phd said:
Yes it is.
Basically, if you do not touch the default text, it will not appear in the finished DVD. No need to clear it out every time. Try it.
Thanks for that, I'll give that a go - it will save me time.
What happens if I save the project, will it always show the default text when I open it, or once I've produced something, and reopen it will it just be blank.
phd said:
Animated menus are not possible in DMF2, they are a feature in DMF 3. If you do decide to demo DMF, be aware of 2 things:
1 The demo can't be patched.
2 No AC3 support.
I don't think I'll bother demo-ing. I'd happily use motion menus if they were there, but I'm reasonably happy with MF2, I like the ease of creating chapters, and a custom background with the audio I like is good enough for me.
I'm more concerned with authoring fairly quickly, really, rather than some polished DVD menu. A good compromise to me is a custom background with audio.
When I have more time, and (hopefully) as later releases happen, I'll do more with the GUI_for_dvdauthor - because that was pretty good - 'cept it wouldn't fully author for me - kept either getting stuck in a loop, or falling over ;-)
AC3 would be good for anything I'm burning that's close to the limit - but would I need to re-encode (given captures are done with mpeg audio) or would it be just re-encoding the audio, and remuxing.
I know I can do it by demuxing and using besweet (and the simple GUI front ends!), but I'm not truly sure of what the best options are with bitrates, there - and it adds quite a lot of time to the process - having to demux, convert, remux then author.
It would be different if I had AC3 source, or was extracting from DVDs with AC3 source, but all I really do is capture from TV (digital satellite) to mpeg, edit, then author.
phd said:
There are also 2 versions of the full DMF3, standard and Disk Creator. Disk Creator has AC3 support, standard does not.
Check out the customize button in DMF2 for other other standard template layouts, you may find one you like.
I played around with it, but couldn't quite get it to take for the session I was in - it didn't seem to apply to the menus I already had?
As a product I find it reasonably good, I don't really have any high-end needs, animation would be nice, but sometimes simple is good, too.
The only thing I think I'd really want to do is play around with the types of buttons it puts on for titles and chapters - sometimes for style, sometimes for colour - probably so that they fit well with the background I use for the disk. And the placement of the title and chapter buttons - again to fit in with the background I'm using.
