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Old 30th October 2002, 10:44   #1  |  Link
Pauly
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Scenarist, seamless branching and interleaved VOB IDs

Hi
I am trying to reauthour "Planet of the Apes" keeping all the extras.
The movie is available as two titles the first is the plain movie and the second includes extras about the making of the movie. They share many VOB IDs but also branch to alternate versions using different IDs at certain points in the movie.
Looking at the structure of the VOBs in DVD2AVI some VOB IDs are interleaved i.e. scanning though the VOBs the ID flicks between say 4 and 5. Using IfoEdit you also see IlVu next to these IDs indicating an "Interleaved Unit".
I have managed to almost get this to work using the "Seamless Branching with Scenarist" guide by OxP on this site, but my reauthoured VOB ID are all sequential which means some cell transitions can not be seamless leading to glitches in the movie.

So my question is how do you get Scenarist to produce interleaved VOB IDs.

Thanks for any replies
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Old 1st November 2002, 13:03   #2  |  Link
Pauly
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I've been searching the net for more info about seamless branching and Scenarist and it would appear that Scenarist cannot do seamless branching and infact there is probably only two authoring packages that can. One from Toshiba and the other from Panasonic (LQ-VD2000S http://www.panasonic.com/PBDS/subcat...lq-vd2000.html) which is what Warners use to author there DVDs.
If anybody knows another package that can do this please let me know.

Cheers Paul
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Old 1st November 2002, 13:32   #3  |  Link
Doom9
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actually, there's a solution when you're reauthoring: http://www.doom9.org/mpg/Seamless_Branching.htm
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Old 1st November 2002, 15:17   #4  |  Link
Pauly
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As I said in my first post, following that guide almost works but when cell transitions jump over a VOB ID the join cannot be made seamless as the DVD drive head has to reposition to pickup the next ID leading to a small glitch in the movie.

e.g.
Title 1 plays VOB IDs 1,2,3,4,6,7.....
Title 2 plays VOB IDs 1,2,3,4,5,7.....
When Title 1 moves from 4 to 6 the transition is NSM (non seamless)
and when Title 2 moves from 5 to 7 the transition is NSM.

To enable a seamless transition VOB IDs 5 & 6 have to be interleaved (ILVU) so that the drive head does not need to be repositioned.

Thanks for the reply anyway.
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Old 12th October 2004, 09:08   #5  |  Link
Hooman
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I got almost the same problem with the reauthored matrix in my standalone player and the pauses between jumps are aproximately about one second long each but not noticeable at all in DVD-ROM drives I tested(I wonder why? are DVD-ROMs faster than standalone players?!)
Could someone please explain what interleaved VOB IDs mean and is that possible to reproduce them while reauthoring? I have not used Maestro so far, can it do seamless branching in the proper way?

PGC_1 (program chain)[Title(TTN: 1)] [02:16:11.25/30 fps] (programs:38) (Cells: 106) (uses VOB-IDs: 4,7,4,8,4,9,4,10,4,11,4,12,4,13,4,14,4,15,4)
.
.
.
PGC_6 (program chain)[Title(TTN: 6)] [02:16:13.06/30 fps] (programs:38) (Cells: 106) (uses VOB-IDs: 4)

Last edited by Hooman; 12th October 2004 at 13:03.
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Old 12th October 2004, 14:35   #6  |  Link
hendrix
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Quote:
Originally posted by Pauly
As I said in my first post, following that guide almost works but when cell transitions jump over a VOB ID the join cannot be made seamless as the DVD drive head has to reposition to pickup the next ID leading to a small glitch in the movie.

e.g.
Title 1 plays VOB IDs 1,2,3,4,6,7.....
Title 2 plays VOB IDs 1,2,3,4,5,7.....
When Title 1 moves from 4 to 6 the transition is NSM (non seamless)
and when Title 2 moves from 5 to 7 the transition is NSM.

To enable a seamless transition VOB IDs 5 & 6 have to be interleaved (ILVU) so that the drive head does not need to be repositioned.

Thanks for the reply anyway.
i've had same problems before...make sure that the audio and video are the exactly same in length to enable seamless branching...sometimes the video is a few frames longer than the audio...just tweek it a little and you can change NSM to SM
and scenarist works well with seamless branching
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Old 12th October 2004, 22:05   #7  |  Link
dgoodbourn
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Quote:
Originally posted by hendrix
and scenarist works well with seamless branching
Mmm, I wan't aware that Scenarist could cope with seamless branching. Would you care to enlighten us please on how you managed to get Scenarist to create a seamless branching disc Or are you refering to authoring a project in Scenarist, then altering it in, say, TFDVDEdit.
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Old 13th October 2004, 01:03   #8  |  Link
hendrix
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Quote:
Originally posted by dgoodbourn
Mmm, I wan't aware that Scenarist could cope with seamless branching. Would you care to enlighten us please on how you managed to get Scenarist to create a seamless branching disc Or are you refering to authoring a project in Scenarist, then altering it in, say, TFDVDEdit.
I've heard of TFDVDEdit but I'm a PC person...all i do is make sure that the audio/video are the exact in lenght per VOBID and put them together in the Scenario Editor - make sure that the Seamless flag is set to NS and it works for me...i've done it on a couple of DVDs i made - i shot a Customer Relations video for the local hospital. In the NLE i spit the video up per chapter and imported them one by one into scenarist - i added extra scenes to make a so-called directors cut and made two title sets and arranged them accordingly and it worked well. if the video is a few frames longer then you wont be able to set the flag to seamless. If i had a Mac i would definitely check out TFDVDEdit
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Old 16th October 2004, 21:19   #9  |  Link
mpucoder
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Looks like a lot of confusion about seamless branching and multi-angle.
When there are 2 or more possible paths, all of equal time, as is the case being discussed, the material is interleaved. This is multi-angle, not seamless branching, and Scenarist can do this. Both Vob 5 and 6 need to be encoded for interleaving, meaning closed GOP, identical GOP structure, and similar bitrates, same exact number of frames.

