Widescreen menu ratios in Scenarist

[Clown shoes]

(jump to third post down for question about menus)

This might sound like a dumb ass question, but I feel like I may have been doing this the wrong way for a while now. Basicaly I am authoring DVDs in Scenarist for a client overseas. Now these DVDs are 16.9 and need English subs which are being provided to me as .stl files. The thing is I have been treating them the same as I would any 16.9 subpicture, ie; making an anamorphic one and a letterbox one, each positioned slightly differently. My question is; Is this necessary? Or can I apply one set and have them used for both anamorphic and letterbox? If so how does Scenarist deal with them? does it stretch them to fit? Any advice would be appreciated.

Clown Shoes

[DaRat]

Yup, the player streches the subpictures while playing 16:9 anamorphic but not when playing any of the 4:3 formats. You could use the same set of subs for both, just be sure you left enough space for overscan at the bottom (usualy edges won't be a problem). In Scenarist just hit both the "W" and "L" (assuming you are making it letterbox) buttons and you should be fine.

[Clown shoes]

Ha ha ha, would you believe I have authored 10 features for this client now, using my cocked up system. They function fine, I was just doubling the work for myself. Doh. Cheers for that Da rat, it should have dawned on me quicker, but I'm used to making two sets of subpics for wide menus and just used the same system :D

While I'm on the subject. I have noticed a problem in scenarist when using letterboxed and anamorphic overlays. The anamorphic one always fits fine, but the letterbox one is always slightly out by a couple of pixels around the top and the bottom, almost as if it is slightly the wrong size. I use the guide on the Sonic website for resizing my overlays in Scenarist. I make my menu in photoshop 1024 x 576, I resize it to 720 x 576 for my anamorphic overlay. I then copy and past the 1024 x 576 overlay onto a new document sized 1024 x 768 which I resize to 720 x 576 giving the letterbox proportions. Does anyone know of a better way of doing this, or better still why Scenarist is not displaying it quite right? Thanks again.

Clown Shoes

[mpucoder]

DVD players do NOT resize subpictures. The subpicture frame is the full display frame. This may appear to be stretched when viewing on a widescreen display, but that's the nature of widescreen displays.
You can use the same subpicture stream for the widescreen and LB or PS modes, but you might have problems with placement (which is why up to 3 streams are possible). Generally, if you stay in the lower or upper 12% the subpicture will appear on the bottom or top of widescreen, but in the matte area for LB.

[Clown shoes]

Sorry MPUcoder are you refering to my first question about subs or the second part about overlays. I value your wisdom, where am I going wrong.

Clown Shoes

[Clown shoes]

Sorry I see what you mean, you are refering to sub placement. Yes I had kind of worked that out but was just posting for confirmation. This issue with the overlays has me stumped though.

Clown shoes

[DaRat]

@MPUCoder: Yes, that"s what I meant by "streching"... :D (or squeezeing if you'd like) :D

@ClownShoes: Well, this is only a guess since I H-A-T-E letterbox menus (LOL): try resizing the subpicture to 960*whatever, then paste that into a 960x768 frame, resize again to 720x576. Might work. Or maybe it won't. :D I did letterbox only once and still have nightmares about that time. You should go for Pan&Scan meuns, the only thing you should bear in mind is you don't want to put anything on the edges (90px on both sides + the usual overscan), then it's a damn easy work for subpictures: resize to 720x576, save, reise to 960x576, crop to 720x576 and save again. :D (anyway that's why I mentioned that "960" thing earlier)

Hope that helps, now I'm off to bed... :D

[mpucoder]

Just trying to clarify what DaRat said. It is not the player that stretches the subpicture, but the display. This is why you need seperate subpictures for menues, because while the subpicture doesn't resize, the video does.
As for subpictures as W and L subtitles, you don't have as severe an alignment problem, as they will be aligned horizontally in both modes (so dialog will appear under the right speaker). It's more a matter of asthetics. Because the subs will be fullscreen on either display, this means fat letters on widescreen, or skinny letters on LB.
You didn't mention PS, so I won't either - just remember if you ever have to do a PS movie that the subs don't pan with the video.

