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itunes extras - make your own
- Thread starter jeb1
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I think that the iTunes extras are just HTML pages. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to import the menus from DVDs and make them iTunes extras.
they are basically mini web sites. which is why they don't work on the Apple TV etc.
as for being able to do it from your own DVDs. sure if you want to do the work. not sure how they work the chapters part but the rest is just links and such.
I suppose if they had a movie you wanted that you didn't have on DVD you could buy it and try to reverse engineer it. I was considering that with the new Wizard of Oz that released today.
If someone does get this working it will most likely be quite unreliable due to the fact that the DVD menus are implemented via instructions to a DVD virtual machine which can then choose to display short movies as menus or static images etc. The VM commands can get quite complex as they set various registers that than have side effects elsewhere (eg. for selecting audio and subtitle tracks).
Any interpreter would need to implement the DVD VM and extract the appropriate info from those commands, if it can figure that out.
Basically it's not trivial, but not impossible either.
What's more realistic is to generate a two tier menu that contained all the titles on the first page and allowed direct chapter selection on the second. Although there would be manual effort required to name the titles for all of the extras.
Cheers, Ed.
Any interpreter would need to implement the DVD VM and extract the appropriate info from those commands, if it can figure that out.
Basically it's not trivial, but not impossible either.
What's more realistic is to generate a two tier menu that contained all the titles on the first page and allowed direct chapter selection on the second. Although there would be manual effort required to name the titles for all of the extras.
Cheers, Ed.
If it was only release in HD, I would have bought it from the iTunes Store.
If only it had an audio option to dub in Dark Side of the Moon, I would have bought it.
/Would really like to have it on a DVD as a separate audio track
I think the best way to "create your own" is to abandon the notion of moving menus and for someone to create an app which displays poster art as the main screen (probably uk quad posters which are widescreen) with options for play film, setup (choose audio track and subtitles assuming this can be set on the ATV before playback starts) and extras. In the app, you would simply list the extras you have encoded and link them to the relevant .m4v file. The app could then package everything up (and maybe automatically link to online trailers) into one neat file.
iTunes Extras
If you navigate through the folders user/music/itunes/itunes media/movies/"Name of Movie"/, you will see your iTunes Extras there in two files. example: "X-Men Origins_ Wolverine.m4v"(for the movie), and "iTunes Extras - X-Men Origins_ Wolverine.ite"(for the actual iTunes Extras). So all the Extras are in that file ".ite" The question is, How to make an ".ite" file and how to put the Extras there and link that file to the ".m4v"??? If there's someone that knows this please share your knowledge.
If you navigate through the folders user/music/itunes/itunes media/movies/"Name of Movie"/, you will see your iTunes Extras there in two files. example: "X-Men Origins_ Wolverine.m4v"(for the movie), and "iTunes Extras - X-Men Origins_ Wolverine.ite"(for the actual iTunes Extras). So all the Extras are in that file ".ite" The question is, How to make an ".ite" file and how to put the Extras there and link that file to the ".m4v"??? If there's someone that knows this please share your knowledge.
I tried doing this a year ago - but I couldn't get the movie linked to the .ite file. I followed the instructions and everything, but just couldn't get it right.
It may have been because I deleted some of the "pages" I didn't need - such as the chapters. I only wanted to include some of the special features - trailers, and some of the Star Wars making of documentaries I have.
I left it for dead after that - but it looks like Apple did some minor updating to the How-to guide that LostOnTheLine posted. Maybe I'll give it a go again.
It may have been because I deleted some of the "pages" I didn't need - such as the chapters. I only wanted to include some of the special features - trailers, and some of the Star Wars making of documentaries I have.
I left it for dead after that - but it looks like Apple did some minor updating to the How-to guide that LostOnTheLine posted. Maybe I'll give it a go again.
Thanks for mentioning that the documentation has been updated... I'd love to put something together for the LoTR trilogy and all of the extra material from the extended editions. Perhaps I'll dig back into it once the Bluray versions are released later this summer!
EDIT: Spent part of the evening digging into the docs and found it pretty straight forward. Of course, I then remembered that iTunes Extras still are not compatible with the AppleTV v2, and my interest died off again pretty quickly.
EDIT: Spent part of the evening digging into the docs and found it pretty straight forward. Of course, I then remembered that iTunes Extras still are not compatible with the AppleTV v2, and my interest died off again pretty quickly.
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