DVDFlick

Below relates to DVDFlick version 1.3.0.7, released October 28, 2009 (and still the latest, as of end 2016).

What is DVDFlick ?

DVDFlick is an Open Source DVD Authoring 'front end' with Video and Audio processing performed by the Open Source Codec package FFMPEG (which is built in**). It builds standard mpeg DVD's (including double layer) only (i.e. not AVCHD's). PAL output is 720x576 pixel video frames at 25fps. You can set the dipslay aspect ratio to 4:3 or 16:9 on a 'per title' (per video clip) basis.

**DVDFlick uses FFmpeg revision 19276 which dates back to June 25 2009. Since then FFmpeg has been massively updated. If your movie plays OK in full 'surround sound' in other apps, but DVDFlick fails to pick up the sound correctly, chances are it's the FFmpeg component. Unfortunately, due to the way FFmpeg is 'built-in' you will have to wait for an 'official' DVDFlick update = which we have been waiting for since 2010 ...
There is a similar problem with the 'bundled' ImgBurn (which is used to make DVD's and/or generate .iso files).

I suggest you check out the 'step through' guide, Using DVDFlick, which is essentially a series of screen shots of the menu's with a brief explanation of what each option controls and what each choice means - but watch out - when the guide suggests you 'leave it set to default', 9 times out of 10, DVDFlick will GET IT WRONG !

DVDFlick accepts standard MPG files (mpeg2), .avi/.WMV (VC-1 video from Windows Movie Maker, but NOT wma and NOT WVP2 from PhotoStory) and also 'elementary stream' separate video and audio files (.m2v & .wav, as generated by Eindows Movie Maker (or SUPER / TMPGEnc etc. video converters).

You can (must) set the 'pixel aspect ratio' of incoming movie files, however it's (very) easy to forget and leave it set to 'default' which case DVDFlick will get it wrong and will typically add 'black bands' to the sides or top & bottom of the output video (which, for PAL is always 720x576)


Input clip		Required DVD	Pixel aspect ratio to set
720x576         4:3             5:4
720x576         16:9            16:10
768x576         4:3             1:1
768x576         16:9            16:9 (PhotoStropy 3 4:3 crop 133% height pre-distorted photos)
1024x576        16:9            1:1

DVD Flick uses about 500Mb of RAM during processing and makes efficient use of HT / multi-core (each 'CPU' is run to 80%+).To create a full 4.7Gb DVD (and save the result) requires just over 12Gb free disk space.

DVD Flick uses a built-in (old version) of ImgBurn to generate .iso or burn DVD's. Whilst this is fine for .iso's, it is reported to have problems with dual layer DVD's and with some drives, so I always use DVD Flick to generate the .iso and a current version of ImgBurn to make the actual DVD (this has the added advantage that you can check the .iso 'plays' OK before wasting time making beer mats :-) )
 
Note, I ALWAYS leave a blank DVD in the 'burner' drive = ImgBurn will check for a blank before running, even it all it's doing is generating an .iso. If the drive is empty, you may wake up in the morning to discover DVDFlick showing a 'drive not ready' error and having dumped everything it's just spent 8 hrs processing overnight :-)

What are it's main advantages and limitations ?

+Audio

The major advantage of DVDFlick is the flexibility of it's Audio support.

You can 'delete' the sound track that is 'embedded' within your movie and add a replacement 'stand-alone' .ac3 5.1 (so long as you set 5.1 in the project settings). You can also add multiple 'language' tracks (which can be 'renamed' to whatever you like for the Menu selection). This allows you to offer, for example, a choice of different 'styles' of music tracks or even the choice of a narration track to go with your home produced movie = so instead of 'English', 'French' etc. you can name the Audio tracks 'Classical', 'New Age', 'Hip Hop' etc.

NB. DVDFlick handles 'elementary' movie clips (separate video (.m2v) & audio (.m2a) components) in the same way as 'normal movie plus additional audio'. It does not 'automatically' pair up elementary components - first you import the video (Add Title) component and then manually add the audio (click to select the Title, click on 'Edit Title', Audio tab, Add and browse for that clips 'matching' audio track)

You can 'import' any 6CH (5.1) .ac3 or 2CH (stereo) .wav, even both types for the same movie clip (i.e. as separate 'languages')

With .avi (generated by Movie Maker from a MS PhotoStory source .wmv), DVD Flick can appear to get the video and audio 'out of step', i.e. the .avi audio starts half-a-second (or more) before your carefully timed photo video srquence.
 
