Can you override a remote control button?

[Haris]

Do DVD specifications allow an author to override a remote control button (eg Enter or Resume) to do something other than what it is set to do by default?

Thanks

Haris

[Video Dude]

Yes. It is called Prohibited User Options or PUO.

[Haris]

Thanks for the reply Video Dude!

I'm aware of PUOs (aka UOPs) however I was under the impression that you can only 'disable' the remote control button with this feature...

What I want to do is use a remote control button (like; Enter/Select) to issue a jump command to another video track in another Title Folder.

Is this possible with PUOs?

Thanks

Haris

[mpucoder]

You can make "enter" execute a command by using invisible BOV. In other words, "enter" will push an unseen button. Other than that, the buttons do what they do. "Return" can be programmed to go to another PGC (the GoUp link).

[Haris]

mpucoder...you're a star!

thanks for those solutions!

[Video Dude]

Sorry that I misunderstood what you wanted to do. I had thought you wanted to disable the remote key.

[Haris]

No need to appologise. I appreciated the post :)

[Haris]

I think I've hit a snag.... I have subtitle tracks in my project...

I'm reading up on creating BOVs and I'm getting the feeling that subtitles and BOV can't co-exist... I'm assuming this is because DVD playback can only display one subpicture track at once? (is this right?)

If so are there any workarounds (I don't want a button graphic to appear anyway so should I still be concerned about using a subpicture track if all I want to do capture a button press event?)

[dgoodbourn]

To capture a button press event as you put it, you need a subtitle stream to always be active. Even when you turn off the subs, you'll need to have a dummy stream of blank subtitles so that the button(s) will still work.

This is all very possible but... it does require some subtitles to always be on. Even when you have selected a subtitle stream, even if there is no talking there should be dummy subtitles in that stream. What software are you using to do this in?

D.

[Haris]

Thanks for the info dgoodbourn,

I'm working in Scenarist,

Reading through your post has made me draw the following conclusions;

1. In order to have subtitles and BOV co-exist I would have to include the Button as part of the existing subtitle bitmap
2. The button would become unavailable if the user turned off subtitles
3. A dummy Subpicture track would be used with ONLY the button bitmap data to mimick the status of 'Subtitles OFF'

Please let me know if any of the above are incorrect...

Thanks

Haris

[dgoodbourn]

1. In order to have subtitles and BOV co-exist I would have to include the Button as part of the existing subtitle bitmap - Yes, but if you're not having a visual button it doesn't matter for this project

2. The button would become unavailable if the user turned off subtitles - This is true for most players. You would probably want to inhibit subs surfing

3. A dummy Subpicture track would be used with ONLY the button bitmap data to mimick the status of 'Subtitles OFF' - true again. When the user turns them off via the menus, it would actually select the dummy stream, but visually looking off

You seem to have got the idea ok. The fun begins if you want a visual button with the subs on too!

D.

[Haris]

D,

It's becoming clearer by the minute thanks to great posts from people like yourself! :)

I'm feeling quite happy that I don't have to tackle a visual button with subs... don't like the idea of having any more 'fun' than I'm already experiencing with my current authoring antics... ;)

[Haris]

I'm having trouble implementing the above in Scenarist....

I'm trying to get a Button in together with the existing subtitles and I'm getting errors.

The story so far:
I've been able to create a BOV 'without' subtitles and I am able to issue a Jump command from it to go to Title_2.

No problems there...

Just to fill you in, I'm importing my subtitles with an SST file which is populating the subtitle track...

The only edit I made to the SST after reading through the previous posts was to change 'non_forced' to 'forced', actually here are the headings just for reference:

st_format 2
Subtitle Subtitles
Display_Start forced
TV_Type PAL
Tape_Type NON_DROP
Color (1 2 3 4)
Contrast (15 15 15 0)
E2 (0 0 255 ===)
E1 (255 0 0 ===)
PA (0 0 0 ===)
BG (255 255 255 ===)
Directory .

In the Scenarist simulation window I create a test button and notice that Scenarist populates the track window's highlight track at the beginning of the timeline for the length of the first subtitle....

Testing the DVD output I see the button at the beginning of the video as expected, it functions fine and as expected it disappears when the first subtitle disappears...