Seamless branching is the optional inclusion/exclusion of material. The different PGCs will have different running times. It is very tricky to do, with various restrictions on the amount of material that can be jumped over based on bitrate (basically 30 seconds is the max without getting into really clever "puddle jumping").
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Old 17th October 2004, 03:19   #10  |  Link
cona812
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Quote:
Seamless branching is the optional inclusion/exclusion of material. The different PGCs will have different running times. It is very tricky to do, with various restrictions on the amount of material that can be jumped over based on bitrate (basically 30 seconds is the max without getting into really clever "puddle jumping").
...and Scenarist definitely can't do it .

Cona
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Old 3rd April 2005, 01:37   #11  |  Link
Talayero
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I'd like to tell my experience with the backup of one of my dvds that has a theatrical and an extended version.
I'm more or less satisfied with the result but I still have some doubts.
One thing is clear, as you said, Scenarist can't cope with seamless branching,

Well, the film I've backuped using Scenarist is the Otto Preminger's classic "Laura".
Both, the theatrical and the extended version have 21 chapters, but a different cell in chapter 6.
I dragged the theatrical version twice into the Scenario Editor and replace in one of the pgcs that cell of chapter 6 with the cell from the extended version. The transition are not seamless, but once compiled I used ifoedit to change the cell type in order to create a seamless playback. That doesn't work in one of my standalone players (a Samsung) that still makes one pause of a second in the transition, as if it were a layer break, but curiosly in other player (a Kiss) goes smoothly, without pause, the same as in the original dvd.

So that means that if you change the cell type with ifoedit there are some players that can play seamless. I know that doesn't sound very "professional" because it depends on the player, but for me is an advance. Maybe someone can comment something about it.

Anyway I'm confused about this:

mpucoder said: "When there are 2 or more possible paths, all of equal time, as is the case being discussed, the material is interleaved. This is multi-angle, not seamless branching, and Scenarist can do this."

Well, I understand that, but if I open this original dvd with ifoedit and look at the two cells that are different I see that in the theatrical version cell 8, that is marked as IlVu, has a time of 00:00:35.05 and the cell 8 in extended version marked also as IlVu has a time of 00:01:37.29. So both are interleaved (if Ilvu means that) but have no equal time.

Which method did they use to make that dvd? Or is it that if they made a seamless branching (with TFDVDEdit or whatever) the cells that are replaced appear also with that IlVu mark. May be not all the Ilvu cells have to have the same duration. I don't know.

Thanks in advance.
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Old 3rd April 2005, 09:46   #12  |  Link
mpucoder
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When I wrote that I did not mean to imply that seamless multi-story is not interleaved - it is. There are three types of interleave:
1) seamless multi-angle in which all paths (angles) have the same time, structure, audio, and subs
2) non-seamless multi-angle in which all paths have the same time, but do not need to have the same structure (a requirement to switch angles seamlessly) , audio, or subs
3) seamless multi-story. The paths are of different lengths, and everything is independant. You cannot switch paths during play, as the path is in the PGC. Within each multi-story path there can be multi-angles, either seamless or non-seamless.

Changing the cell type can work if the player can make the jump before its buffer runs out. All players are required to make certain minimum jumps, and this is the trick to seamless branching (multi-story) - to keep the jumps over the other paths within the distances all players should handle.
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Old 3rd April 2005, 12:30   #13  |  Link
Talayero
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Thanks a lot.

If I understood well, the film I backuped has a seamless multi-story type of interleave.
I would only like to know one more question :

is there other way to recreate the film with Scenarist different as the one I used it?

I mean, both versions have 29 cells and only cell 8 is different. What I did is quite simple. I dragged twice the shorter version and replace the shorter cell 8 with the larger cell 8 of extended version. I did that in the scenario editor. I didn't touch the track editor nor create new angles nor anything more.
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Old 3rd April 2005, 17:16   #14  |  Link
mpucoder
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Although I use Scenarist I'm far from a guru with it. But from what I understand you have gotten as close to the original as possible with Scenarist. There is probably a way to avoid the tweak with IfoEdit, and I think the entire process was discussed in a thread in this forum some time in the past.
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Old 4th April 2005, 01:52   #15  |  Link
Trahald
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@talayero
thats usually the best way to go.. or drag the longer one twice of you want that version to play seamlessly. the other version (pgc) will have a noticeble pause but its the best scenarist can do.
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