iDVD equivalent?

[WilBUR]

Well I have been making DVDs for quite sometime and I usually take the quick and dirty route, put higher quality into the movie itself rather then the menus. So last night my roommate (who is a mac user) decides to join in on the fun and start to make DVDs. He does so with ease on iDVD/iMovie (although he still lacks the quality in the movie aspect) but his menus are just WOW. Seeing as how I am on XP, will be OSX once Leopard and a good laptop hits the market, I would just like to ask those movie makers what they are using the create dvd menus that are just as breathtaking as iDVD?

[Metrogirl]

I haven't tried making DVDs on the Mac at all, so I can't compare products. On XP for simple projects I generally use an aging copy of Spruce, released in 2002 I believe and now unavailable except from :pirate2: sources. It's actually a commercial product which was used by many studios although you have to work hard to create dynamic graphics with it. My tool of choice on XP is DVD Lab Pro which is just amazing - you can do anything menu-wise with it.

 

To rip I use DVD Decrypter in file mode running on top of AnyDVD which I set to jump directly to the main menu. Then I pass the rip through Vobblanker to strip any trailers, residual FBI warnings, studio logos etc. If I must shrink I use DVD Shrink which is still pretty good, though now that you can get DL DVD for around $1 apiece there's not much reason to compress a DVD any more. Like you, if I shrink I compress the extras and menus to the maximum, and give as much space as possible to the movie.

 

The beauty of AnyDVD is that it handles every copy protection including the newer ArCOSS {censored} that Sony turn out nowadays, lets you play discs from any region on an RPC2 drive, bypasses the trailers and FBI/Europol warnings and also decrypts the movie (including HD and BluRay) before Windows ever sees it. The studios have started putting the garbage AFTER you hit the 'play movie' button so it can't handle that, which is why I use Vobblanker. Also, to compress effectively you should remove the garbage (Vobblanker again) so it doesn't take up space because AnyDVD only bypasses it, it's still there.