NAME
movie-title - Creates a menu for a set of movies on a DVD
SYNOPSIS
movie-title [-C] -o output -t title_seq [-T XxY] [-s start]
[-c interval] source_video [...]
DESCRIPTION
This program takes one or more video streams (which are the .m2v or
.vob files that are produced by movie-to-dvd) and exactly one title
sequence (as produced by movie-make-title or movie-make-title-simple)
and combines all of them into a navigational menu from which a viewer
of the DVD can choose which movie he or she wants to see.
The program will produce a VOB file that can be used as a menu if you
want to do your own DVD authoring, but it will also produce an XML file
that can be used directly as an input file for dvdauthor, the program
that you will most likely be using to create the DVD images that you
can burn on a real DVD.
THE MENU
The menu will look as follows: the background that will fill the entire
screen will be the supplied title sequence (as produced by movie-make-
title or movie-make-title-simple). The sound from the title sequence
(if any) will be audible while the viewer is choosing which movie to
watch.
If the animated type of menu was chosen in movie-make-title or movie-
make-title-simple, each movie in the menu will be presented by having a
rectangle in the menu in which a picture-in-picture version of that
movie is display (exactly as long as the title sequence is itself).
If the static type of menu was chosen in movie-make-title or movie-
make-title-simple, each movie in the menu will be presented by having a
rectangle in the menu in which one frame of that movie is displayed,
that will remain unchanged while the menu is being displayed.
If the none type of menu was chosen in movie-make-title or movie-make-
title-simple, none of the movies in the menu will have a preview image
at all.
Below the rectangle (or below the navigation button(s) if there is no
preview image), the name of the movie will be displayed. If no further
information is supplied (see further on), the movie’s file name will be
used as the title (which is most likely not what you want), otherwise
the supplied title will be used. Above the rectangle (or above the
title if no preview images are present), a "play" icon will be
displayed, which can be chosen by using the DVD player’s remote to play
the movie. If more information is supplied (more than just a title),
an extra "information" icon will be displayed as well, which can be
selected in order to view the extra supplied information.
EXTRA INFORMATION
If supplied, one can also add information about the movies to the DVD:
an extra information icon will appear with the movie’s title, and when
chosen, the information will appear for the viewer to read. If there
is more information than will fit onto the screen, a scrollbar will be
created, and the viewer will be able to scroll by using the up and down
keys on his or her DVD player’s remote control.
The way the extra information works is as follows: create a file with
the same name as the video stream’s name, except using .info as the
extension instead of .m2v or .vob. So if you have a video stream
called my_home_video.m2v, then you should create a text file called
my_home_video.info.
There is a program called movie-rip-tv.com that can produce such .info
files for TV episodes: the information is ripped from tv.com. See its
manual page for more information about this.
EXTRA INFORMATION FORMAT
The file has a certain format: the first line should be the title of
the movie as it should be displayed in the menu. You may use the
special character ^ (carrot, usually shift-6) to split up the title
into multiple lines. This is useful when the title is quite long and
is too wide to fit in the grid.
The remainder of the file may be used to supply information about the
movie. If the file contains only one line, only the title will be used
and no "information" icon will be displayed for this movie. Lines
should normally not be any wider than about 60 characters to avoid the
lines being wider than the screen can display.
EXTRA INFORMATION COLORS
To introduce some extra clarity, you may specify in which color a line
should be displayed. Usually, the text is white (and the background is
always black). You may type a hash mark (#) followed by a six-
character hexadecimal color code (the same as those used on the web)
followed by a space followed by the line itself to display a line in a
certain color.
EXTRA INFORMATION EXAMPLE
An example of a .info file could be:
My first words
#ffff00 Title:
My first words
#ff00ff Date:
September 8th, 1975
#ff0000 Synopsis:
A home video that captures my first words as a child!
In this case, the title is "My first words", which will be displayed in
the DVD menu. Further more, extra information is supplied, which can
be viewed using the "information" icon on the DVD. The "Title:" line
will be in yellow, the "Date:" line in magenta and the "Synopsis:" line
will be presented in red. The other text will be in plain white.
OPTIONS
The following options are available:
-o output
Specifies the name of the menu VOB file that should be produced
by this program.
Not only this file is created, but a whole lot of other files as
well. These files can be automatically cleaned up by using the
-C option (see the information there).
The most notable files are output itself (which is a VOB file
that can be used as a menu, if you want to do your own DVD
authoring) and output-dvdauthor.xml, which is an XML file that
can be given to dvdauthor’s -x option to create the DVD image
for you.
