This guide is intended to help new users learn how to create their own DVD with a menu by using DIKO with DVD Styler out of AVI files on their hard drive. This will take a large amount of space on your hard drive, so be warned. I have attempted to use many freeware AVI to DVD utilities, and DIKO seems to be the most intuitive to me. This guide is especially useful for television episodes as well as DVDs with multiple movies. It will also give you an understanding of burning a single movie without a menu.
DIKO can be obtained from here:
http://www.vmesquita.com/forum/index.php?page=2
The current version as of this writing is 2.31, and obviously one would download the full install. This should include DVD Styler, and has an automatic integration with DVD Styler which will prompt you to create a menu at the necessary time. I recommend installing AviSynth, which is an option in the DIKO installation, since you most likely do not have it and WILL run into problems without it.
Now, for purposes of this demonstration I have decided to use the first fifteen minutes or so of The Departed split into five separate files in order to show the user how to burn a DVD with several different menu choices.
This is the main menu which you will find when you first open the program.
Now first, we'll want to enter the configuration.
Under "System", you'll want to select NTSC if you use a television with a 4:3 ratio (such as American fullscreen, as I'm familiar with), or PAL if it is not.
Under "Mode", you'll want to select BDVD as we'll be creating a DVD.
The "Media Size" area is automatically set as 4482 MB, which is the standard size of a single layer DVD. If that's what you have, don't change it. If you are going to be creating a dual layer DVD, you can double that number to 8964 MB as a personal approximation, as I haven't had one before. If you'd like to be safe, you can drop that number a bit.
You can change the "Working Folder" if you'd like, or "Interface Language" if English is not your first language and wish to find things easier.
I suggest making sure that "Remove Temp. Files" is checked. Space is a commodity, is it not?
Under the Video 1 tab, I made sure to select 2 passes. This will take twice as longer to encode the files (roughly 2 hours per 700MB in my experience), but will result in better quality. This is purely optional and depends entirely on your preference.
Under the Video 2 tab, I decided to switch the "Widescreen Material" to Encode Anamorphic. This is also optional, as if the default setting of Letterbox and Encode at 4:3 is checked, you'll get a video of a standard NTSC fullscreen... which would not be preferable with a widescreen or PAL television.
I left the other tabs alone and have had no problems so far, but feel free to poke around if you have experience with such things.
Now close the configuration, and it's back to the main window! select "New Conversion."
This is where the magic happens. First we'll want to click "Add Video Files," and select our first movie file from wherever we may have it stored. It will now show up in the upper area of the window.
What, you ask, do we do when we want two files combined into a single movie on the DVD? Well, this is simple. You add the first file of the movie as we did in the step above. Now, however, we select this file and click the "Edit" button. This will give us this window:
IMG06
http://i19.tinypic.com/6bsxrug.jpg
As you can see, you can double click these items to add video files and subtitle files. Double click the "Video File 1" option and select the first half of the movie. Double click the "Video File 2" option and select the second half, then click "ok." See? It's very simple.
Moving on, we continue to select each video file that we wish to place on the DVD. This can be done all in one step by selecting multiple files in the file selection window, and we should have something like this, with everything in order to move on.
Now we simply click "Finish" to move on with the process, and come to an important window.
Here I am asking it to author the disc, and to use DVD Styler. I like to have chapters every 5 minutes, personally. You can optionally tell it to create a DVD image and burn it with ImgBurn (included in the DIKO package, no worries). As I like to test the files out myself on the hard drive before I burn them, I do not choose these methods. If you would like to just pop in a DVD and burn it when the conversion is completed, be my guest.
Alternatively, if you are just burning one movie, you might as well opt to have no menu at all. There will be no chapter selection screen on the menu, so there would really be absolutely no point to having a menu with a single movie.
Anywho, click "ok" and DVD Styler should be launched automatically.
I don't recommend having the window so tiny, I just did this to keep some sanity on the board. Anyhow, on the left you'll see some predefined backgrounds and the a button to select directories. As a background for the DVD, it is useful to have one prepared to keep the menu from appearing so bland. It can be as detailed as you want, it really is up to you as it is merely a simple picture, but it can really add to the effect of the movie. I chose this cleaned up wallpaper as a great menu image. Under directories you can browse to your image and simply click on it. Now we move on to adding our buttons.
Note: I believe the bordered box inside is the "safe" zone due to overscan on many televisions (though I'm not sure). Try to keep your content within this box.
Take note that each of your movies below has a title number. This will be used to refer to it within the buttons. Now click on "Buttons" on the far left and choose whatever you'd like to represent your movie. I selected the first one, as it is customizable text. Drag it wherever you'd like, and double click it for the options.
Here it is necessary to change which title you will make this button jump to under the large Action header. Below, in the Look subheader you can customize the text and font of this label (pretty useful). Many symbol fonts come in great usefulness at this point for many symbols you may wish to have as menu items. Many can be obtained here:
http://www.dafont.com/ You can also change the color of the text, its color when the cursor is over it, and its color when you have clicked on it. Back at the Action subheader, it can be useful to change the four boxes which are arranged in an up, down, left, and right setup. These decide what you select when you navigate the menu. It is pretty self explanatory, and I generally suggest using it.
Note: It is possible to have multiple menus. You must add buttons to each menu that would point to the other. This would be customizable under the button options in the "Jump To" area.
Continue changing the buttons to point to your multiple movies, and then simply save your menu and close DVD Styler.
A new box will pop up from DIKO. This is where you will be deciding whether to convert your files to DVD format (remember, it is a time consuming process!) or scrap your entire project. Obviously, we'll be selecting "Start Conversion Now!" This will create your DVD. Many windows will pop up during this process, try not to mess with them. It will encode each of your files individually. This should be pretty intense on your CPU, so try not to play any crazy games during this process. I think you can take it from here.
Note: Always +rep your favorite TacoCutter.
Linear Mode
