Video Player playist start stop time

[delaluz]

I digitized 8 vhs tapes to mpg files for a friend. There are around 50 different events total on the mpg files. The plan was for my friend to send the 8 files on a flash drive to his kids.

I would like to create a menu that would list the events and play them when you click on them (OK maybe 1 menu for each tape).

I could create DVD images with a menu system but then whoever got the flash drive would have to have a DVD player software.

What software would do this easily? I searched the web and it looks like VLC software has a playlist function. However, based on the comments it looks pretty complicated to add the start and stop times.

It would be great if there was some product that you could:
1. click create playlist
2. click add a clip with start and stop time.
3. then generate a menu listing the clips

Any suggestions?

[canuck]

On what device are the videos going to be played?

If you can create a the Video_TS or iso image file of your project (with menus etc), you can copy those to a USB stick. Using VLC they can then be played only on the computer just as if they were a DVD. A SmartTV may also play the Video+TS files but with out the menu system

[Davidk]

Using VS, you can only create output media with a menu if you choose the disk option in the share panel.
- Most TV's have either a disc player integral to the TV or attached as a separate item. Put a disk in the player to play, just like you would for any DVD - don't need a computer player like VLC for that, however VLC is useful to check the results of your efforts before committing to a disk: saves a lot of wasted disks if you got something wrong.
- Once at that (disk) point, there are 4 choices of media type; 3 for disks (DVD, AVCHD, Bluray) and SD card. Using digitised vhs recordings, I suggest that a DVD output is the most economical result - the others are HD platforms and vhs most definitely is not HD. If you have digitised vhs tapes, there will probably be horizontal streaks thru the imagery, caused by wear on the vhs tape as it ran thru the vhs player.
- Having chosen the media type (eg, DVD) you will presented with a burn panel on how to create it in 3 stages: load and sort the media into the sequence you want, create the menu which can include music and backgrounds with a preview option to look at the result, and then burn the disk. There are configuration options/preferences available under the icons at the bottom of the burn panel.
- create the final burn as as iso file. That allows you to review the result using VLC, and it's just a computer file: if there is something unsatisfactory (audio too hi or low, text spelling etc) then you can delete the file and re-do the DVD composition.
- when you are happy, burn the iso file to disk. You can use VS (under tools there is a burn form iso option) or any of a number of free burners that will use an iso file as input. Make sure when burning the disk that the burn rate set is equal to or less than the disk rating: if the disk is 16x, then use 16x or less as the burn rate.

[delaluz]

Davidk,

Thanks for your input. The person I am doing this for wanted to be ale to play these files on his laptop. He doesn't have a DVD/CD drive on it. I'm pretty familiar with creating DVD's using VisualStudio. I beleive that I can creatge an ISO file of a DVD and VLC media player will play it.

Again thanks for your input

Berto

[Davidk]

If your target display device is a PC that doesn't have a DVD player, then
1. you/he is stuck with playing files from a usb stick, but in this case you won't have a menu option: create the final file using the same as project files option with the target/save to device being the usb stick.
OR
2. acquire a DVD player that connects to a PC using a usb port, create the disk with menu as before and then play it using this attaching player
OR
3. if the PC has an sd card slot, create the 'disk' on an sd card (that gives you the menu) and then play the card thru the sd slot.

[canuck]

You can create the iso file or Video_TS folder set on a USB stick and then play it with VLC player. It will play the full menus if you have created one

[delaluz]

I appreciate all of you suggestions. The person I'm doing this for will be very happy to just get 8 video files on a USB drive (no menus). At this point I don't want to invest the time in creating 8 DVD images with each one having 6-15 menu options. I was trying to find a simple solution that would take an hour or two to create a "playlist" file for each video that listed start and stop times for different segments on the tape.

VLC media player has a feature whereby you can create chapters for a video. I will look into but not for this effort.

Again thanks for the input.