so, as it turns out, you can make your own DVDs. now i always knew that one could burn a DVD, same as a CD (slightly more complicated, apparently, but we'll return to that later), but i didn't realise - you can make your own DVD menus. this has changed the game for me. my brother, upon hearing this info, asked:

which, yeah maybe. i had assumed that burning a DVD was the same as burning a CD. you popped your blank disc in, you let the program work its magic (itunes back in my childhood), and voila. optical media. but to actually get a DVD to play in a DVD player is apparently a more complicated process than that.

the program still does the work but it's a DVD 'authoring program' apparently. went seeking, found one called DVDStyler. this may or may not be a plug for said program (haven't used it to style a DVD yet), but the first glance is promising. along with just uploading a static image for the background of your DVD menu you can make your own custom buttons from svg files (will have to acquire some).

i need to figure out how to burn a whole iso to a disc. there's an upload of mezzo (or mezzo forte, can't remember) with its menu intact so i'd love to put that thing on a disc. that's where it wants to be. also need to figure out subtitles on a DVD.

this is all bonus for me too because i just bought my hundred pack of DVDs to burn games to, to play on original hardware. turns out i'll have to convince my ps2 that it wants to play games burned to a disc, because nothing is ever easy. but the 'make your own DVD menus' thing is a whole other level of artistic creation than i could have asked for. once i start recording The Videos i think i'll burn them to DVD, make my menus, keep them as little artifacts of where i was at when i made them. a digital collage type thing.