[Clown shoes]

I would love to do the pan and scan menus but the client insists on the wide and letterboxed ones :devil: I will try 960 instead of 1024 but I don't think it will work. The offset appears to be only slight when I make them, but enough to mean I must take them back into photoshop. Anyway goodnight DaRat, thanks for your help.

Clown Shoes

[Clown shoes]

Yeah I get the resize thing for anamorphic and letterbox menus. The reason I was making multiple sub streams was a combination of stupidity and being so used to making multiple aspect overlays. Like I said what's stumping me now is this tiny positioning difference on the overlays, but only by a pixel or two. Could the formula from the Sonic site be at fault. Do you have a different way of resizing the overlays?

Clown Shoes

[DaRat]

Shame on your client, Clown... :D Anyway I digged up my ersources for THAT project and tried several combos, the 960x768 thing seems to work for me, it's almmost identical to my remaked LB subpics. The 1 px thiner lines (just 1 or 2) must be the result of the resizing, not inaccuracy. :cool:

[Clown shoes]

Cheers dude much appreciated. I shall try that first thing in the morning. Thanks again, you may well have made my life a lot easier :D

Clown Shoes

[Clown shoes]

This is the document on the Sonic site;

http://cs.sonic.com/scripts/texcel/swise/TxSwDownload/e2f302cde2f302dce2f302dde2f30183/Multi_Aspect_Menus_Scen.pdf

1. Start with a new photoshop document – 1024 x 576 (72 pixels/inch) and make
the wide screen menu (including subpicture).
2. Resize menu graphic to 720 x 576 and save menu graphic and subpicture
(names: menu_main, menu_wide_sub).
3. Resize graphic back to 1024 x 576 (to make letterbox menu) and copy
subpicture layer.
4. Make a new photoshop document – 1024 x 768 and paste subpicture (copied
from step 3).
5. Resize to 720 x 576 and save subpicture for letterbox (name: menu_letter_sub



Time for bed I think, my brain hurts. Thanks once more DaRat and MPUCoder.

Clown Shoes

[Clown shoes]

Sorry DaRat but 960 x 768 doesn't work. 1024 x 768 is definatly the closest. I just did a few tests in photoshop. I use the same procedure each time, but depending on the images used I am getting different offsets!! It makes me wonder either about the resizing in Photoshop (doubtful) and that just leaves the resizing in Scenarist. Could it be that the letterbox resizer is not 100% accurate. Has anyone else noticed slight offsets like this. Does anyone else use widescreen menus?

Clown Shoes

(got your PM Arky. You would never have guessed I was in a foul mood last night. Overworked and underpaid, story of my life. Still I think the post reads a litle calmer now ;)

[DaRat]

Yup, sorry about that Clowns, I also noticed that 960 won't do any good here. Interestingly enough, resizing form 960 gives almost the same result as the 1024 version.. hmm... Anyhow you should make sure you're working with indexed color images when you're resizeing the subpictures (or PS would nicely anti-alias the edges... :D).


Ooo, after resizing, try to shift the subpc down by one pixel, this might solve your problem. Both on standalone and on pc (with realmagic) looks just fine. Tough the scenarist preview will lie about this one.. :D

[Clown shoes]

I have attached these responses from another forum which could explain the problem;



Ruud
Member
Member # 55
posted February 24, 2004 02:12 PM
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As far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with your arithmetic. What I would do differently is instead of pasting the 1024 x 576 image into a new 1024 x 768 document, would be to enlarge the canvas to 768 pixels high. (Easier and avoiding any accidental position shift.)
Maybe your problem has something to do with this line in Scenarist's subtitle specs (which I don't understand):

Dy1 <= 479(NTSC)/574(PAL) (not 575)

For some reason the height of an NTSC subpicture is total minus 1 and for a PAL subpicture it is total minus 2.


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Posts: 151 | From: | Registered: Aug 2001 | IP: Logged

Yiannis
Member
Member # 329
Rate Member
posted February 25, 2004 02:02 AM
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I have the same problem with Scenarist.
But the problem take place when the simulation outputs to cinemaster. Burn a test disc and test it to a dvd player, I think that actually the problem occured from cinemaster and not from Scenarist.