This is because (by default) MS PhotoStory starts with a blank (black) screen and 'fades in' to the first photo with a default 1 second fade - and (in PhotoStory) the music starts with the first photo (and not with the 'blank screen' inserted for the fade)
 
To avoid this, in MS PhotoStory just set the first photo to 'no transition' :-)

If you import WMV video (it understands VC-1 fine) and it doesn't understand the Audio (Windows Media 10) it will accept the video and drop the audio (unlike most other packages that just 'give up' and refuse to import anything)

Pixel aspect ratio

Just about every video processing package in the world has probelms with PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio) and DAR (Display Aspect Ratio).

The problem is created by the many video formats / containers than only support DAR and application software that continually 'gets it wrong' by 'asking the wrong questionn', ignoring the incoming file PAR/DAR and setting 'incorrect' output PAR/DAR
 
Windows Movie Maker is one of the worst offenders - if you feed it (133% height stretched) 768x576 video (4:3) and tell it to output '16x9', it will totally ignore that setting and mark the output with a DAR of '4x3' ...
.. and (by default) DVD Flick does exactly the same ...

To get widescreen output in DVDFlick you must set the output for EACH TITLE as 16:9 and set the 'Pixel Aspect Ratio' of each '133% height streteched' input as 16x9 (if just set the 'output' to 16x9, it will WIDTH COMPRESS any '4:3' declared input by adding black bands at the left and right sides !)

The main GUI shows 'thumbnails' of the video Titles in 4x3 sized display thumbnail windows. If you see black bands at the top and bottom, then the input will be stretched to fill the 16x9 width OK (i.e. no side black bands)

The only other way to get 16x9 is to set the output to 16:9 and feed it 1024x576 pixel input video (i.e. actual 16:9 (DAR) movie with 1:1 (PAR) aspect ratio pixels)

-Menu GUI

The main weakness of DVD Flick is it's Menu system which has essentially no GUI (of which more later).

You can select your Menu from one of the 'profiles' (which are all 3:4). The problem is that SOME domestic players will then insist on playing your entire movie in 4:3 format ! To get 16:9 you have to replace the 4x3 splash screens in one of the profiles folder with 16:9 versions (which will then cause DVD Flick to generate a 16x9 menu)

WARNING Whilst it is possible to select Menu == 'none' (eg for an 'auto-play' disc without any menu), when you do this DVD Flick will create a DVD "Video_TS.IFO" file that states the entire disk is "4:3, NTSC 29.970 fps" irrespective of your actual video format !!
 
If the actual video differs (eg it's PAL 25fps or 16:9), most players will cope by playing your 16:9 as 'tall and thin' 4:3 .. other players will get very upset, although you can, of course, hand-edit the .IFO files before burning the DVD

Because the menu GUI is virtually useless, I encourage you to go and edit the menu 'profiles'. Whilst it's quite hard to 'get it right', the menu profiles are an extremely flexible and powerful way to define your own menu structures.

The menu background splash screens are 768x576 pixel .bmp for 4x3. For 16x9, just swap out the images for 1024x576 pixel .bmp's
 
Note that ALL menu bmp's must exist, ESPECIALLY the 'example.bmp' (which is shown when you 'select' a menu in the DVD Project). Miss out (or miss name) a bmp, and DVD Flick will crash loosing everything since the last 'save project'

On 'importing' a clip (Title), DVDFlick will automatically generate a 'thumbnail' to identify that Title in the menu (later). This is taken from some random frame between 0 and a few dozen seconds 'in', and yes, it is quite good at selecting a 'blank' frame as your clip 'fades in'.

Fortunately DVDFlick lets you change the time point - but only to the nearest second - from which the thumbnail is taken. Further the 'thumbnail' will be displayed in the aspect ratio that DVDFlick is going to assume for that 'Title' (movie clip)
 
There are TWO places where you need to set 16:9 settings = one is for the playback (output) and the other is for the incoming pixel aspect ratio = you have to get BOTH RIGHT if you want 16:9 playback.
 
If you forget to set the pixel ratio (i,.e. leave it on 'auto') but set 16x9 output, DVD Flack will assume incoming pixels are 'square' and PAD OUT to 16x9 by adding black 'bands' to the start and end of each and every scan line !

-Unwanted (bit rate) adjustments

The 'number one' major annoyance of DVDFlick is it's continuous attempts to 're-code' everything without much warning in order to 'fit everything onto the DVD'. Whilst you might expect it to re-code to a lower bit-rate if you try to 'squeeze too much in', it often decides to recode to a 'higher' bit-rate if you 'leave empty space' !

