What I would like to do, for a sort of scavenger hunt/birthday gift for my girlfriend is to take a movie that we own on DVD, to make a backup of that movie on DVDR but first, edit the contents so that I can add an invisible button somewhere within one of the menu's of the DVD and to add some extra content, like a short video clip, that this button would play.
So apart from it being on a DVDR disk everything about the menu's the movie itself etc would look like the real thing, but then when she finds the hidden button or secred command of some sort (Kind of a DVD Easter Egg) it would play the hidden video clip that I have added.
Is this possible, if so how would I go about doing it, I welcome any help, lists of software I need and I am happy to get any software that can do this, free or paid as long as it is going to work and do what I need, and the fancier the hidden video/button can be added the more secretly hidden the "Easter Egg" is the better, as I want her to have to work a little to find it lol.
Hopefully someone can help me, if not I may have to think up a new idea for this step of the puzzle.
Normally you would have to use pricey software like DVD Studio Pro.
That aside, I've done this using freeware.
The problem is that this way each case is different and one has to have a certain level of skill with each of the steps involved.
What I did was rip a commercial DVD, shrinked it to fit a DVD-R - but making sure there was enough space left on the disk to accommodate another short video clip.
Used PgcEdit to create a blank cell (chapter) on the end of the main title.
Next, used VobBlanker to replace that blank cell with the extra video.
Back in PgcEdit I found the main menu and added a new button and linked that button to the extra.
When written back to disk and played on the standalone, the main menu would appear and by selecting the button number on the numeric pad of the remote and pressing the enter button, the extra would playback.
The button was not visible on screen and could only be selected using the number pad.
If it was played back on the PC using a media player, it was still hidden, but you could take a guess and hit it with the mouse.
Sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to go about it attar. Of course there are others on a custom home built menu, as a dvd menu supports transparancies you can have a transparent button ;) There is a brilliant post topic I remember reading years back on the dvd-author site about doing just this.. how to build a menu screen which even includes animated scenes and buttons. It's years since I did anything with dvd's if I'm honest and that info has just left my head..
I did a heap of work years ago on this subject which luckily I stuck on my site so it hasn't been lost (but whether you can see it is another matter) .. it's pretty much the last post on the thread and has quite a lot of in depth info about how menus and subtitles actually work (dead technical.. honest) which you can have a read at if you like and see if the little bulbs go on. Most people never bother physically making menus, and it's years since I had need to so I have forgotten.. and frankly I have no need to refresh my memory as I doubt I'll ever have a need to do it again.
Check it out.. attar you might find this heap of info interesting. I never got round to posting how to make interactive dvd menu driven games using the dvd player registers.. funny how a change of direction can stall plans eh?