There is also output-overlay.gif, which will contain the titles
and the rectangles used in the menu. This file can be viewed to
see whether the titles all fit nicely in the menu before you
decide to burn it to a real DVD.
Personally, I usually use the name title.vob (short and to-the-
point).
-C When this option is supplied (and the rest the of arguments
remain as they were when the program is first run), the program
will clean up all the temporary files that were created for
producing the DVD image. When the program is run without this
option, it will suggest a command line to run including this
option when it finishes, to clean up.
-t title_sequence
This option tells the program which title sequence directory to
use, which must have been created my movie-make-title or movie-
make-title-simple beforehand. Please look in the manual pages
for movie-make-title and movie-make-title-simple for more
information on how to use those programs.
-T XxY Normally, the program will determine by itself what the optimal
grid size is in which to present all the movies at once. For
example, if there are five movies, it will set the grid size to
three by two (leaving one space blank). Using this option, you
may override the program’s default grid size and set it to X by
Y (note the letter x in between the two numbers). If you
specify a grid size that has more spaces than there are movies,
the last few spaces will be left blank. If you specify a grid
size that has fewer spaces than there are movies, the program
will tell you so and will refuse to run.
-s start
Normally, the program will start capturing frames for the
picture-in-picture versions of the movies to put in the menu
from the beginning (first frame) of those movies. This is often
just fine, but sometimes you will want to start capturing frames
somewhere beyond the start. You could want this if all the
movies start the same way, for example. You’ll also want to use
this if you are displaying static preview images in your menu:
if you don’t, you will probably just see a black image because
the first image of a movie is rarely anything useful. Using
this option, you can specify a number seconds, which will be
used as a seek position in the movie before any frames are
captured.
-c interval
Sets how long a chapter lasts in the movies. Chapters are
created every interval minutes in the movies. This makes the
movie easy to navigate with a DVD player’s remote control. The
default is 2 minutes. If you do not want chapters to be
created, specify none.
DIAGNOSTICS
If this program is called with a incorrect set of parameters, it will
print a diagnostic message telling the user what went wrong. Also, it
will then print its usage information, listing all the options and
their meanings.
The program tells you what it is doing while it is running.
EXAMPLE
The command line that I use most often is:
movie-title -o title.vob -t title input1.m2v input2.m2v
AFTER RUNNING THE PROGRAM
Once the program has been run, you should run dvdauthor to create a DVD
image that you can burn to a real DVD. The program will tell you how
to run dvdauthor once it has finished. Also, it will suggest what to
run after dvdauthor has done its job to clean up all the temporary
files that are no longer necessary at that point.
BURNING THE IMAGE TO A REAL DVD
Once you have created a DVD image with dvdauthor, you may burn it onto
a real DVD. How this is done depends on which program you use for
that. Personally, I use growisofs. The command line that I use for
that program is:
growisofs -dvd-video -Z /dev/dvd directory_with_image
The directory_with_image is the directory that you specified in
dvdauthor’s -o option.
MOVIES WITH MORE THAN ONE PART
Some movies are split up into more than one part. That is, you have
more than one .m2v or .vob file, which together make up the entire
movie. For example, you could have a movie that has been split up into
separate sections, each lasting a half hour at the most.
In this case, you don’t want all the sections to appear in the menu,
just the section from which you want to rip the picture-in-picture view
for use in the menu.
You should supply just the .m2v or .vob as an argument to this program
from which you want to rip the frames for use in the menu, along with
any other .m2v or .vob files that you want to appear in the menu. Once
the program is done, just before you run dvdauthor, you should edit the
file called output-dvdauthor.xml. Look for the line that contains the
file name of the section of the movie that you specified on the command
line. Copy this line and paste it below the existing line until you
have as many lines as that there are parts of the movie. Now, edit the
file names in each of the lines so that you end up naming all of the
sections of the movie.
Now, when you run dvdauthor, it will join all of the sections together
into one complete movie. It will do this for all the movies that had
been split up.
SEE ALSO
videotrans(1), movie-make-title(1), movie-make-title-simple(1), movie-
to-dvd(1), movie-rip-tv.com(1), movie-compare-dvd(1), movie-rip-
epg.data(1)
AUTHOR
The author is Sven Berkvens-Matthijsse (sven@berkvens.net). Please
send any project related e-mail to videotrans@berkvens.net.
BUGS
None known. Please report any bugs to videotrans@berkvens.net!
videotrans movie-title(1)