Advice for Authoring Motion Menus from AfterEffects CS3?

[BassPig]

We've been authoring DVDs in Scenarist 2.7 for a number of years. In the past, we did things the hard way, with subpictures created in PhotoShop. That was fine when we mostly did still menus, but more and more titles we author today specify motion menus in the job spec.

Often, we recycle prior projects as templates for new projects by unlinking the source media from the PGCs in the Assets manager and then selecting the new path and file for each asset and then Placeholder -> Data.

In light of the need to have an efficient workflow for motion menus, we've been experimenting with creating them in Adobe AfterEffects CS3. The general concept is to have a 29:29 duration composition, in which the animation/video elements are created/merged. The top layers are text layers for the (usually Zapf Dingbats) highlight button shapes. Between the button layers and the backround video, we place a white solid layer.

To render the video background, we turn off the text layers (buttons) and the white solid and render an MPEG2 file.

To render the button overlay/subpicture, we turn on visibility for the white solid and text button layers and export frame to TARGA 32-bit with alpha channel at the project dimensions of 720x480.

The problem we're having is that in Scenarist, when we are starting to work on the creation of highlight buttons, the button graphics from the subpicture are illedgiblely-distorted and seem to be at very low resolution. If we turn on visibility for the subpicture, it is very sharp and clear. But the highlight graphics produced are exceptionally blocky and unreadable.

In a widescreen menu, we also have turned on widescreen and letterbox options for the subpicture. When the project is authored, we have a couple of additional problems, which I'm not sure may be related to the fact that we're reusing projects as templates, as noted above, but one of the issues is that when we build the image on HD, when the process completes (as far as the progress indicator shows), instead of a "DVD files successfully created", we've been getting a "Unable to create DVD files" error. The files are there, and in the case of a previous project last week, we found they could be burned to a disc and the disc played through with no issues. So we assumed the error was some minor issue that did not affect playback.

However, with this week's project, we're experiencing the error again, and, although the DVD files were created, this multichapter, multi-program project has one program in which the audio cuts out halfway through playback.

The other issue is going back to the menu topic: On a 4:3 TV, the subpicture is out of alignment with the video background menu. On a 16:9 TV, it matches up correctly. In both cases, the subpictures are illedgible.

I recall that back in the still menu era, we used to have to produce PhotoShop files that were 720 x 576, not 720 x 480.
The challenge is that in AfterEffects, the project dimensions are the same for the motion graphics and the subpicture overlay. I think some of our menu quality issues are hiding in there.

Has anyone figured out a proper way to produce the subpictures from AE, so that they appear with full resolution on the DVD? If so, what are the export settings and project settings that work?

We're still troubleshooting the error message, but suspect it could be related to this, or some vestige of a mismatch due to using old projects as templates (a lot of GPRM programming that we don't want to have to create from scratch for every title we author of a given series).

Any ideas and tips would be helpful. Thanks!

[BassPig]

A more immediate problem that I've isolated is that, depending on the TV aspect ratio this DVD is played on, the subpictures will be displayed incorrectly.

Ie., on a 16x9 TV, the subpicture matches the highlight buttons and the menu graphics.

On a 4x3 TV, the wrong subpicture is being used, as it's aspect is too tall for the letterboxed screen.


In Scenarist, there are two subpicture streams with Wide, Letterbox and Pan & scan buttons. Two versions of the subpicture were created and placed in the track, with one being set to W and the other to L.

In the simulator, when the screen is static in edit mode, choosing the Wide and Letterbox display views results in the correct subpicture being displayed. In addition, the subpic display shows "Subpic1" for the wide and "Subpic 2" for the letterbox view. So that parts seems to be working.

The problem is when the simulation is run in letterbox mode, the subpicture displayed seems to be the Widescreen version and not the Letterbox version. This is confirmed on a Pioneer DV343 player, connected to a 4x3 TV, as well.

What can cause the wrong subpicture to display in simulation and actual playback, when in the editor, the correct subpictures are displaying for their respective sceen aspect ratios?

[Corion]

""Unable to create DVD files" error. The files are there,...."multi-program project has one program in which the audio cuts out halfway through playback."

I've never seen this particular error before but maybe worth reparsing your assets? I know there's no parse file for audio but could still be worth trying to delete your vifs and reopen the project. If not I'd suggest deleting the problematic audio track in your track editor and bringing it in afresh.

Re the letterbox subpictures display problem...From what you say you may have done this already but have you checked the subpicture decoding attributes at PGC level? (Click on PGC > in property browser click "Subpicture Attributes" > "Subpicture Attribute #0" then you should see a list of the subpictures used in that PGC.) I've found that if I add a track to a PGC, delete the subpicture stream then re-insert it, it doesn't always update.

Re your subpics out of AFX. Do you not generate the text/highlight in PShop in the first place and then import it into AFX? I just ask because that's how I'd do it so it would make sense to me to stick with PShop for generating subpics.

