dan
1st December 2002, 09:41
Hello all....
Is the following because of my methodology or the DVD standard?
In Scenarist, I've set up and imported a sequence of bitmaps with a script with the plan of using them as buttons. The areas of the bitmaps that is to be used for the buttons doesn't change location on the screen, but changes with each frame. [The *planned* end result is that the animated subpictures sit over the full color video, and are a close-to-sepia tone version of each frame, so that when the user moves the cursor over the video, the reduced color version of the frame [the subpicture] changes from 100% to 0% opacity. It's gimmicky, but, in my opinion, it looks pretty cool. To get it to work, I adjusted highlight colors and button areas, and it previews just fine. To take care of the transparency of each frame of the subpicture, I changed the duration of the highlight layer to match that of the subpicture [and also of the background video file].
Though it simulates just fine, when I try to add it to a title in the Scenario Editor, I get:
"Error - No valid Sub-Picture exists for highlight 01:00:00:00 in Track(scene1-t) Sub-Picture stream 1." I tried adjusting the highlight length down at various intervals until it was 2 frames long, but I still got the same error. I'm using 4:3 panscan menus, and I have both the wide and panscan subpictures in place, so it's not, as far as I know, something "simple".
I was messing around, trying to get it to work, and came across the fact that if the duration of one instance of the highlight layer matches the duration of one instance of the subpicture [in my case, 1 frame], it imports just fine. Now, I don't want to have to define a highlight layer [6 buttons] for each frame of 18 seconds of video [18s * 30frames/s * 2 [button areas for [I]both panscan and wide]= no fun], but I figured I could sacrifice an afternoon pursuing this to make it work. But, luckily, I did some more testing before sitting down to do all the button defining. When I had the highlight layer respectively defined for two consecutive frames, I imported the track into the Scenario Editor with no problems, and I wanted to preview my hard work [all two frames' worth] in a regular video player program, so I went to make a disc image, but no...Scenarist wasn't having any of that. I got an error telling me that there wasn't enough time between when one highlight ends and the next begins. I adjusted to see where the limit was, and I got to about 7 or 8 and decided I had better things to do with my time [granted, I ended up wasting the time I saved, but that's beside the point]. I'd assume that the the minimum is probably 10 [it's a nice number] or 15 [half of 30fps], but if that's so, the effect looks more like bad authoring than, dare-I-say, innovative [personally, I've never seen this particular trick for chapter selection done before...as animated subpictures are rare in and of themselves...but, of course, there may be a reason that I've never seen it before (i.e. the technical restrictions of the standard)].
Regardless, any help would be appreciated.
[for what it's worth, there are alternate [read: easier] ways to get this effect, but, out of principle, I'd rather not setup a series of menus that use auto-action buttons to "secretly" move to another menu video that looks the same except for one area...[again, in my opinion] waiting for the set-top to reseat the laser whenever the cursor is moved is no fun to sit through...]
Boiled down:
Does trying to set the length of the highlight layer to last the entire range of subpicture frames go against Scenarist and the DVD standard? Having the highlight layer redefined every frame definitely seems "against the rules".
Thanks in advance...
Dan
Is the following because of my methodology or the DVD standard?
In Scenarist, I've set up and imported a sequence of bitmaps with a script with the plan of using them as buttons. The areas of the bitmaps that is to be used for the buttons doesn't change location on the screen, but changes with each frame. [The *planned* end result is that the animated subpictures sit over the full color video, and are a close-to-sepia tone version of each frame, so that when the user moves the cursor over the video, the reduced color version of the frame [the subpicture] changes from 100% to 0% opacity. It's gimmicky, but, in my opinion, it looks pretty cool. To get it to work, I adjusted highlight colors and button areas, and it previews just fine. To take care of the transparency of each frame of the subpicture, I changed the duration of the highlight layer to match that of the subpicture [and also of the background video file].
Though it simulates just fine, when I try to add it to a title in the Scenario Editor, I get:
"Error - No valid Sub-Picture exists for highlight 01:00:00:00 in Track(scene1-t) Sub-Picture stream 1." I tried adjusting the highlight length down at various intervals until it was 2 frames long, but I still got the same error. I'm using 4:3 panscan menus, and I have both the wide and panscan subpictures in place, so it's not, as far as I know, something "simple".
I was messing around, trying to get it to work, and came across the fact that if the duration of one instance of the highlight layer matches the duration of one instance of the subpicture [in my case, 1 frame], it imports just fine. Now, I don't want to have to define a highlight layer [6 buttons] for each frame of 18 seconds of video [18s * 30frames/s * 2 [button areas for [I]both panscan and wide]= no fun], but I figured I could sacrifice an afternoon pursuing this to make it work. But, luckily, I did some more testing before sitting down to do all the button defining. When I had the highlight layer respectively defined for two consecutive frames, I imported the track into the Scenario Editor with no problems, and I wanted to preview my hard work [all two frames' worth] in a regular video player program, so I went to make a disc image, but no...Scenarist wasn't having any of that. I got an error telling me that there wasn't enough time between when one highlight ends and the next begins. I adjusted to see where the limit was, and I got to about 7 or 8 and decided I had better things to do with my time [granted, I ended up wasting the time I saved, but that's beside the point]. I'd assume that the the minimum is probably 10 [it's a nice number] or 15 [half of 30fps], but if that's so, the effect looks more like bad authoring than, dare-I-say, innovative [personally, I've never seen this particular trick for chapter selection done before...as animated subpictures are rare in and of themselves...but, of course, there may be a reason that I've never seen it before (i.e. the technical restrictions of the standard)].
Regardless, any help would be appreciated.
[for what it's worth, there are alternate [read: easier] ways to get this effect, but, out of principle, I'd rather not setup a series of menus that use auto-action buttons to "secretly" move to another menu video that looks the same except for one area...[again, in my opinion] waiting for the set-top to reseat the laser whenever the cursor is moved is no fun to sit through...]
Boiled down:
Does trying to set the length of the highlight layer to last the entire range of subpicture frames go against Scenarist and the DVD standard? Having the highlight layer redefined every frame definitely seems "against the rules".
Thanks in advance...
Dan