As well as wasting hours of your time, it is, of course, impossible to improve the 'quality' of low-bit rate video by re-recoding at a higher bit rate
 
NOTE that DVDFlick also has a habit of resetting values to 'default' - and since the default is to burn to DVD, if you don't have a blank DVD ready in the drive after it's spent hours recoding, it just throws a 'Not Ready Error' and drops everything

In short, never leave anything in DVDFlick set to 'auto' or 'default' == always set exactly what you want and check before clicking 'Make DVD'. That way you won't have to wait hours whilst it processes your video into something you don't want and then deletes the lot because there is no blank DVD ready :-)

The DVD standard supports 'up to' 9mbps (mega-bits-per-second)
 
In the DVD Project settings, you can select a maximium of 8mbps, however that's for Video and Audio is 'extra' so you will get quite close the the DVD max. spec. if you add more than one Audio tracks (each AC-3 5.1 track is typically 448kbps).

Why is my 16:9 DVD playing in 4:3 ?

1) If you fail to specify a Menu, DVDFlick will revert to it's 'default' movie DVD settings, which is NTSC 4:3

2) If you leave the Pixel aspect ratio set on 'default', DVDFlick ignores the aspect ratio setting of your imported video and 'guesses' what to do by looking at the pixel height/width counts and ASSUMING square pixels.

This means that when you import 768x576 133% pre-distorted (from Movie Maker output of PhotoStory 3 wmv-i), even if the '16:9' flag is correctly set in the .avi file, DVDFlick will treat it as DAR 4:3 and PAR 1:1 ! i.e. you MUST change the Pixel Aspect Ratio in DVDFlick, "title" 'source' window from 'Default' to 16:9 !
 
On the other hand, it copes just fine with the moronic 'video format conversion' utilities that set DVD standard 720x576 DAR to '5:4' (instead of 4:3) :-)

If you are building a 16:9 DVD and slip up on the 'source', then DVDFlick will waste hours converting your '4:3' video into 16:9 by adding 'black bands' to each side of every video line**. This can be very confusing as the 'padded' video will now have the 16:9 DAR flag set, but, of course, when played back, the black band padding will make it look like 4:3 !

** To achieve this, it squeezes the original 720/768 down to 540 and then adds 180 black pixels (90 to the start and end) to 'pad out' each display line and bring the total back up to 720 (the SD DVD storage standard).
 
If, however if DVDFlick is 'forced' to treat (133% height pre-distorted) 768x576 pixels as '16:9', to generate a 16:9 DVD it will correctly 'squeeze' the incoming 768 into 720 (i.e. no black bands added).

To avoid DVDFlicks' auto 4:3 assumption, you must manually set the 'Pixel aspect ratio' to 16:9 in the 'Video sources' settings (highlight the imported Title, click Edit Title from the right hand menu & select the 'Video Sources' setting) for each imported 'Title' (video clip). The Thumbnail for the clip will show the video aspect ratio (if it's 'square', DVDFlick is treating that video clip as 4:3)

WARNING - DVDFlick has a habit of 'resetting' the pixel aspect ratio back to 'auto' (4:3) when you do things with the Menu ! So, before clicking 'Build DVD', you must always check that each Title thumbnail is being displayed correctly (i.e. 16:9 if you are starting with 133% pre-distorted video)

NOTE. DVDFlick will always process the imported video to get the required DVD standard width of 720. If your imported clips are 1:1 pixel aspect ratio and the video is 1024 x 576 (i.e. real 16:9) you can leave the pixel aspect ratio set to 'auto', set the 16:9 DVD flag and DVDFlick will correctly squeeze the 1024 into 720

If your 'imported' video is only 702 (rather than 768 or 720) pixels wide, in Project settings, Video, Advanced, you can set 'add over-scan borders'. This will add 18 pixels (9 at start and end) of each display line and avoids the 702 pixels being 'stretched' to fit 720

Sub-title support

DVDFlick supports .SRT (SubRip), MicroDVD and SubView subtitle definition files. It also has limited support for 'Substation Alpha' SSA\ASS (only the text is imported, no markup or colors) in .AQT, .JS, .RT, .SMI, .ASS, .SRT, .SSA, .TXT files.

Are 'bit mapped' subtitles supported ?

No, DVDFlick supports ascii coded text definitions and can not import 'bit mapped' (image) subtitles. DVDFlick converts from ascii text to (poor definition) bitmap during it's own DVD creation cycle.

