}{eywood
22nd February 2011, 08:34
Let me begin by saying that I have never authored a DVD before. I am an experienced audio technician, but have rarely done video.
I have a DVD that I need to author in a specific way. It absolutely must play the way I am about to explain, but I have no idea how to do it.
I have a movie that I am making two alternate audio tracks for. they contain different musical scores than the original film did. A great deal of work has gone into creating these alternate audio tracks. What I need the video to do is this:
From the main menu select "play Movie" and the movie plays one of the alternate versions that we made. This is the main movie for this disc. This will have the first and last chapter's credits altered to reflect the changes in audio. The chapters will be the same length as the originals. Selecting the "Special Features" choice should lead to a second menu containing choices for "Alternate versions", "Alternate Scenes" "Subtitles", "Slideshow" and "Trailer". The "Alternate Versions" shortcut should lead to two choices: The "Alternate Version 2" which will contain a different first and last chapter from the main version, with differences in the credits, and the "Original Version" which will have the first and last chapters as they were on the DVD it was taken from. The "Alternate Scenes" choice should lead to a menu page with 6 scenes that are different cuts than in the film, but will play individually. Sequential play is not important, but if its not too difficult I am not against including it as an option. "Slideshow" will lead to a photo slideshow that will have about 100 pictures that will display for about 8 seconds each and can be paused on any one. And of course "Trailer" leads to the trailer.
The disc began with a main audio track and three alternate audio tracks for different languages. the main English audio is all I am planning to keep from it. It has 11 subtitle tracks, three of which are the same as the audio languages. This is why I feel I can remove the audio version; the subs are still there if you speak that language.
So what I need is a disc with the ability to play the same movie from different menus, but with different chapters bookending it. These need to play seamlessly as well, so as not to disturb the flow of the film. Three different firs chapters and three different final chapters, with the rest of the movie concurrent.
For the menus, I also want to create my own background stills and my own audio.
I have seen DVDs that allow alternate scenes to be inserted, so I know this is possible, but seamlessly?
Another issue I also need to learn how to deal with is the PAL speed up. This is a movie that has a lot of music in it, but it runs too fast. I need to somehow slow it back down to the correct speed and pitch. It is PAL now, but I assume that once I slow it down it will have to be NTSC. Although I prefer PAL, I am willing to accept this limitation. The problem is that everything that I know of that converts from PAL to NTSC doesn't actually alter the speed of the film, it just does pulldown frames to correct the per-second framerate. I don't want to add frames, yet keep the pitch speed where it is. I need to actually slow down the number of frames per second that the movie plays at so that it plays at the speed it was originally made at, then do pulldowns to make it the proper framerate again.
The thing that I don't understand about how framerates work is this: If film plays at 24fps, PAL plays at 25fps and NTSC plays at 30fps, then why are PAL films always too fast and NTSC ones correct? Wouldn't NTSC be the one that requires the most alteration to get it to the speed it needs to play at? This is why I would think that I could slow down my movie, then add pulldown frames to fill in the blanks until there were 25 a second again, thus retaining the PAL format. I don't really care which format the disc ends up at. Whatever works out with the least damage and least amount of problems when it comes to resyncing the audio.
The files I currently have on my harddrive are mpeg files, one is the entire movie, the others are the individual chapters. The new audio I have made is by chapters, because that was the easiest way to work with it, but it is no problem to append them all together to the full length of the movie. It is also in mono, because that is how the film was made. I hope to be able to put the audio streams on the disc as PCM, since that is how all the restoration was done.
How can this be done, and with what software can I most easily achieve my goal?
Thanks. I anxiously await your expertise and assistance.
I have a DVD that I need to author in a specific way. It absolutely must play the way I am about to explain, but I have no idea how to do it.
I have a movie that I am making two alternate audio tracks for. they contain different musical scores than the original film did. A great deal of work has gone into creating these alternate audio tracks. What I need the video to do is this:
From the main menu select "play Movie" and the movie plays one of the alternate versions that we made. This is the main movie for this disc. This will have the first and last chapter's credits altered to reflect the changes in audio. The chapters will be the same length as the originals. Selecting the "Special Features" choice should lead to a second menu containing choices for "Alternate versions", "Alternate Scenes" "Subtitles", "Slideshow" and "Trailer". The "Alternate Versions" shortcut should lead to two choices: The "Alternate Version 2" which will contain a different first and last chapter from the main version, with differences in the credits, and the "Original Version" which will have the first and last chapters as they were on the DVD it was taken from. The "Alternate Scenes" choice should lead to a menu page with 6 scenes that are different cuts than in the film, but will play individually. Sequential play is not important, but if its not too difficult I am not against including it as an option. "Slideshow" will lead to a photo slideshow that will have about 100 pictures that will display for about 8 seconds each and can be paused on any one. And of course "Trailer" leads to the trailer.
The disc began with a main audio track and three alternate audio tracks for different languages. the main English audio is all I am planning to keep from it. It has 11 subtitle tracks, three of which are the same as the audio languages. This is why I feel I can remove the audio version; the subs are still there if you speak that language.
So what I need is a disc with the ability to play the same movie from different menus, but with different chapters bookending it. These need to play seamlessly as well, so as not to disturb the flow of the film. Three different firs chapters and three different final chapters, with the rest of the movie concurrent.
For the menus, I also want to create my own background stills and my own audio.
I have seen DVDs that allow alternate scenes to be inserted, so I know this is possible, but seamlessly?
Another issue I also need to learn how to deal with is the PAL speed up. This is a movie that has a lot of music in it, but it runs too fast. I need to somehow slow it back down to the correct speed and pitch. It is PAL now, but I assume that once I slow it down it will have to be NTSC. Although I prefer PAL, I am willing to accept this limitation. The problem is that everything that I know of that converts from PAL to NTSC doesn't actually alter the speed of the film, it just does pulldown frames to correct the per-second framerate. I don't want to add frames, yet keep the pitch speed where it is. I need to actually slow down the number of frames per second that the movie plays at so that it plays at the speed it was originally made at, then do pulldowns to make it the proper framerate again.
The thing that I don't understand about how framerates work is this: If film plays at 24fps, PAL plays at 25fps and NTSC plays at 30fps, then why are PAL films always too fast and NTSC ones correct? Wouldn't NTSC be the one that requires the most alteration to get it to the speed it needs to play at? This is why I would think that I could slow down my movie, then add pulldown frames to fill in the blanks until there were 25 a second again, thus retaining the PAL format. I don't really care which format the disc ends up at. Whatever works out with the least damage and least amount of problems when it comes to resyncing the audio.
The files I currently have on my harddrive are mpeg files, one is the entire movie, the others are the individual chapters. The new audio I have made is by chapters, because that was the easiest way to work with it, but it is no problem to append them all together to the full length of the movie. It is also in mono, because that is how the film was made. I hope to be able to put the audio streams on the disc as PCM, since that is how all the restoration was done.
How can this be done, and with what software can I most easily achieve my goal?
Thanks. I anxiously await your expertise and assistance.