AC-3 uses the highest compression that's DVD compliant. There are also many tools that will convert audio to MPEG Audio - not as highly compressed but it can be done with free tools. Each song could be either a chapter or a separate title. You can encode a single still that's either a solid color or has whatever you want displayed during the song. That still could be duplicated in every frame of the video (however many frames it takes to play the song), keeping the video overhead as low as possible. Once you get into it you'll probably find it's less complicated than it sounds.
vurbal- I started using Nero to make the dvd-video slide show. I got it pretty well figured out except for a couple things. First, in the dvd-video format, I quickly exceeded the available disk space (using dolby digital (AC-3) 2.0 or 5.1). You said that there are compression software that create compatible mpeg audio. I suspect though that they still won't compress as well as mp3's? The total file size is 699MB at 32kbps (51 hours playing time) which just nicely fits on the dvd disk. I can tolerate down to 16kbps but would rather not go less than 24kbps. I'd appreciate knowing before I go out and buy more software. If it won't fit in the dvd-video format, then it looks like I'm stuck with going the mp3 dvd route? Second, I couldn't get it to create chapters at all. They would have been at the file level. Is this unique to Nero? Thanks Dave
vurbal- When I said "The total file size is 699MB at 32kbps (51 hours playing time) which just nicely fits on the dvd disk. I can tolerate down to 16kbps but would rather not go less than 24kbps. ", I meant as simple mp3's. Sorry. I've been working on this way too long. Ask my wife. Dave
This is correct. AC-3 will give you the smallest size of any DVD compliant audio stream. Just to be clear on a couple of things. If you're putting this on a DVD you should have 4.37GB to use. Depending on the length of the audio files this may be fine for 51 hours of slideshow with 192kbps AC-3. If not you shouldn't need to go any lower than 128kbps. If you only have about 700MB available that would be a CD based project. Chapters are done at the title level. If you're doing a slideshow (probably the most efficient way to go) you should still be able to have chapters. I recommend downloading the trial version of DVD-Lab Pro if you can't do it with Nero. You should be able to get plenty of help on their support forum for what you want to do. If it can't be done they'll be able to tell you that as well. Plus you won't have to buy the software to find out. In fact, if you're not going to do it again you don't necessarily have to buy the software at all (assuming you get done with the project before the trial runs out). DVD-Lab Pro Website
vurbal I'm a little confused. The problem I think is that because the audio files are the main purpose of the entire project and they will not fit on a dvd disk in dvd-video format, it won't work? Notice that I sent a subsequent reply clarifying that the file sizes I was referring to were for the mp3 files and not for mpeg audio. In short, I don't think 51 hours of audio can be stored on a dvd-video disk, can it? Assuming I can't go the dvd-video route, mp3 is the next best choice for home dvd player compatibility, isn't it? Is there such a thing as a dvd-audio format that all dvd players recognize? I really appreciate your help. Thanks Dave
Actually, as long as it's in a slideshow it's probably possible. A slideshow only requires the amount of space a still takes up for video. Some quick calculations: Assuming 100MB for menus (which you probably won't use) and 3 minutes per song, at 160kbps AC-3 you'd have about 695kB for each image and at 128kbps you'd have about 1.4MB per image. Sounds like it would work to me. It's the next best thing as long as you're talking about putting the MP3's on a CD. Until about 3 years ago there weren't any DVD players that would playback MP3 on a DVD. Even now it's not universal, so while it's theoretically a good idea it's not a sure thing. Unfortunately not. What people think of as a DVD player is technically a DVD-Video player. The only way to be sure it will play on all players is to make it DVD-Video compliant. Second to that would be MP3 on CD. No problem. It's an interesting problem and I'd never thought about just how much audio you can actually put on a DVD until now.
vurbal- Uh, I hate to argue with you, but I am not so sure about your figures. I put only 8 hours, 15 minutes of audio files on a dvd audio-video slide show with only a few jpeg's for the slides (the intended total audio files come to 59 hours). The 8h, 15m required 7.93 GB of disk space. (These same audio files in mp3 came to only 113MB.) Remember, the audio files, in their entirety, are what is important. The stills are to give a pretty background while the audio is playing. On the other hand, I had selected "fit slide show duration to audio duration" for each of the 3 titles (each title had a single jpg). Does this somehow eat up disk space? I thought it would just make sure that the picture would display until the audio finished playing for that title. Again, thanks Dave
It sounds like you were using uncompressed audio and using an awful lot of space for the images. I did my calculations using Videohelp.com's online bitrate calculator. To get figures that match yours click on the Advanced mode button. Change the size to 1 x 7.95GB(DVD-9) and the audio bitrate to 1536 (which is uncompressed). The calculated video bitrate is 627kbps. That's huge for a slideshow since you only need to save each picture in the slideshow once and then specify the amount of time for it to display. To get calculations for AC-3 you need to go back to simple mode, set the video length to 59 hours, the size to 4.37(DVD-5), and set Audio bitrate to 128kbps. That will give you a calculated bitrate of 41kbps. If average song length (or display time for 1 slide) is 3 minutes, that gives you (41*60*3)/8 = 922.5kB or almost 1 MB for a single still image. If the average song time is 5 minutes is tould be (41*60*5)/8 = 1537.5kB or almost 1.5MB You won't get AC-3 audio without using an AC-3 encoder. There's one that's part of BeSweet (freeware) that isn't licensed or certified with Dolby Labs. It doesn't create perfect streams and you may have problems with bad output files or audio that won't play on all players. Pegasys (maker of TMPGenc Encoder) sells a cheap AC-3 encoder that only does 2 channel output. It's Dolby Labs certified and licensed. DVD-Lab can use it as a plugin and so can TMPGEnc DVD Author.
