Rivergate Software Inc. - makers of DVDAfterEdit

Posted Jun 21,2005 6:19 AM ChrisMD

I posted this also in the Beta Forum, when I realized that here might be the better place....

Hi everyone!

I've got a rather difficult (piece of cake for you, I hope...) project to do in the next few days, that contains a mixed angle track where buttons are displayed everytime there is the second video-stream present. Those buttons should allow the user to change the video-angle instead of having to use the angle key on the remote to do that.

The project is authored using Scenarist 2.7. At the places where there are two angles I've got a forced display subpicture containing the buttons that is displayed as long as a second angle is available.

Since the muxer of Scenarist strangely only muxed the first appearance of a second angle correctly (in all following sections there is no navigation info in the second angle navpacks), I used TFDVDEdit to copy all the button Information from the first angle to the second.

With PowerDVD, WinDVD and a standalone player from Medion everything works as expected (you can change the stream as often as you like while the buttons are displayed), but with standalones from Sony, Panasonic and Pioneer the following happens:
when a mixed angle spot is reached the buttons are displayed correctly. When I press the button to change the stream, it works, but the button remains pressed (activated state) and nothing can be done until the next time where there are two angles....

Any ideas how to make that feature work on most players??

What about changing the "buttons highlight" information from "use prev vobu" to "all new Info" on every navpack at two-angle points.... (and what about that "prev+commands"???
I f that could work is there a way of changing that info of all navpack at once instead of clicking on each of those thousands of navpack one after one?

Greetz from Germany
Christoph

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Posted Jun 21,2005 8:18 AM isonic

My 2 cents
One way I've found is: rather than have a continuous subpicture have one say every couple of seconds. You can use a script as you would normal subtitles. Then copy and paste button highlights and commands to all sub pics with TFD. I've used this method where a button on video navigates out of the PGC and then returns. If there is a continuous subpic and you join it midstream it won't display or be active. This method renews it at each subpic.

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Posted Jun 21,2005 10:29 AM ChrisMD

Thanx for your thought...

Already had the same idea though.
I made the Navigation Info for the first appearance of the SUBpicture in Scenarist and copied it to the subsequent Navpacks in both angle units using TFDVDedit.
I copied:

"button highlights"
"color palette"
"button navigation"

and pasted them repeatedly... in the angle units
now the buttons won't work at all in a standalone player....

Did I miss something??

Greetz
Christoph

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Posted Jun 21,2005 10:21 AM benchmarque

Christoph-

It makes sense to me that this is happening, because navigation isn't going anywhere - it is staying right where it is while changing the stream (assuming the button command is changing the stream). Unfortunately I'm not able to test this right now, but try what you suggested by changing the info to "all new info" during the angle sections. My guess is that you don't need to change every nav pack - maybe every other or every two (maybe longer). Make sure the in-between nav packs are then set to "use prev VOBU." Then if you don't care for the results, try "all new info" for every nav pack.

-Ben

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Posted Jun 21,2005 10:34 AM ChrisMD

Thanx Ben!

Is there a way to paste that "All new info" thing in to a lot of navpacks at once?
and what about those values:
"Highlight Start Time"
"Highlight End time"
"button selection end time)

Greetz
Christoph

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Posted Jun 21,2005 10:53 AM benchmarque

You'll need to use the "Paste Button Highlights Repeated" command for the selected nav packs, but "all new info" may not copy - you've probably discovered this, right? Usually we'd want "Use prev VOBU," but it may work on non-consecutive nav packs? Actually, this doesn't seem to work either - I think it will have to be done manually. Oh well...

I believe the various Highlight Time parameters should be the same from nav pack to nav pack, within the section containing the buttons since that is what is being defined.

-Ben

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Posted Jun 21,2005 10:57 AM ChrisMD

Status Update:

I remade the dvd using multiple SUBs each 1 second in lengh. What happens now is that the Sony DVD Player plays correctly but all other players here show the following. The buttons are selectable for one second and afterwards only the SUB is displayed without the buttons working....

It seems to me that the problem could be
"Highlight Start Time"
"Highlight End time"
"button selection end time"

Since I copied the Highlight Information from the navpack that contained the button info that was set to 1 second duration by Scenarist I think the time info doesn't fit anymore....

What should I do now???

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Posted Jun 21,2005 11:17 AM ChrisMD

Status Update 2:

When editing the navpacks to "all new info" the first problem reappears. (Button activated and nothing selectable...)

No ideas left....
ideas, anyone?

Greetz
Christoph

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Posted Jun 21,2005 11:22 AM benchmarque

Check to make sure all of the nav packs have the necessary button command. Also, check to see if you are using the latest version of the application, because as of a few versions ago the highlight times parameters were not reporting values accurately. these parameters should appear as in the attached image.

In checking several motion menu VOBs, the highlight time values do not change from nav pack to navpack. but now that i'm thinking about it again, they may need to represent the start & end times of the navpacks starting with "all new info." So every group of nav packs that start with "all new info" probably need new highlight start & end times to function correctly.

Unfortunately, I'm not exactly sure how to figure out what the values should be, but I think Ian may have worked with this out? If I have a chance, I'll try to figure out how generate these values.

-Ben

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Posted Jun 21,2005 11:23 AM benchmarque

forgot the picture...

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Posted Jun 21,2005 11:40 AM ianshepherd

Woah ! I've never seen values like that in those fields... Christoph, you may have to treat the advice in my other post with some caution !