If you want to 'port' (re-use) bit-mapped subtitles from an existing DVD into DVDFlick, you have to convert them into text format first (eg using SubTitleCreator to 'OCR' them to .srt format)

Creating subtitles

To create (or edit) your own subtitles, you will need a tool such as SubtitleCreator

This is another good reason to 'start' with video that does not need to be converted (by DVDFlick into mpeg2) = so that all the timings 'line up' when you add the sub-titles

Adding subtitles

To add sub-titles to a clip ('title'), select the title & then edit & browse for the (.srt etc) subtitle file.

Modifying subtitle appearance

To change subtitle fonts etc., select the subtitle file and click the Edit button. You can changes the font, font size and positioning of a subtitle (within the video frame).

Multiple subtitle 'tracks'

You can assign a different subtitle file 'per language' Use 'Edit' to set the 'language' for each subtitle.

Forcing subtitle display

Setting 'force display' effectively makes the subtitles 'burn in'. Click the preview window to see a full size render of how the subtitle will look.

Output Quality (bit rate)

If you leave the bit rate set to 'auto' and run out of room on the DVD, DVDFlick will automatically recode your movie and reduce the bit rate as necessary to fit everything onto the disc. Whilst it will not drop the rate below at 2mbps, there seems to be no warning when it first decides that recoding is necessary.

As you add clips, DVDFlick 'estimates' the space required for 'full quality' bit rate and shows a 'space used bar' on the left side of it's main window GUI, so you will know when you are 'running out'.
 
It's to be noted that the output quality at reduced bit rates is amazingly good = it's quite possible to get 3+ hours onto a standard DVD with no obvious loss of playback quality. However recoding will take time.
 
So to avoid long processing times, you may wish to set the rate to whatever you know your mpeg is already coded at (you can use the Open Source utility MediaInfo to discover your video files' bit rate)

DVD Flick will display the duration of each clip (or 'Title') you add - plainly this should match the duration originally created in MS Photo Story 3 etc. .. and since you know you can only get just over 100 minutes of high quality movie per DVD you will, of course, have limited the total time of the clips you created in the first place :-)

Watch out for DVDFlick wasting time by re-coding to HIGHER bit-rates when you leave 'empty space' on the DVD !

Hacking the DVD Menu

When you open the Menu tab, it displays a list of 'styles'. These 'styles' are stored in C:\Program Files\DVD Flick\templates, and there is nothing to stop you creating your own 'style' template.

Note that, having selected a Menu style, the complete menu structure will be 'built'.

This means any 'custom' profile you define MUST contain all the elements for a full menu structure, even if you never intend to use some parts (such as multiple audio tracks or Chapters)

WARNING - unless you have multiple Audio tracks, always deselect 'show audio first' or DVD Flick will direct the user to a pointless menu page** insisting they choose from a 'selection' of the one and only audio track :-)

Note that DVDFlick always creates a 'Select audio' page and on pressing the 'Menu' button (on the DVD player remote control) a user will often end up visiting the 'select audio' page unexpectedly.

**Depending on the 'style', DVDFlick may also create 'Subtitles' & 'Chapters' buttons even if no Subtitles exist and no Chapters have been created = the user will be shown a menu page that displays the text 'Sub-titles disabled' (or an empty 'Choose Chapter' page) :-)

The first ('Top') Menu page will show the user 2 buttons, 'Start' or 'Choose Title', along with a background image (.bmp).

The 'Start' button means 'Play All' i.e. play the 'Titles' one after the other automatically.
 
It also doubles up as the 'Resume' button, so you might want to change the 'Start' button to 'Play All / Resume' in your own profiles
 
Each button has a 'mask' which defines it's background (which can be transparent). These are held as 'bit maps' (.bmp), typically about 28 pixels high by about 150 wide.
 
You can add your own FONTS for button text (see the 'Plasma Sphere' menu profile)

The 'Choose Title' button will take the user to a series of sub-menu pages with a choice of only 3 Titles per 'page' (it may be possible to change the number per page by a hand edit 'hack' of the Menu the 'profile').

The background is a second .bmp image and DVDFlick will use the 'thumbnail' image, as defined in the Titles import page, as well as the Title name for each button on each sub-menu page.

You can also set the DVD to start automatically and 'loop' forever (this is very useful if you want to create a DVD for 'background' showing eg. at a public exhibition).

