Do I have to author a dvd to use different files (like VOB or AOB) to get the DVD player to recognize them?
Yes, you need DVD authoring software to get the proper files & file structure, and to make a menu.
Regular video DVDs use VOB files in the VIDEO_S folder, and the AUDIO_TS folder is empty. DVD-Audio uses AOB files in the AUDIO_TS folder. A VOB file has MPEG-2 video (MPEG-1 is also allowed) with one or more of the DVD-compatible audio formats intereleaved.
DVD players are not required to play DTS, but they can all play AC3 and LPCM. So a DVD can't have DTS
only. It must have one of the standard-formats, and then the DTS can be an additional-optional track.
Most players won't play DVD-Audio, and the authoring software is more rare too.
So, it's usually best to make a video DVD, with a still/slideshow background and a visual menu. You can use a blank-black still image if you wish, but it's more common to display the cover artwork or photos of the band.
For DVD authoring, I use
DVD-Lab[/u][/b] (http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/) ($100 - $250 USD). Corel
Movie Factory (http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod3430136&cid=catalog20038&segid=896&storeKey=us&languageCode=en) is popular.
DVDstyler (http://www.dvdstyler.org/en/) is FREE. Wikipedia has a
List of DVD authoring applications (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DVD_authoring_applications).
There are some quirky things about DVD-Lab. It doesn't have encoders, so you have to feed-in DVD-compatible MPEG-2 and DVD-compatible audio. And when you preview, there is no audio, so you have to know the timing if you want a chapter-point between songs. The $100 version can't make an "audio only" DVD, but you can make a slide-show MPEG-2 "movie" with a video editor and feed it in for the video.
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A DVD is organized by titles (movies) and chapters. You can have up to 99 titles and each title can have up to 99 chapters.
There is no gap between chapters, but there is a pause between titles. (i.e. A live concert needs to be one long title with chapter-markers for the songs.) Typically, you can't make a DVD stop at the end of a chapter. Some DVD authoring software can give the option of going back to the menu at the end of a chapter, but some DVD players will glitch/pause when you try to play that DVD continuously without pausing.
The >>| and |<< buttons on your remote will skip back-and-forth between chapters, but not betwen titles. If you put a chapter marker at the end of the last chapter, the >>| button can make playback jump to the end, and then it will usually go back to the menu (depending on how the DVD was authored).
At the end of a title, playback will usually return to the menu. But, you can link a "play all" menu button to a playlist if you want to play all of the titles in a row.