I am looking for a way to author a DVD by using HTML to make the interactive menus. There I haven't found a single program but I have heard that they are out there. I also want to know what HTML tags are used to make the DVD player play the videos on the DVDs.

hmm, dvdauthor i believe uses XML for dvd menus, which is close to HTML here's a bit of documentation: http://dvdauthor.sourceforge.net/doc/r1741.html

The "dvdauthor" program accepts an XML (not HTML) file to author a DVD from. Is that what you're asking?

See: http://dvdauthor.sourceforge.net/doc/dvdauthor.html

Scroll down on the above webpage to the section labeled "XML Description"

If the above is not what you are inquiring about, I don't understand your question or have another answer for you.

[edit] I see @frieza responded to this thread at the same time I did, so we ended up with near-duplicate posts. At least we are both understanding/misunderstanding your question in the same way! [/edit]

I do not know of html sourced DVD authoring tool, but another xml based tool is dvdstyler. Normally, its GUI is used to design the DVD from scratch. However, its project file is xml based and not hard hard to decipher. For example, I wrote a perl script that generates a basic dvdstyler project file from a large set of daily webcam movies. Typically 4 months worth. Each month is a DVD menu of ~30 day movies arranged in a calendar month grid. I can then bring it up in dvdstyler and spice up the graphics and audio on the menus and add annotations before burning the DVD.

I guess it would be possible to make a web based front end. Nero uses a .cue file and it's pretty simple usually. Some other apps can use that file too.

XML is fine, If they have good documentation then it's cool.

Well the dvdstyler would be out. They don't document the xml project DTD. However, if you make a very simple DVD menu, some text and a menu button, with the GUI, it is not hard to figure it out.

i personally would recommend dvdauthor, as a good many linux GUI programs for mastering dvds are really simply front-ends for dvdauthor anyhow.