Multi-angle video...

[drdaz]

Hi, I'm not sure this is the right place to post this, but it seemed to be the most fitting, so here goes.

I have a DVD with a single A/V stream, which is in fact a concatenated recording from 2 different cameras (ie, Angle A is followed by Angle B). The audio on the 'second' stream is considerably better than the first.

I would like to make a multi-angle video file of these recordings, however I can't seem to find any capable format apart from DVD. I'd really like to know if another such format exists (and if so, how to do it), and if not, some kind of guide to doing the job using the DVD format.

Thanks for any info you can offer.
/drdaz

[Dimmer]

Can't think of any other way except DVD. Only professional level DVD authoring programs like Scenarist support multi-angles. It's really easy there and laid out step by step in the manual. Other well-know program is Maestro. Of course, you'll have to cut your video into two independent parts.

[drdaz]

Thanks for your reply...

This might be an incredibly dumb question, but I've spent the last few hours downloading and trying out different software with no avail, so... What package should I use for cutting the stream in 2? I know I could use VDubMod, but that would presumably involve conversion of some sort which seems quite unnecessary.

Also, for some reason Scenarist won't accept any of my video files. Ever experienced that?

Thanks in advance,
/drdaz

[Dimmer]

Provided your audio is stereo or mono, there is kind of an unusual but easy way to accomplish this. Use TMPGEnc DVD Author (TDA) to create a new DVD out of the original one. Since you have only one title, import it twice into separate tracks using Add DVD Video and Add New Track buttons. Trim each track to contain one of the two parts, and ensure that they have exactly the same length. Build a DVD without any menus. TDA creates a separate titleset for each track. Demux each titleset with VobEdit as follows: open VTS_01_1.VOB, click Demux, check Demux all Video streams and all Auduo streams. Repeat for VTS_02_1.VOB. You'll get two m2v files and two ac3/wav/mp2 files depending on your original audio format. Then you can import them into Scenarist and author a multi-angle DVD.

Scenarist can import only elementary streams such as .m2v or .wav. It won't accept .mpg or .vob files. For NTSC DVD, it won't accept .mp2 audio either.

Remember that video length should be precisely the same for both angles. Fortunately, TDA has counters that show the length of the trimmed clip. If you positively can't make them the same length, add the shorter one as a first angle on your track, and Scenarist will cut off the end of the longer clip. Don't forget to set the scene angle type to non-seamless before adding the audio for each angle.

[oddyseus]

A word of caution. Multi angle video must have the exact same number of frames, identical GOP structure and the closed GOP altogether.

Their frames must be divideable in integer with the GOP length. Pal GOPs r 15 max frame in length, whereas NTSC are 18. Therefore if you have 1000 frames to encode u must be using a 10frame GOP cause no number between 8 and 15 (for PAL) can divide 1000 in to an integer result.