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This page demonstrates how to use todisc to create a DVD with animated-thumbnail menus, like those you often see in commercially-produced DVDs. todisc takes a collection of video files, encodes them for compliance if necessary, and generates a DVD Video filesystem structure suitable for burning to a disc.

In addition to a main menu pointing to each video, todisc can also make a chapter menu for each video included on the disc.

Main menu layouts

todisc has three basic layout formats for the main menu: thumbnail, showcase, and text only.

Thumbnail

The thumbnail layout was the first to appear in todisc.

Showcase

The showcase layout creates smaller thumbnails, but also uses a larger centerpiece thumbnail to 'showcase' any image or video you want. With -showcase IMAGE | VIDEO, the showcase thumbnail can be either an image or a video; todisc will automatically detect the input filetype and use it accordingly.

The showcase layout has several unique options that change the appearance of the showcase thumbnail. The examples here use all of them:

  • -rotate DEGREES
  • -wave default
  • -showcase-framestyle
  • -showcase-titles-align west | east
  • -showcase-seek SECONDS

An image

Showcase image

-rotate 5 -wave default

In addition to showcasing an image, this example illustrates the effects of using -rotate 5, -wave default, and -showcase-titles-align east. This (admittedly long) command also includes making static chapter submenus, each with their own background audio. Click on the screenshot for further links to these submenus.

$ todisc -files amateur.mpg caliendo.mpg monkey.mpg poppin.mpg
  -titles "Amateur" "Frank\nCaliendo" "Code\nMonkey" "Korean\nBreakers" 
  -menu-title "My Favorite YouTube Videos" -menu-font DieNasty 
  -menu-fontsize 36 -title-color '#ff7700' -stroke-color black 
  -thumb-font DieNasty -thumb-fontsize 22 -thumb-text-color '#ff7700' 
  -showcase monkey-highlight.png -showcase-titles-align east 
  -bgaudio monkey.wav -submenus -submenu-titles "Amateur by Lasse Gjertsen" 
  "Frank Caliendo on Dave Letterman" "Code Monkey music video" 
  "Poppin in the Streets of Korea" -submenu-title-color '#ff7700' 
  -submenu-stroke-color black -submenu-audiolength 20 -submenu-audio 
  amateur.wav caliendo.wav monkey.wav poppin.wav 
  -rotate 5 -wave default -debug -keepfiles 
  -out MyFavoriteYouTube



A video


Nothing


Text only

Sub menus

to be reformatted

A sample of todisc's output

Creative commons lrg

Before you begin

Examples

You must provide at least a list of video files and titles to animenu (along with a name for the output file):

 $ todisc \ 
   -files Degroot.mpg Popocatepetl.mpg Yellowstone.mpg \
   -titles "Degroot Market" "Popocatepetl" "Yellowstone" \
   -bgimage yellowstone.jpg
   -out dvd_dir

This creates a DVD filesystem in dvd_dir; when complete, you should be able to preview it like so:

$ gxine dvd://path/to/dvd_dir

todisc supports a wide range of customizations, allowing you to configure the style, fonts, and effects applied to the menu. For example, to include a background video and custom menu title:

$ todisc \
  -files [...] -titles [...] \
  -bgvideo yellowstone.avi \
  -menu-title \
  "My Creative Commons\nVideo Collection" \
  -out dvd_dir

Note: todisc also supports static menus, just add:

-static

to your command line. A static menu will be created quite quickly. Also supported are the makemenu style of text menus. If you add:

-textmenu

todisc will call makemenu and create a text menu.

More to be written

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