NOTE. Whilst the DVDFlick menu is usable, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you select 'ISO' as the output - and then use a specialist DVD Menu (& Sub Title) creation utility to examine and modify DVDFlicks rather 'broken' Menu structure before burning to DVD.

How are the Titles shown in the Menu ?

The order of Titles shown in the Menu will be the same as you see in the main display (Title import) window = you can change the order, but it's plainly easier to import your clips in the order you wish them to appear in the Menu :-)

The name of each Title defaults to name of the video clip file you loaded (use Edit Title, General tab to change it's name).

The 'thumbnail' shown for a Title in the Menu defaults more or less at random from 0 to up to 10 or 12 seconds in from the start of a clip. To change the 'thumbnail', click to select the Title, click on 'Edit Title', General tab, Thumbnail. For most clips, the first (t=0) frame is black. Since the thumbnail time can only be set to 'N' complete seconds, you have to use trial & error to select a 'live' frame as the thumbnail.

The 'thumbnail' at 1 second for MS PhotoStory generated clips often appears as 'a badly cropped' version of the first photo in the 'story' (complete with 'black bands'). This is due to the (default) 'slow fade in' effect at the start of the story. So either start your PhotoStory with 'no effect' or with at least 2 or 3 seconds of static (no pan or zooming) - and set the thumbnail in DVDFlick at 2 or 3 seconds in.

How do I check the Menu layout?

You can 'Preview' the Menu that will be created, but this only shows you the screen shots / layout and NOT the 'functionality'.

On more than one occasion I have had a current model domestic DVD player fail to correctly sequence a 'Menu' generated by DVD Flick.
 
In addition to ending up in 'Select Audio' when trying to obtain the 'Top' (main) menu via the remote control, the DVD 'goes off into the weeds' if you try to select a second Title after you have started to play the first (sometimes it ends up showing the 'Select Audio' but more often it 'locks up' with the only way out via the power switch !).

How do I stop DVDFlick creating redundant menu pages ?

A1. Unless you have multiple Audio tracks, deselect 'show audio first' or DVD Flick will create a pointless page** insisting you choose from a 'selection' of the one and only audio track :-)

** Pointless page generation also occurs if you select 'Subtitles (Chapters)' but didn't allow DVD Flick to create any. DVD Flick will create a Menu page which will display the text 'Sub-titles disabled' :-).

How do I create a custom Menu Template for DVD Flick ?

Templates are stored in folders. First copy an existing template folder (eg 'The Party') from the template 'tree' (C:\Program Files\DVD Flick\templates\The Party) and rename the folder for use as your own Menu (eg. C:\Program Files\DVD Flick\templates\My Menu)

In the \My Menu folder, Edit the XML text format 'template.cfg' file and change the 'headers' names ... for example :-

Name = "My Menu";
Author = "Me";
Description = "My own style";
Copyrights = "Mine";

You can replace the Menu page background 'images' (BMP files) with your own. The pixels are assumed to be square, so for 4:3 dispaly they must be EXACTLY 768 x 576 pixels = the same size as the existing ones. For 16:9, it's 1024x576 pixels. You must have the following :-

example.bmp
audioselect.bmp
subtitleselect.bmp
title.bmp
titleselect.bmp

You may also wish to change the 'button' mask/icons as well eg:-

btn_playresume.bmp
btn_selecttitle.bmp

How do I change the Menu buttons ?

The template.cfg file contains definitions of both the menu text (& font, size, style, colour) and it's position (X/Y pixel count). Also defined is the 'select' effect (highlight, border etc).

If you wish to use text instead of 'icon' buttons for 'Play All' & 'Select Title', you will have to set the font and colour etc. (see the template.cfg in C:\Program Files\DVD Flick\templates\Plasma Sphere for an example)

WARNING - even if you have deselected the 'Show Audio' and 'Show Sub-title' options, DVD Flick will still create (normally invisible) Audio and Subtitle selection menu pages !
 
This means your 'profile' MUST define both an Audio and Sub-title menu structure (and both audioselect.bmp and subtitleselect.bmp must exist) even if you never intend to use them (otherwise DVD Flick will simply crash when you click 'Preview' and it tries to create the Menu)

You can 'tweak' the template.cfg 'on the fly' whilst DVD Flick is running .. the current definition will be picked up and used every time you click 'Preview Menu' in DVD Flick. Note, however, that whilst the visual layout shown in the menu preview is 'true to life', the functional 'simulation' is not = it is entirely possible that a 'fully functional' menu on the PC will, in fact, fail to work correctly on your DVD player.

