Any programs to create iTunes Extras .ite files yet?

After having ripped most of my DVDs to m4vs, I've recently been ripping the extras (deleted scenes, documentaries etc). At the moment, they're just sat in folders and I know it's going to be a nightmare trying to get everything to look nice in iTunes and on the ATV. However, iTunes Extras gave me hope that a solution was on the way, where all the files (film + extras) could be packaged up into one big .ite file.

I really hope the next version of iLife has the option to export to an .ite file instead of just being able to burn DVDs as I really like the iDVD interface. In the meantime, I'm quite surprised noone has come up with a little gui like metaX or Subler to make simple files.

So you start with some templates for layouts (such as a picture to the side with menu items or, the menu items over one big picture) and then you can add buttons that take you to new pages (such as a chapters page or an extras page each of which also have templates).

For example you would add a new button and a box would pop up asking if you wanted to link to another page, or a video (so the "play film" button would link to the movie file and the "extras" button would take you to another page where the buttons are linked to the individual extras videos). Then you can customise it by dragging a picture onto the template such as the film artwork) and specify a music track to play if you want.

This would seriously get me to box up and put into deep storage most of my DVDs.

Hmm, I was really after a nice drag and drop app like iDVD as there seems to be a myriad of things to tinker with (and get wrong) with doing it manually. I'm surprised the ATV can't handle .ite files - especially basic ones consisting of simply static wallpaper. Guess I'll see what the the next version of iDVD brings...

ssj2goha said:

I'm playing around with designing a program that will do this...
What are the "requests" people think this should have?
I'm thinking about putting it in the mac app store once I am done with it.
But I will have it on my website for sure... (new site i'm working on, not up yet...)

Click to expand...

I'd definitely be interested in something like this (as you might expect as I started the thread). The idea I've got in my head is for something fairly simple and foolproof:

The main working window is shaped as a 16:9 TV. You drag pictures into the window to set backgrounds. As it's unlikely most artwork will fit, there should be an option (either button or right click context menu) to allow horizontal or vertical cropping. The picture can be moved and resized as desired.
In addition, audio files can be dragged and dropped onto the window to set a background soundtrack for the menu and options to allow looping of the track or not.
Next, links (the equivalent of hyperlinks) can be added with options for setting font, size, colour etc like a standard word-processor. If these menu options are supposed to link to a video then the video file can be dragged into the "hyperlink" configuration menu. If a link leads to a submenu (e.g. extra features) then a menu pops up asking if you want to duplicate the main menu (i.e. the background art / audio) or create the submenu from scratch.

I'm not sure of how much interaction the iTunes extras menus can have with the video files (i.e. can you have a menu where you can select which audio track to select - AC3 or stereo - or turn the subtitles on and off), but this would be good to do too. A sub-page for chapter selection should be able to read the chapter names from the video file and even the still frames associated with the chapter (as seen in recent versions of Subler - if they aren't present, offer to create them). Perhaps with various templates for how the chapter selections are laid out to choose from. But these are a luxury as chapters and audio options can be selected once the video is underway (on the ATV1 at least).

As a first pass all I'd be looking for is a page with links to the main feature (which plays the main m4v file) and an "extra features" page, which contains links to each of the extra features m4v files. Both these pages should have customisable text and background art (and maybe audio). Of course, it should then out put everything as one nice iTunes/ATV-compatible .ite package file.