scenarist: end time of select

[iJump]

I am interested in limiting when a remote button can be pressed.

I assume that this can be done in scenarist in the highlight menu using "End Time of Select," "Start Time to Video" and the highlight's duration. However, I have not been successful. I can change the duration successfully. But when I change the "Start Time to Video" in the highlight menu, scenarist crashes. Also, when I change "End Time of Select," there seems to be no effect.

The cell that I am working with is very short: 12 frames ntsc. What I optimally want to happen is that ten or eleven frames play with the remote buttons being unresponsive. Then when I stop on the last frame (cell still time = 255), I would like the user to be able to input.

I think I will try some reauthoring tools to see if my thinking is clear on the matter, but I really want to find an authoring solution. Maybe muxman would solve these problems.

Thanks

[iJump]

I figured out some of the problems. I guess scenarist likes the subpicture and the highlight to be aligned. I don't think this is a necessity for the dvd spec, but I'm not sure.

So I concentrated on adjusting the subpicture and then aligned the highlight to the subpicture.

You can make the subpicture 1 frame in length by dragging it in the track window past the video's length of duration. This is also the way I found to adjust "Start Time to Video" for both subpicture and highlight without scenarist crashing. A backwards way of working. It takes some trial and error hand coordination.

Since I'm less concerned here with the subpicture image, I don't mind it popping up at the end when it is time to select. I'm still interested in figuring out how highlight and subpicture can be manipulated indepently.

[DaRat]

You can try selecting the highlight layer (with buttons and stuff done), cut it, paste the script into a text-editor (notepad will do), edit the highlight start there, then paste the edited script back on the highlight layer.

[mpucoder]

Every highlight must coincide with a subpicture. If you want the entire menu to appear but be inoperable for a period of time you must duplicate it, adding the highlight layer to only the second.

[Cheesus]

I'm using Scenarist 3.01 and it is possible to do what you want without it crashing. This is how you can do it, I think it is how you were doing it, but I'll go through it anyway.


Click on the orange highlight level and open the properties window. Change start video time from 00:00:00:00 to 00:00:00:11. That should make the subpicture appear on the last frame. The still and subpicture layers stay the same.


However be aware that this small length of time for your cell is too short for some DVD players to handle and they may sit down to the generic DVD title screen, although this may not apply to what you are doing, I'm not sure. I started a thread here about it that's a couple of days old called 'what's a safe menu transition length'. What you are doing is fairly similar, so it maybe a problem. I'm still trying to work out what is a fail safe cell menu length but anything over two seconds should be fine. I'll update when I've checked some more cell lengths.