Video Thumbnail buttons in Scenarist SD - How?

[neil wilkes]

Can anyone please tell me how to create a video thumbnail button in Scenarist SD?
(Latest build 3.4.3)

Cannot find anything in the manuals about this, and any help would be wonderful.

[rik1138]

It would have to be part of the background video for the menu itself. If you only want one thumbnail to moving at a time (i.e., the one you have selected), you need to create a unique video loop for every chapter, and when you advance to the next thumbnail, you have the disc actually jump to the appropriate menu/video background.

Note from a user point-of-view on that second scenario: Programming a disc that way is annoying as hell to the end user... Takes forever to get through the chapter selections, and you see the video pause/restart every time you move the button highlight... Unless you need this functionality to help explain the chapters as they go through them, I'd avoid it. (Assuming it's a movie-style disc meant to be released to the public, anyway...)
I think the original Lord of the Rings DVDs were programmed like this if you want an example of how tedious it can be to navigate through them...

If you just want all of the thumbnails to be animated, then you just make a single video loop for the menu with them all rendered into it. No problem there...

[Ghitulescu]

The way I did it, long time ago, is to create several menus with videos created in avisynth (in my case there have been all chapters moving, the selected one was in colour, the others were B/W). The navigation is not that difficult to solve, I agree however that is a hell of a task for a beginner. I would now/today prefer to do the same in pgcedit, but that time such a tool did not exist.

[neil wilkes]

@rik1138.
Thanks for the suggestions - this is something the client wants, and I am - in all honesty - trying to dissuade them (as you so rightly point out, it is as annoying as all hell).
The problem I face with them is that this project has been authored once already and cancelled as the authoring was completely screwed up & we are trying to pick up the pieces as the original company has now gone under. From what I have seen (and it is wrong to say this but truth is truth) it is no great loss either. They seemed to be more concerned with trying to design screens that might win style awards at the cost of functionality - not a good idea, as we always think that menus are there to get the user into the content easily, quickly & efficiently with minimal buggering about. But I digress....
IF they insist on going for it, it looks like After Effects time then. Again, the original authors did not use Scenarist but Adobe's Encore DVD, and they have it in their heads I can do the same thing & set a loop from each title on the menu - Encore does this with a poster frame & a times loop, and it looks horrendous to me. If it has to be, then it will be - dare I say - one loop to rule them all? (sorry, could not resist given your example)

@Ghitulescu.
Again, thank you for your suggestions - much appreciated. We are trying to talk them into simple but elegant, as opposed to complex & impenetrable.

[superleo]

I'm authoring a BD50 for a demonstration disc that consists of video clips. The disc is organized into 5 different segments, bass, visual, surround animation and music. Each segment has submenu with 9 pages with cover art. for each. The problem I ran into was maxing out the menu buffer, but using pages and background graphics for each page (BG:) works.

Here is an example of the menu.

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm148/CastilloLeo/Menu_5.jpg

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm148/CastilloLeo/menu_6.jpg

and PopUp menu.

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm148/CastilloLeo/Inception_3.jpg

Each segment has eight clips plus a play All menu with in the same menu as pages. There is no lag in between the navigation, the lag is only when navigating back to the Top menu.

[rik1138]

I'm authoring a BD50 for a demonstration disc that consists of video clips. The disc is organized into 5 different segments, bass, visual, surround animation and music. Each segment has submenu with 9 pages with cover art. for each. The problem I ran into was maxing out the menu buffer, but using pages and background graphics for each page (BG:) works.

He's actually making a DVD, not Blu-ray...

Is that something you are just doing for yourself? Favorite scenes to show off blu-ray? That's actually a cool idea... Might have to try that myself...

[superleo]

Sorry about that!!! I missed the SD part in the heading.

There are 2 disc like this (Volume 1 and Volume 2) from scubasteve2365 that can be downloaded at avsforum... where the inspiration came from. There are lost of little technical details when splitting the clips from the main file, but after doing a couple you'll be able to figure it out.

For sure it is very cool to have the best clips on one disc to showcase a home theater.

Good luck in your project neil.