We recently had a thread on that - regarding what was the best method - playlist, in/out points, complete film etc. Try to find that discussion and you will find lots of information.

Per1
NOT blowing my own horn or anything, added a couple of posts that might interest you -- your posts inspired a bit of research & they're the result. One goes into what happens with playlists a bit more, after I *took* a DVDA layout apart.

thank you
the playlist is great

I still want to learn scripts though
for stuff like director's commentary

"I still want to learn scripts though
for stuff like director's commentary"

Scripts are cool, but in many cases slow... Like much else, you want to try and use them when and only if they can add value I think -- just my opinion anyway.

The official specs are very expensive and come with a Non Disclosure agreement buyers must sign, so unfortunately you have to try and collect whatever you can find on-line. There are a lot of rules, and many will seem either arcane or insane depending on your point of view - http://www.dvd-replica.com is a good place to start IMHO. Poking around ripping forums sometimes helps, as does reading posts re: PgcEdit. The homepage for Muxman leads to a lot of info, but you have to donate to get access. PgcEdit itself helps a lot for learning -- you can trace the flow through the scripts used in a DVDA layout for example. You can find some info on scripts in the DVDLab Pro forums, & the DVD Studio forums & sites can be great -- you're after the script solutions, not how to plug them in, so you can find some decent examples.

For your Director's Commentary, DVDLab Pro & DVD Studio both have docs online so that if the basics were put together the results would be very sophisticated. Or going the simplest route, use a couple of identical menu pages with the graphics on one showing which audio track is selected.

I still want to learn scripts though

Not that I'm trying to prevent you from learning scripts, but most of the tasks connected with commentary tracks can also be done without scripts. ;) Though they might be useful for what MPM mentions (having a way for a menu to indicate the currently active track).

Rob

MPM.
>added a couple of posts that might interest you

To what topic was that. I'd like to read more on this subject.

Per1
You were talking about shooting PAL & encoding 1 copy to NTSC.... I was curious about the math involved in cropping the PAL frame & re-sizing width only, so I came up with what I think are the correct cropping dimensions. Don't know if it's worth it or practical, cropping the viewable image for the sake of better frames. And of course I buried it in probably too much background info hoping to write something that someone without any background might find useful in the future.
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=519006

I was also curious about the program flow when DVDA did playlists or angles, and how that compared to the alternatives - my interest was sparked by the thread: "Create one avi file or many smaller avi files" & so I started a spare-time project to play with. Taking a hard look at playlists in DVDA, I decided that wasn't really the best way to handle what are basically 2 versions of the same title, and that instead I should use some sort of branching. I figured out a method that seems to work using PgcEdit. I haven't looked at the output of DVDLab Pro, yet, but I suspect I'll prefer DVDA + PgcEdit overall.
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=519003