Force Pan/Scan in Scenarist

[crusty1]

Does anyone know how to force PAN/SCAN on a still menu i.e. if a standalone player is set 4:3LB it will be ignored and force PS.

Thanks

[Cheesus]

In Scenarist change default settings (top toolbar settings-default setting) to 4:3 Pan Scan in the Still tab by selecting the Aspect Ratio pulldown. Do this before you import in your subpictures.
Then create your menu as per normal and assign your Pan/Scan subpicture by pressing in the P button. There is no letterbox subpicture assigned so the DVD defaults to the Pan/Scan view.

[crusty1]

Thx Cheesus,

I did as you instructed and nothing appeared to happen other than still getting Wide and Letter. If you could just clarify for me does the project need to be set up as 16:9 or does it need to be 4:3 pan Scan and if so will the video still play correctly if in PS mode i.e. Letterbox on 4:3 tv and wide on a widescreen. Is there any special way I need to create my subpics for ps.

Thanks.

[Cheesus]

You need to make two sets of subpictures, one a 16:9 anamorphic version, one a 4:3 pan/scan version. I think there is a guide to doing this somewhere but I'll explain it quickly, it's a little tricky.

I create my menu in photoshop as 1024 x 576. This is a square pixel size for an anamorphic image, so it displays the image correctly on your monitor. This is how your image should look on a widescreen TV. If you have round shapes or complex shapes for your subpictures, create them here so they look correct. If you're using simple lines or boxes for subpictures don't bother doing them yet. When you're happy resize, your image size to 720 x 576.
Your picture is now anamorphic and should look squashed, people will look tall and skinny. You will have noticed that that your subpictures edges have become see through. This is called aliasing. Authoring systems need colours to be exact so they can key onto the image, and aliased edges are not the same colour and therefore will not be used. At this stage I redraw complex subpictures with the pencil tool so I have square pixels, usually pure red to keep things simple. If you are using more than one colour use say pure blue or black. It's not essential though, you can use the eye dropper tool in Scenarist to pick a colour. The essential point is you have antialiased edges, whole correct colour pixels.
Save your anamorphic background. Save your anamorphic subpictures seperately on a white background.
To create your pan/scan subpicture resize your canvas to 540 x 576. This is the area that the DVD player scans of the anamorphic image to give you a pan/scan view on a 4:3 TV. Resize your image to 720 x 576. The image should now look like a centre cut of the original wide image. Create your pan/scan subs and save.

Delete any menu files that you already have in Scenarist and then change the default settings to pan/scan. Now bring in the background, drag the anamorphic sub onto it in the track editor and then drag the pan/scan image on. Set the anamorphic image to W (press button in) and pan/scan to P.

The user of the DVD player has to set the aspect ratio. Presumably if they are watching on a widescreen it will be set to anamorphic and everything will look correct. If they are using a 4:3 TV the DVD aspect ratio can be set to either pan/scan or letterbox and the player will output pan/scan because that is all that has been authored on the disc.

[crusty1]

Thx Cheesus,

It worked an absolute treat.....
:thanks:

[Cheesus]

Glad to help.

[DaRat]

$.02: keep the antialiased subpicture, convert it to indexed color image (4 color), set the colors to white/black/red/blue (or whatever you use when importing), and voila, you have a antialiased subpicture, looks much better and no flicker from the highlight too. Also from 1024x576 resize to 960x576, then for ws resize once more to 720x576, for p&s crop the image to 720x576, creates much less distortion in the p&s subpicture.


Also if you already have a letterbox menu then delete the track from scenario and track editor, then you can change the encoding type of the stills in the data editor (double click asset).