Customize a DVD Menu
Create your own custom DVD menus graphically with DVDStyler.
[Hack #70] covers the basics for converting a video into a DVD-compatible format. Although a DVD that jumps directly into the video can be fine, sometimes you’d like to add menus and other custom touches to your DVD. In the past, if you wanted to do something like this, it meant digging through dvdauthor-compatible XML files. Although you can still do it that way (masochist), there are easier options. In this hack I cover how to create your own custom DVD menu using the DVDStyler graphical tool.
DVDStyler is a cross-platform DVD authoring tool that can manage multiple menus, offers drag-and-drop functionality for menus, video, and buttons, and allows you to set chapters for each of your movies. Under Linux it acts as a frontend to the dvdauthor tool and creates dvdauthor-compatible XML files behind the scenes. While DVD authoring can be a bit advanced, DVDStyler makes it reasonably simple for you to create a basic DVD menu for your movie without much prior know-how.
To get DVDStyler, go to the download page at the official site http://dvdstyler.sourceforge.net. Precompiled Debian packages are available there. Otherwise, download and compile the source according to the installation instructions. As I mentioned before, this program acts as a frontend to dvdauthor and other DVD creation tools under Linux, so be sure that dvdauthor, mjpegtools, mkisofs, and growisofs are installed on your system.
To start ...
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