Extracting Subpictures from menus

[klona]

Hi.
When doing a completely re-authored dvd, the more boring to me is (except subs of course) the subpicture for menu to redo in Photoshop.

Is there a way to extract original ones ?

[steve00021]

Fire up subrip, Select VTS_01_0 VOB this is where the menu subpictures usualy are.
Select save subpictures as bitmap And remember to set cropping to 720x480 NTSC or 720x576 PAL. This will then save all the buttons Etc ready to used when you re-author .

[klona]

Thx a lot. It will be usefull

[UTec]

Also...

- make sure you're using the latest version: Subrip 1.02

- reset the timecode to 0:0:0:0

- when asked for beginning of file name, use "menus" (you can rename the files later).

- In the next dialog, Colors tab, set the color preset radio button to "Maestro" (assuming you're using Maestro to re-author, if not you can set the colors manually).

- Positionning tab: make sure X and Y are set to "keep original position"

- Cropping tab: set "minimum picture width" to 720 and "minimum picture height" to 480. "Allow BMP cropping": checkmark OFF. This part is very important otherwise your button overlays will be offset vertically and end up in the wrong position!!

- Set both "Horizontal alignment (X)" and "Vertical alignment (Y)" radio buttons to "Center"

- Click OK

- Close all windows. Subrip will ask you "Text not saved! Do you really want to quit?". Click Yes, you don't need any text files for this, only the bitmaps (and those are already saved at this point).

Now open and check every .BMP file with your favorite bitmap tool (Photoshop, Paintshop, etc.). You will notice that for some reason I can't explain, your BMP's will be 720 x 478 pixels instead of 720 x 480 like they should (a bug in Subrip perhaps?...)

No sweat. Just make sure the background color is set to pure black (RGB 0,0,0) and change the canvas size to 720 x 480 adding an extra pixel on top and bottom of the bitmap. Do this for each of your bitmap files.

Another thing to check for:

Subrip will extract as many bitmaps as the number of menus there are in the VTS_0x_0.VOB file. On many occasions, the chapter menu bitmaps are all the same. It is worth comparing them and keep only one BMP. This way, you only have one source to import in Maestro and you can re-use the same one for all your chapter menus.

Extra tip:

If you're like me and don't keep all the menus when re-authoring (I only keep the main menu and the chapters menu), I suggest you use IFOedit and strip the menu extras you don't need from the VTS_0x_0.VOB file BEFORE you use Subrip to extract the bitmaps. This way, you will end up with less bitmaps to check, compare and fix in your paint tool.

Subrip is a great tool for this. Not only will it save you TONS of time but you will also have the exact, original bitmap overlays for all your menus :)