The most common problem seems to be 'inaccessible' menu choices .. this occurs when you have defined a 'button' mask with a size that overlaps another or with a size that is smaller than the text.

Can you 'burn' directly to DVD from DVDFlick ?

Yes, by default that's what DVDFlick will do, using the 'built in' ImgBurn engine. You can also choose to create an ISO image instead (or as well).

The version of ImgBurn 'built in' is at least 5 years out of date and DVDFlick user forums suggest that it has problems burning a dual layer DVD. So if you insist on using it (rather than sticking to making ISO's and using the current stand-alone version of ImgBurn), you should stick to single layer DVDs.

Note, even if you don't intend to burn a DVD immediately, it's a 'good idea' to have a blank in the drive (or DVDFlick may crash with 'drive not ready' when it tries to get ImgBurn to make the .iso)

How do I view .ISO movies on my PC ?

If you wish to check a movie 'saved as' ISO before actually burning to DVD, you will need to use software that is capable of 'mounting' the ISO image as if it was an actual disc. The Open Source software 'WinCDEmu' will do this. An alternative, still Open Source, but rather harder to use, is 'ImDisk'.

You can then play the movie by 'opening' the .IFO (or direrctly opening a .VOB) using VLC

If you also checked the 'Save intermediate files' option, you should be able to find the 'VIDEO_TS' folder containing your movie. This can be 'run' - and the Menu's checked for functionality - using VLC (double click the 'VIDEO_TS.IFO' file)
 
NB. Because VLC tries to follow the Menu, often you will find it 'stuck' on the Top Menu with no way to get to the movie clips. Fortunately, DVDFlick encodes each clip as a separate .VOB, so you can 'double click' each .vob file in turn to play each of your 'Titles'.

Can I re-use DVDFlick intermediate files ?

Yes & no. Whilst it is also possible to 'save intermediate files', there is no easy way have DVDFlick re-use the files itself.

This is rather annoying, especially if you just want to make some minor changes after 'assembly'
 
However, DVDFlick will have encoded each of your clips (Titles) as a separate .VOB file (in the DVD\VIDEO_TS folder)
 
To avoid having to re-process from the 'source', just rename the .VOB as '.mpg' and Import them to DVDFlick (DVDFlick will even 'spot' if a Title has multiple audio tracks and ask which (if any) you want to use)

If 'save intermediate' is selected you will also get access to the VIDEO_TS folder without having to 'mount' the ISO image. This allows you to 'tweak' settings (such as the Menu structure) using other packages. One obvious 'tweak' you may wish to do is to correct the Video_TS.IFO for a 'auto-running' disc :-)

You can 'burn' the VIDEO_TS straight to DVD using any current version ImgBurn (which will adjust it's settings to correctly burn a movie DVD on 'spotting' the VIDEO_TS folder name)

If you started with non-mpg e.g. .avi / .wmv, or m2v + wav etc. DVDFlick will have converted them into '.VOB' files. A .VOB is simply a multi-audio track .mpg !

DVDFlick 'packs' each 'Title' into a single VOB (unlike commercial DVD's which pack everything into 1Gb 'chunks'). This means you can simply change the file extension of each VTS_nn_1.VOB to .mpg (i.e. VTS_01_1.mpg) and this gets you a 'stand-alone movie' (without the Menu) You can do the same for commercial DVD's, however because multiple movie Titles are all joined together and the result 'chopped up' into 1Gb .VOB files it's much harder to extract individual Titles

What's the hard way to re-use intermediate files ?

DVDFlick is aimed at 'creating a DVD', so whilst you will see temporary files (such as "(movie).mpg" and .m2v (which contains .mpg video only) and m2a (which contains the sound track)) appearing in the chosen destination folder, these file are deleted after the VIDEO_TS *.VOB files are created.

To stop DVDFlick deleting these temporary files you have to 'abort' DVDFlick from the Task Manager

Even after DVDFlick 'completes' the DVD build, it will hold the m2v and m2a flies 'open', so you can't 'move' them or stop DVDFlick deleting them - even trying to change the files 'attributes' to 'Read Only' during the 'Author DVD' step doesn't work :-) ). Instead, to prevent these files being deleted, you have to launch Task Manager, find the DVDFlick 'task' and use 'End Task' to crash DVDFlick's 'DVD build' process

Clicking 'Next >>' will take you to my 'HD Video issues' page.

Next page :- Adding subtitles to a DVD

[top]

Using DVDFlick to make a movie DVD