How to put on timeline multiple movies in Maestro

[Kilyan]

Hy!

My question derives directly from Ice Age Pal r2, which I am reauthoring completely (I know that with Ifoedit I just have to leave out some foreign langages but I want to do it with Maestro.)
So I demuxed all the overlay bmp-s, ac3-s, menus, movies.

I wanted to put the 6 missing scene from the film to one "movie" timeline, that works fine. But if I want to put the english ac3-s for each of them, I cannot put it to one anothers tail? So I can do it with m2v-s but not with ac3-s?
The other possibility was to put the second extra movie to the next row, under the first extra movie, but Maestro tells me that "the gop structure blahblah...", I think it must be in relationship with the timestamp thing.
By the way no menu were reencoded with cce, so I always have a beginning timestamp different from 00:00:00:00, Is there a way to change this????, because it is quite a work to shift the chapters, the subs (subrip does it, but anyway)

How can I put extras m2v on the same timeline? and the same for ac3?
Can the timestamp for m2v-s be changed to 00:00:00:00?

I authored Ice age now so I have nearly 20 vobset

Thanks

[UTec]

I don't see why you want to put the 6 scenes on one movie timeline. Couldn't you simply create 6 movie entries in Maestro and put each scene m2v and ac3 in its own timeline? Then if you want them to play one after the other, all you have to do is set the "end action" target of the first scene to the second scene, link the end action of the 2nd to the 3rd, so on and so forth...

If you absolutely want to have all 6 scenes in one timeline, the best way would be to concatenate all the m2v's together into one stream, same thing for the ac3's. Then import the concatenated streams into Maestro.

But that involves a lot of extra work and I fail to see what you would gain by it.

[Kilyan]

Hy, thanks for your answer.
I just don't understand that the original ice age dvd has 4 vobset (the third doesn't contain anything but data), and mine is about 24 or so? I suppose that if I used Scenarist I could have nearly the same structure. So there is no way to have less vobset without doing the extra job (wehich I won't do)?
I have a main movie, 6 missing scenes, 6 making of the film, 3 trailers, 3 scrat little movie, and some other stuff, that makes a total of 19 vobset minimum. And there is only 3 on the original dvd???

What about the timestamp thiing? Can it be changed to 00:00:00:00 in the m2v? is there any utility for that?

For the endpoint I use end action and a punch chapter point linked tzo the next one. By the way there is no direct linking here, because I also have the animated menus.
By the way when I have an animated menu, then if button 1 is pushed it goes to another animation which is only a transition between the first and the third one, how do I proceed normally? I've made it so that the first one's button is linked to the second one, which has a timeout 0 linked to the third one. But I also put an invisible auto-action button on the second one linked to the third one? Is this necessary?

Thanks for your answer

[UTec]

I don't see how having more VTS titlesets on the backup is a problem... The way I see it, as long as the DVD-R works the same as the original, that's all that really matters doesn't it?

But if that bugs you, the reason is that Maestro will put only one Title per VTS titleset when compiling the VOB files. You don't have any control over that. Of course, Scenarist does let you have control over this but it's much more complicated to use than Maestro. I don't recommend it until you have a full grasp on Maestro and want to move on to doing more complex things like seamless branching and multi-angle.

About your question on timestamps, I don't understand what you mean.

About the transition video from the menu question:

Many people make the mistake of making a menu out of those instead of simply a movie. The only reason to put a stream in a menu is if it has buttons (IOW, only it's REALLY a menu). Otherwise, create all your transition sequences as movies.

Target the menu button to "transition sequence Chapter1", then set the "end action" (connections view) of the transition video to "third video chapter 1". No need for punch chapter point when the end action of a sequence is already defined. That's like wearing a belt AND suspenders to hold up your pants. You only need one or the other but not both. :)

[Kilyan]

Thanks for your reply.
I thought the same thing about the transition thing, I only used the two ways because I wasn't sure of myself. So from now on I will use only timeout to transition.
The timestamp thing was about: I put a m2v on the timeline and it overwrites the clock to 01:00:04:04 for example, so I have to delay manually all my chapter points of Chapter Extractor to the right place which isn't funny for a movie that have about 40 chapters(I could not get to work the delay in Chapter Extractor for Maestro format).
And have to do that with subs either. In case of subs Subrip does it, but I don't know why adds a negative 00:00:00:04 delay to the subs (list 2 digits only counts to 30 in Maestro normally), but that doesn't bother since it really won't affect the syny between video and subs.
All would be much simpler if I could overwrite the timestamp of the m2v from 01:00:04:04 to 00:00:00:00

Thanks again.

If I have nearly 30 little transition menus (no button) between other menus, I could just put them on 1 timeline next to each other, but they also have ac3-s which cant be put tnext to each other, so that will add 30 more vts's? :scared: :(

[UTec]

About the transition sequences, I'm afraid so. Not really a problem as such since those are small and you're allowed up to 99 VTS's in the DVD specification.

If that bothers you too much, you could always revert to putting the transitions in menus without subpictures or buttons. Then set those "menus" to Timeout, 0 secs and set the timeout action to play the next video/menu. The result will be that all those transitions will be compiled into VTS_01_0.VOB instead of spread across 30 VTS titles.

About the timestamp thing, funny you should mention that...

I'm having the same problem with ALL my demultiplexed menu m2v's from Attack Of the Clones. When I import them in Scenarist, they all show a beginning timestamp of 01:04:00:12 and Scenarist refuses to let me change it to 00:00:00:00 as they should be.