[BassPig]

Thank you for your insiteful analysis of the subpicture wide/letterbox problem. You pointed me to the right place! I found that while the decoding stream for wide was set, the decoding stream for letterbox was blank. I needed only click on the dropdown and select the only choice that was there--letterbox. How this got mixed up like this, I have no clue.

Regarding subpictures made in AE, we thought it would be a faster workflow to design our motion menus in AE and then make an extra layer for the subpictures. It is easy to place subpicture elements in AE, since you can see the motion video right under the layer. However, the unexpected result of Scenarist doing what looks like a "nearest neighbor" resampling of the image results in a 75% degradation in subpicture resolution. What was a clearly recognizeable font has been converted to a few random dots representing the densist areas of the character. Works okay for a box or rectangle button, but not for anything with a text highlight.

We USED to generate all subpics in PhotoShop, but have started doing them in AE, not expecting the odd results we're getting. The old way was a lot of extra work because we'd have to take a screen shot of the motion menu and past it into a PSD file and then add a layer for the subpicture, using the pasted image as a position guide. The resolution of the PSD file was 576x480 and then I think we'd convert it to 720x480 before saving to .TGA with alpha channel. The result SHOULD have beent the same, since AE corrects the aspect ratio without resorting to this trick. But somewhere along the line, the resolution is almost completely lost--where a given letter may have been represented by 64 pixels, now it's represented by 16 pixels and is unrecognizeable.


But the wide and letterbox issue appears to be solved. Why Scenerist doesn't assign these streams when I add the second subpicture and set it's W or L attribute, I can't say, but at least this workaround seems to have worked, based on the simulation results. I'm going to burn a DVD later this evening and can verify proper play later.

Thanks VERY much for solving a major part of the problem!

[Corion]

No problem mate.

Re the subpicture definition problem...Having re-read your original post, I would try exporting a 24 bit TGA. Scenarist won't know about alpha channels. Also make sure it is flattened. 720 X 480 is correct for NTSC.

If that doesn't work, check in PShop that your subpic looks okay and is black, blue and/or red only.

Finally - if still no joy - you can change the way a subpicture file is interpreted by Scenarist. In your case it sounds like Scenarist is picking up the solid of the subpicture but none of the anti aliasing. To change this, click on your menu track and in the simulation window select "color" from the drop down combo-box. You'll no doubt be familiar with the 4 coloumns (original, display, selection & action). Let's say you've used black for your subpicture....double click on the black box in the original color coloumn. Change the RGB operators from = to < and then change the colour values from 0 to, lets say 192. This has the effect of telling Scenarist to highlight any colour within the subpicture which is darker than a 192 grey - which should hopefully include your anti alias. You can tweak the colour values until what you have looks good.

[BassPig]

That's good information about the subpicture interpretation. I've dabbled in those menus, but avoided changing any of the values, given that all edits are "destructive" and there's no undo. But now I think I have a good enough understanding to play with them.

We are making non antialiased subpicture graphics and they do look good in Scenarist's Simulator window when "original subpicture" is selected. Switching back to "Display color" reveals an image that is 1/4 the raster resolution of the "original subpicture". I think there is an issue with interpretation, and I've got a test scenario open now and am going to play with some of the ideas you put forth.

We found we can effectively turn off AA by using draft mode on the AE timeline. That makes a pure B&W image with no grey levels along the edges.

And in fact we did try 24-bit TARGA files, thinking along the lines of what you mentioned, but Scenerist only imports them as "still pictures" and there is no subpicture choice. It apparently needs the alpha channel to flag it as a subpicture-capable TARGA file.


========HEY, YOUR SUGGESTION WORKED!

Alright, I was writing this as I played with your idea about changing the original color RB operators. Now this is very interesting, because, although the image I imported is indeed pure black and pure white, according to PhotoShop, it's not being seen that way in Scenarist. However... upon changing the RGB values to "<192" when I regenerated the highlights, they now match perfectly with the source file. Wish I had read this two days ago, as we just shipped a title with the less than perfect subpictures, but at least now we can avoid this problem in the future.

Thank you VERY much for turning me onto the right solution for this problem that has been plaguing us since our decision to use AE for motion menu development. I've added this to our knowledgebase, so if it comes up in the future, we have the procedure at-hand for fixing it.

[Corion]

Good stuff, glad it worked. One last thing...While I was poking around in AE I found something pretty cool which is that you can export a layered PSD of the frame on which you are parked (From the menu tab, composition > Save Frame As > PShop Layers). If you ever go back to PShop for generating subpics this would be much better than screen grabs.

[BassPig]

Believe it or not, that's how we've been exporting subpictures from AE, using 'save frame as', but selecting TARGA 32-bit w/ alpha channel.

Upon closer inspection, it seems that even with draft mode set (to supposedly turn off AA, AE still puts a yellow edge around some portions of the output. I traced this to an outline color of yellow, that we weren't even using, but AE was including it in draft mode.

But with the tweaks to Scenarist, we're getting the fine results we used to get from PhotoShop. Thanks again for your insite and help with this!