In an effort to make the button last longer I dragged the right edge of the highlight to a longer time however Scenarist throws the following error:
"Error No valid Subpicture exists for highlight "00:00:00;00" in Video Track "Test.video_1" Subpicture stream 1."

I then undid that and tried to add more button highlights to accompany the ensuing subtitles. In the Scenario Editor the 'Btns' tag on the PGC has turned grey and the information window is notifying me that "More than one menu exists"

What am I doing wrong? should I be using a separate subpicture track?

Any advice would be appreciated!

[Haris]

I've been trying to get this to work but have been hitting a brick wall...

1 question; is it possible to have BOV and subtitles on screen AT THE SAME TIME?

by subtitles I mean 'subtitles' not a subpicture track used for the sole purpose of BOV

[dgoodbourn]

Of course you can, but you have to combine the BOV 'graphic' with the subtitle 'graphic'. You could setup a batch in Photoshop to combine the two.

D.

[Haris]

D, check your PM pls...

What I don't understand is, how do I get the button highlight in the Highlight Track to continue beyond the first subtitle/subpic frame?...

[Haris]

Just been chatting to D on MSN, we went through the issues I described in the previous posts and it turned out that I was taking "More than one menu exists" in the information window to be an error when it wasn't...

I needed to open the PGC up to get access to the individual Button tags... seems I was so close but yet so far! :)

Anyway, just thought I'd share this info with everyone on here and say that dgoodbourn is a fantastic member of the forum and I owe him a beer! (Fosters!)

[jel]

fosters ?!?!??!??!?!
:eek:
:eek:
:eek:
c'mon mate, you cant be serious? he helped you out, and now you want to poison him? :p

anyway, good to see your on your way to finishing your first BoV project. congratulations.

one other thing i have noticed in regards to scenarist, is that it can be a bit of pain with a few things.

firstly, if you are using a subpic for BoV thats has a display stop AND starts within 12 frames (PAL) / 15 frames (NTSC) to a scene start time, quite often in the final output, the BoV subpic will not be correctly displayed.
one way around this is to set another scene at the time you wish the BoV to not be displayed, and set your supbic to no_stop, so it fills the entire 'space' between scene times (you can see this in the spidey guide i emailed).

the second thing is when you are trying to put multiple, short length, BoV's really close together, you will quite often receive HLI buffer under-runs when compiling. see this thread for more details:
Menu with animated subpicture: doable, but... (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=74857&highlight=button)

anyways, as i said, congrats!

rock on

j

[Haris]

Hey! Fosters was his choice! :) hehe!

I know full well that Scenarist is a pain, you can't help but develop a love/hate relationship with it... You can't live with it but you can't live without it.... hang on.. it's a woman!... :)

Your guide's helped out alot! I noticed the part about no stop

Thanks for all the pointers and links J! I'll be sure to take them on board if SHE starts playing up... ;)

Haris

[influenza]

Well BOV and scenarist is a love-hate relationship for sure :). Recently I've been doing my bov projects with muxman and I must say that that goes a lot smoother in most cases. :cool:

[Haris]

Cool! I'll check it out!

[Haris]

Well Influenza, you where right!

Scenarist is throwing errors at me to do with the HLI buffer... :(

I'm going to see if Muxman can help, when you said you've been doing your bov projects in Muxman did you export a scenarist script or start from scratch?

[influenza]

I've done some projects using scripts created by scenaid. Muxman should be able to import native scenarist scripts as well.

[jel]

hi haris,

as i mentioned earlier, HLI errors are usually a result of putting multiple minimum frame highlights close together.

by all means try importing your scenarist script into muxman and see if that fixes your problem, however if it doesnt, you may want to try a few things suggested in that thread i linked to earlier - in particular this advice by mpucoder:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=574807#post574807

another option is to increase the number of frames between consecutive highlights and to increase the duration of the highlights, although i have found in the past that this can often be a matter of trial and error with scenarist depending on the number of highlights.

anyways,

good luck

j

[Haris]

Thanks guys, will check out suggestions...

[Robotik]

can you override "subtitle" button?
or somehow do something upon a subtitle change event?