Scenarist Chapter Issues and Hellos

[dan]

Ok guys [and girls],
I've been a forum lurker for a while, and have gotten pretty proficient with Scenarist NT [much thanks for the guide], but anywhoo...

Firstly, sorry that this question has a lot to do with encoding as well...if you want to move it to there, no problems by me, but there are authoring-type issues here too.

It seems that most of you guys are dealing with content that already exists, as in ripping a DVD, then re-encoding it, authoring it, then burning. The project I'm working on is a "Stupendous Edition" DVD of a movie that a bunch of friends of mine worked on last summer. Being that I was the computer/tech type among my group of friends, I got to do the editing and mixing and etc. I have a fairly complete disc layout [in terms of menus working and whatnot] in Scenarist, but I'm about to split the movie into chapters [well, I know that nothing is technically "split" but you know what I mean] in the track editor, but because this is my own content, I can't/don't know how to easily define where I frames will be. Because I don't know how to do that, the chapter breaks aren't cleanly at the beginning of a scene. And, of course, because Scenarist only lets chapters start on I frames, I'm stuck. It's a problem I could deal with, but, perhaps, there's a way to get rid of it [aside from setting every frame to be an I frame (I don't know the particulars of mpeg2, but I can't imagine that that would be a good idea, as DivX doesn't exactly flourish with having every frame a keyframe...just an analogy, I know the two aren't same)].

Okay, here's how it goes:
Athlon XP 1900
256 MB PC2700
70GB HDD [30 for system, 40 for video, both 7200rpm]
Premiere 6.01
---Ligos LSX Plug-in [sure it's not CCE, but I try to avoid frame-serving, but I'll try frame-serving if that'd solve this].
It's set to something like 1/4/2 (I/P/B).

The timeline is about 1:49:xx:xx (hours:minutes:seconds:frames), and if any of you guys have worked with Premiere with such a large file, you know the hassles of exporting video about 15 minutes at a time, then joining it with DVTool or something similar. Because the movie is so big, I wouldn't want to export an ultra-high bitrate mpeg2 (or even huffyyuv AVI), as I'd run out of HDD space, then in TMPGenc redefine I frames, etc. as recompression artifacts suck.

If I make an image in Scenarist, then manually edit the IFO's to change the timings chapter stops, would that work? My scenarist-sense [as opposed to spidey-sense] says no, but anyone tried that?

Well, that's about it. Let me thank you guys in advance. Sorry so wordy. If you guys are interested in checking out any of the movie stuff [trailers, menu design, etc.] just give me a holler. Don't worry, I'm not trying to sell anything, this is just my summer project (as last summer's project was the movie itself).


Thanks a whole bunch (just for reading this far down).

Dan

Do you guys think I should change my username to something more hacker-esque [like "blackDOOM", "TerminalOccupancy", or "l33t3r-th@n- U"] as opposed to my regular name?

[slk001]

Scenarist will automatically adjust your chapter points to the nearest I frame (says so in the manual).

As for changing your name, let me know if you find a way... I want to capitalize the letters in my "handle", but I can't see how. The forum wouldn't let me enter my letters in caps originally, either.

You adjust the scene start time by changing the time code and thus the positioning of the scene. When you set a new time code, Scenarist re-positions the scene to begin at the nearest I-frame. This prevents the chapter stop from landing in the middle of a GOP.

[dan]

Thanks for the reply, but the problem is that [like I had included in the original post and the first reply confirmed] Scenarist only puts chapter stops at I frames. I'm looking for some way of either having better control over I frames [without making every frame an I frame] or manually adjusting the IFO's to redefine the chapter points [which I'm not sure is possible, and have a working disc]. Any ideas? [if you're not sure what I mean exactly, check out my original post, as it goes into more detail].

Thanks again,
Dan

[slk001]

Well, when you encode, if you use VBR also check "AUTOMATIC SCENE DETECTION". This should put a new I frame at all scene changes. Using a 15 frame GOP (in NTSC) a new I frame occurs every 0.5 seconds. I encode using 12 frame GOP's, just so I can get a little bit finer resolution on where my chapter points fall (they now fall at a minimum of every 0.4 seconds).

Either that, or have 0.5 sec fades at every place you want a chapter (so you can always hit an "I" somewhere in the fade). You can always set the chapter point at the I frame before the scene change - the effect is not really that noticeable (this is the way I do it).

You cannot enter a GOP at anywhere other than an I frame. If you modify the .IFO file chapter entry points, you will probably have a brief period of intensely blockly video (if it works at all - you have missed the required GOP header info), which you had better hope gets fixed when the next I frame occurs.

Anyway, don't make a mountain out of a molehile. If you look at many commercial DVD's, you will see chapter entry points at, or slightly before, the scene in question. As a viewer, you hardly notice this.

[dan]

Thanks a whole lot for the help/info.