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Posts: 10 | From: Greece | Registered: Jul 2002 | IP: Logged

Carl Ardron
Member
Member # 439
posted February 25, 2004 04:42 AM
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Hi Richard
Are you resizing the subpictures using bi-linear type resizing within Photoshop?

I ask because this will cause the colours to become grduations. Nearest Neighbour will maintain the absolute colours but sometimes creates jagged edge.

The best way is to use the same process as used for the original anamorphic subpicture creation, but with the letterbox images.

The maths is correct.

You can also reduce the image to 432 vertical from an anamorphic picture. Then resize canvas back to 576..

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Carl Ardron
DVD Author
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _______ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


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Posts: 56 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2003 | IP: Logged

Richard
Member
Member # 498
Rate Member
posted February 25, 2004 06:19 AM
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@ Yiannis, sadly the problem is still apparent on the finished DVD.

@ Ruud, I will try the canvas resizing although the system I was using was suggested on the Sonic support forum. The line difference issue is interesting, but what could be done about it?

@ Carl, Yes I am using bi linear resizing, which could be it. If my mask is absolute blue then the resized areas will not all be absolute blue, the very edges etc (If I am understanding you right). How noticible would the jagged edges in nearest neighbour resizing be?

Would this work? Stick with bi linear resizing and set my colour picker to just outside the range of the mask, eg; my mask is 0,0,0 so I set the picker to 10,10,10 and less than, to cover the graduation. In my head this works but unfortunatly I am not at work today to check it out. Does this seem logical to you guys?

Richard

(cheers for the pm DaRat, have not had a chance to check it out yet though)

Clown Shoes

[mpucoder]

You know, it is true that subpictures can not be the full height. Maybe this is causing your alignment problem. NTSC is limited to 478 lines, PAL to 573 lines (why, I don't know). This means with full height images Scenarist either has to crop or resize. And then how is the result aligned, to the top, or to the bottom? My recollection of menu subpictures was that they were aligned to the bottom (the top line of the subpicture was 2).

edit: just did a quick check of a couple NTSC menu subpictures. The display box is 0,2 to 719,479 on them.

[Clown shoes]

That's true, however the problem is not apparent with anamorphic or full height 4.3 menus, only letterboxed menus that have been resized in Photoshop. This is why I am curious about what Carl suggested;

Hi Richard
Are you resizing the subpictures using bi-linear type resizing within Photoshop?

I ask because this will cause the colours to become grduations. Nearest Neighbour will maintain the absolute colours but sometimes creates jagged edge.

This could explain the problem as the subpicture when resized will no longer be one colour ie; 255,255,255 the graduation on some of the edge pixels may cause the RGB value to be different ie; 253,254,253 therefore the colour picker is only searching for the value 255,255,255. This would mean the edge pixels are not displayed. This should be correctable by adjusting the picker's range and making it in this example 253 and above for R, G and B. In theory this should work. Does it make sense to anyone else?

Clown Shoes

[DaRat]

Clown, as I said earlier, copy the subpicture layer, paste into a new document, go to Image > Mode > Indexed Color, pick Exact as a palette, this should give you a 4 color bitmap. You can resize this anyhow you want to, you won't get any problems like nearest neighbour and stuff..

(if the bitmap is not 4 color after converting it, use the image>mode>color palette thing, set the nearest colors to exact red/blue/black/white, switch back to rgb and then again to indexed..)

[Clown shoes]

Thanks so much Da Rat. The colour indexing works perfectly. I never thought for one moment the colours would get graduated during the resizes. Still, you live and learn.

Clown Shoes

[zappppp]

you can find it in how to make subpicture for 16:9

[Clown shoes]

Well spotted Zapppp. They appear to have updated the Scenarist manual in version 3.0. There is a section explaining how to construct 16.9 menus in Photoshop. The PDF on there website is out of date as they no longer advise that method of stretching the menu. Instead you downsize the menu and stretch the canvas. I think I shall have to have a look at the manual and see what else has changed :)

Clown Shoes