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Posted Jun 21,2005 11:38 AM ianshepherd

Hi Christoph,

Unfortunately I've never satisfied myself that I know the definitive answer to this. However, this is my latest best guess:

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Judging by disks I've looked at, the values for ALL the nav-packs where the animated highlight is visible should be set as follows:

Highlight Start Time (PTM) should equal the VOBU Start Presentation Time of the first nav-pack where the highlight appears

Highlight End Time (PTM) and Button Selection End Time should equal the VOBU End Presentation Time of the final nav-pack where the animated highlight appears ( Possibly minus a small amount - 3600, in the example I'm looking at, but I'm not sure if this is a requirement or a quirk. )

***

So in this case Christoph, I'm guessing that the key parameter is "Button Selection End Time", and if you choose to have "All new info" every 2 seconds ( say ) then the Highlight times should be adjusted as if there were a new highlight each time to match...?

The person who would probably have the best idea on this forum is Joe Rice, since he authors many discs with this kind of functionality. Here's a post where he's talking about related issues:

http://www.tfdvdedit.com/members/forum/openthread.cfm?forum=1&ThreadID=6...

Maybe Trai can email him directly, since I'm not sure how often he reads the forum ? Alternatively if you reply to one of his posts but choose the "Post Replay To: via email" option, I'm sure he'll get back to you. Be aware though, his company specialise in this stuff, and he may regard the answers as a "trade secret" !

Good luck, let us know what you find,

Cheers,

Ian

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Posted Jun 21,2005 1:48 PM Trai

Hi Ian,

"Not sure how often I read the forum?!!!" I'm watching you guys like a hawk! :-)<---smiley. Also, all cool discoveries when found are posted here.

I'm following this and other threads closely, and as soon as this satellite dish is installed (they're putting it in now) in my new mobile DVD Verification Lab (souped up RV; pictures, and fessin' to what I've been up to, soon), I plan to look at this issue (of which I don't have an answer for, yet).

It's been a hectic last few months, and I'm up to another one of my "DVD adventures" again; but soon, It'll seem like I'm back.

Keep up the good work Ian, and All.

Trai

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Posted Jun 21,2005 4:11 PM larryapple

Hi Christoph,

I discussed this with John Brisbin and he suggested to try a Set Stream command combined with a Link NoLink button number. We are just guessing, hope this helps.

Regards,

Larry

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Posted Jun 21,2005 5:26 PM ChrisMD

Thanx for the idea, but in the meantime I found a solution using "nearly" only Scenarist.....
Sometimes I feel like I don't know that program at all.... sigh

For those that are interested....
I made a sst script with the SUBs refreshing every 2 seconds.
Then I created the buttons once and copied them to every instance of my SUB (783!! the "V"-Key on my keyboard isn't readable anymore ;-))
At last I copied the navigation info of every first navpack in an angle part to all subsequent navpacks

On our Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic and Medion Player everything works as expected.

Thanx to all of for your ideas and replies, especially to you Ian for link to the thread with the reply from Joe (That made me searching how to define multiple Highlights within one cell efficiently.

Greetz
Christoph

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Posted Jun 22,2005 10:24 AM ianshepherd

Hi Christoph,

Would you mind taking a couple of screenshots in TFDVDEdit of the finished article ? The same info as Ben posted, for a few different navpacks and/or cells ? Or, quickly checking to see if the suggestions I made above for setting the highlight start/end times were correct ?

Thanks !

Ian

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Posted Jun 22,2005 10:51 AM ChrisMD

Hi Ian!

As you had suggested, I read the other thread with a reply from Joe Rice. I contacted him through mail. While I was waiting for a reply, I experimented a bit in Scenarist with the Info I got from the thread. At last I thought I had found I way to complete the project.... I made a script that inserted the same SUB every two seconds and created the buttons once for each angle block and then pasted the button info in Scenarist to every instance of the SUB.

Unfortunatetly Scenarist muxed only the first angle block correctly (button info in both angle unit) but all subsequent angle blocks (31!!!) contained the button info only in angle unit 1 (...as before). I then tried setting every fourth navpack to "all new info" and also copied the color and nav info. What I noticed here is, that the highlight start/end times within the correctly muxe angle block (the first) had always the same value. What seemed to be the cause for the disc to not be working properly, was the wrong positions for that "all new info". I should have checked the positions (timecode) of all 854 SUB and should have pasted that "all new info" at the appropiate navpacks.

Trai, wouldn't it be possible to copy the parameters from a given number of navpacks at once to the same number of navpacks. And what about copying multiple parameters (e.g. Button Highlights, Color info and Navigation info) from one navpack at once and paste them repeatedly?

Joe wrote a very informative (and long... Thanx again Joe!!!) eMail and gave me the tip to slice the mixed angle track into single angle and multiangle tracks and build a seamless pgc afterwards.

Here a picture of the nearly finished project:

Greetings and thanx
Christoph

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Posted Jun 24,2005 9:41 AM ianshepherd

Hi Christoph,

Thanks for the reply - actually it was the highlight information I was more interested in, but I have a couple of discs of my own I can look at anyway, so don't worry ! So, once you'd solved the Sonic mux issue, did everything work OK ?

Ian

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Posted Jun 24,2005 5:30 PM ChrisMD

Yep!

I managed to finish the project just about 2 hours before the latest possible moment....

Thanx again to you all!!!

It is nice to know that the small investment pays out so often!

Greetz
Christoph

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Posted Jun 21,2005 5:13 PM ianshepherd

Hi Trai,

I meant Joe, not you !

"mobile DVD Verification Lab " huh ? Sounds intriguing...

Ian

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Posted Jun 21,2005 11:40 PM Trai

Thanks Ian, and glad you got things figured out Christoph.

Yep, I've been having so much fun lately, I guess I must be projecting some guilt, eh? :-)

Talk soon,

Trai