[dice]

Hi

I have been given three short home DVDs and I want to merge them all into a single DVD.... how should I go about doing this?

When I insert one of the DVDs into my Mac an empty folder appears on the desktop called SONATA_VOLUME. I can open the folder but the Finder says there are no files. I opened up Disk Utility and it tells me there are 6 files with a total size of 230mb.

When I open DVD Player, I can play the DVD and watch the movie contained within.

So what I want to do is create a new dvd containing the three discs and preferably with a menu to let me choose which movie to play.

I have Toast, iDVD, iMovie and I downloaded MacTheRipper if that helps?

I can copy DVDs no problem but I have never tried to make a new DVD myself so any help would be much appreciated.

thanks!!

[Madrag]

try this in Toast (I've had this "tutorial" lying arround, I forgot to write down the author, so mind you that I didn't write it myself):

If you just want to burn a disc from one VIDEO_TS folder, go to the options panel on the left, click the "DVD-Video from VIDEO_TS" checkbox, and drag your VIDEO_TS folder into the main pane. Be aware that this option does not allow you to create any menu.

If you want to make a menu, or if you want to put the contents of several VIDEO_TS folders on one disc, select the "DVD-Video" checkbox. Below that, you'll see various options, including one to choose a menu style. At the top of the main pane you'll see the words "My DVD". If you click these words, you can alter them to whatever words you want to appear as the title of your menu.

Now drag each of your VIDEO_TS folders into the main pane. (Each time you do this, you'll get a warning box saying that some files are unsupported and will not been included. Don't worry - that's OK. It's just telling you that it's ignoring the IFO and BUP files because it will make its own.)

Each item you drag in will appear in the pane as a separate video clip, with an "Edit" button to the right. This button enables you to customise the 3 lines of text that will appear next to that item in the DVD menu. If you click on the little video clip itself, you get a slider control to help you choose a still image from the video for your menu button.

When you've done this for all your clips, put your blank disc in the burner. Before hitting the big red "BURN" button, make sure you have selected the right size of disc (there's a tiny little button just above "BURN" that gives you a choice of CD, DVD or DVD Dual Layer).

When you hit "BURN", Toast will re-mux the contents of all the VIDEO_TS folders, make a menu and write its own IFO and BUP files to create a playable DVD. As long as you haven't tried to put too much stuff on the disc, it will do this WITHOUT RE-ENCODING YOUR VOBs, so there will be no quality lost.

In that DVD that you can't see any files, I'm not sure if this method works, but it's a starting point...

[dice]

Originally Posted by Madrag 

try this in Toast (I've had this "tutorial" lying arround, I forgot to write down the author, so mind you that I didn't write it myself):
<snip....>

cool thanks for that. I didn't know toast could do that... alternatively I might try and use iDVD (once I fix my version) as i'd also like to add a slideshow of some photographs but i'll play with toast too.

thanks!