I just imported one of those m2v's in Maestro (which I'm far more familiar with than Scenarist) and checked the properties. In one field called "File offset", there's that timestamp of 01:04:00:12.

So I'm sure the problem is the m2v stream itself. I don't know yet how to modify this file offset back to 00:00:00:00 but I'll bet my shirt that's the solution. Once I find out how, I'll post it here or post a link to the thread with the answer.

[UTec]

Well I found the way to reset the timecode to 00:00:00:00 in an m2v... Quite simple in fact but quite tedious: you have to transcode it in CCE. Just make sure you reset the timecode to 00:00:00:00 in the Video options before you start encoding.

The good news is that I found that this "file offset" does not affect playback of menu streams and the timing of the subpicture highlighting for the buttons... I was worried I would have to transcode all the menu video streams one by one, all 63 of them.. thank God that won't be necessary.

As for the main movie, I might be wrong but since you have to transcode it to fit on DVD-R no matter what, you have the opportunity to reset the timecode to 00:00:00:00 in CCE. So where's the problem?... unless I'm missing something perhaps?

[Eraser]

I got exactly the same problem/solution UTec.. When i import all the PGCs into Scenarist the offset of 01:00:00:00 messes everything up. I found if i encode all parts including warner logo etc with cce and the new timecode of 00 everything works fine (pain tho)

ive been searching round this forum and the internet in general for a program to simply change this offset before you import the video

Can any of the experts please help us with this?

thanks

Eraser

[Kilyan]

Utec yes defenitely your missing the point :D :D
Ice Age is just as little that it is not needed to reencode, all menus, movies, extras fit on the same dvd-r, so it would be a waste of time to reencode it.
Fot the timestamp thing if cce is the only way to go than I prefer to calculate the delays myself for such little dvds, for big ones of course I use cce anyway.

[UTec]

Kilyan,

Sorry about that, I wasn't aware that the Ice Age DVD is a single-layer title. :) In that case, I totally agree that re-encoding the movie and re-muxing in IfoEdit in order to extract a good chapterlist would take a lot more time than calculating your offsets manually.

Eraser,

Who knows?... Maybe someday, one of the gurus will whip up a special utility that can reset the timecode of a stream to 0. I have no idea how simple or how complicated this would be to implement but it sure would be useful.

[Eraser]

UTEC

The CCE way definitley seems to be the best way until we find a program or one of the experts makes a program to do this.

the current DVD im doing has what appears to be a dummy PGC with only 2 second clip - how do you handle these? -

I cant get dvd2avi to create a proper D2V so i can cce it properly like normal PGC's which i need to do to get the timecode to 00 ???

Thanks

Eraser

[mookyking]

Regarding the first post, combining multiple video and audio files together on the same movie timeline (maEstro)...
You have to create a 'sync audio track'.

It's easy to do, just drag all the .m2v video files onto the timeline, adjust the start and end points of each clip as needed, then right click on one of the audio tracks (empty one), select 'create sync audio track'. A dialog box listing all the video clips in the current movie will come up. Double click each video clip and select the audio clip that goes with it.

When you clicker the 'create audio file' button, it combines all the audio sources into one big audio track that is in sync with the video (hence sync audio I guess). The nice part is if you change the starting/ending points of the video clips, maestro will adjust the audio files during the combining process to match the video clips (but you have to re-create the sync audio track every time you make changes to the video clips).


As for the timecode setting, you can click on the displayed timecode and change it (to 00:00:00:00) only if there is one video clip on the timeline. If there are several clips combined together, maEstro complains that the timecode is set by the first asset (video clip). However, maEstro seems to completely ignore any changed timecode settings when importing a chapter list. For example, if I reset a movie from 01:00:00:00 to 00:00:00:00 and then try to import a .chp file, none of the chapters will import unless they are offset by 01:00:00:00 (just as if I never reset the timecode). MaEstro seems to only use the timecode offset during subtitle imports.

My workaround is to have 2 dummy clips of 4hour black video, one drop frame and one non-dropframe. When I want to import a chapter list, I just stick in a dummy clip of non-dropframe video, import the chapters, then delete the dummy clip and stick back the movie clips. The chapter points do not change. This is also required when my video file is encoded with the dropframe flag set, as maEstro will not import any .chp file into a dropframe video clip ("I-Frame insertion entry not valid blah blah").

I use the dummy dropframe videoclip when importing subtitles. Sometimes when importing subtitles into a video clip (non-drop frame, usually anime), the subtitle timing is a little off. This can be fixed with subrip, but many times it can be fixed simply by importing subtitles with the dropframe dummy file on the timeline, then deleting the dummy file and inserting the real non-dropframe video back.

If you want to place multiple video clips on different tracks, you have to enable 'dvd video multiangle' in CCE while encoding the video. This makes CCE close all gops, equalize each gop's lenght, and disable automatic i frame insertion. CCE warns of degraded picture quality when doing this, so it is only recommened to be used when really needed (multiangle dvd).

The CCE docs state that timecode 00:00:00:00 should not be used as it has 'special meaning' to CCE. I have never had any problems using 00:00:00:00, has anyone else? And what is this 'special meaning' mentioned in the CCE docs?

[Kilyan]

Great help Thanks!
Mookyking:
How do you generate such black video files? Does it take a lot of space?
Is there any dvd with dropfram flag set in pal?

[mookyking]

I made me blank 4hour clip with a simple one line avisynth script..

blankclip(360000,720,480,"YUY2",25,1,48000,true,true,$000000)

Then opened this in cce and encoded it with very low bitrate.
Finally I used pulldown.exe to make a dropfame version of the same blank video clip...