Need help with aspect ratios and 'Button Groups'

[Dr.Khron]

Ok, so I've taken on an insanely complicated project... its been fun up until this point, but I just realized that I was only editing ONE set of menus. Grrrr.

Background: a special two disk edition. The main disk is a DL with both widescreen and P&S formats, as well as directors comments and a French audio track (its pretty full for a DL). The bonus disk is only 1.6 GB, so I decided to try and combine the disks.

The key here is that I decided to strip out the P&S version. Once I removed the P&S version of the main movie, and the French Language, the two disks will fit on one SL disk with minimal compression. The plan was to remove the root menu from disk 2, and stitch together the three different Special Feature (SF) menus with navigation buttons, so that you don't have to "change disks" to see the SFs on Disk 2.


Here is my basic work flow:

1. Rip both disks to HD with DVD Decrapter
2. Blank out warnings and other annoyances with Vob Blanker
3. Strip out P&S version of main movie with Vob Blanker
4. Strip out French Language content with Vob Blanker
5. Edit "Play Movie" button to go straight to the main movie WS PGC, and blank out the Aspect Ratio selction menus.
6. Import Title Sets from Disk 2 into Disk 1 with PGC Edit
7. Import Menu Sets from Disk 2 into Disk 1 with PGC Edit

8. Dump the "Special Feature" menu stills as BMPs with Vob Blanker, and then edit them to add naviatgation buttons, and to remove buttons I need to hide. Insert the new menu still BMPs with Vob Blanker. (I did this FIRST so that I would have a visual guide for editing the actual buttons)
9. Edit the buttons in PGC Edit, hiding unused ones and adding new navigation buttons
10. Change where buttons for the disk 2 material point; replace Disk 2's VMGMs with new dummy VMGMs in disk one.
11. Adjust how the GPRM's are set so that you get returned to the right place in the new SF menus after completing one of the SF programs.

12. Fix the menu highlights: Extract the cells for modified SF menus, rip out the subs as BMP, edit the submask BMP, remux with Muxman, and add the cells back in per following guide(s):
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=99306
13. Shrink DVD down to SL with DVD Shrink.
14. Build and burn with ImgBurn.


I got as far as step 11, when I decided to burn a test DVD to see how it would perform in my standalone player, and this is where I ran into a problem.

Basically, all the menu editing I had done was on the 16:9 menus, not the 4:3 menus. I didn't even realize that they were different menus. The DVD ran perfect in my software player, becuase its set up for WS only. My standalone player is plugged into a 4:3 TV, so it showed me the 4:3 menus, which were TOTALLY broken.

I didn't really understand the button "groups" when I did the button editing. For some reason, it won't let you adjust two of the sliders (X position and Width) when you have the "Group: All" radio button selected. Since I needed to edit those sliders to place my buttons, I switched to "Group 1", the widescreen menus to do my editing. I erroneously assumed that since there was only a 16:9 main movie, that it would only use 16:9 menus. And since it worked great on my PC, I thought I had gotten it right.

First question: How the hell are there two sets one menus, and how do switch between them? I know how to edit different cells within the same menu PGC, but I can't find two sets of menus for one cell anywhere in PGC Edit.

2nd question: why can't you edit both menus at once?

3rd question: how do I fix my problem? I see three possible options:
-go back and redit every single menu so that the two versions of the menus are the same. This would be a huge amount of work.
-Some how strip out all of the 4:3 menus. I don't know if this possible.
-Force the DVD player to use the 16:9 menus with some sort of command or register adjustment. I don't know if this is possible, either.

Any input greatly appreciated.

[Dr.Khron]

Ok, so I figured out how to flip back and forth between the menu groups while editing buttons...

But I still don't understand how a player knows which group to pick.

[Zeul]

ok
What you need to understand is how a menu works. There are 3 layers:
The 'Background' a video or still
The subtitle layer
The highlight layer.

The background doesn't change - it is usually 16:9 aspect ratio with P&S data embedded (so the dvdplayer/tv can either display the video as 16:9 or panned)

The subtitle layer will comprise of 2 subpictures. One created for 16:9 , and the other created for P&S. (occasionaly there will be a 3rd subpicture for letterboxing)

The highlight layer will comprise of upto 36 buttons (if the background is 4:3), 18 buttons (if 16:9 and P&S) or 12 buttons (if 16:9 , P&S AND Letterbox)

In your case i suspect you have the normal 16:9 with PS info, so you will have 2 subpictures. As the correct subpicture is chosen (based on the current display mode setting of the dvd player), the corresponding button group is chosen.

So when creating a menu, you need to create the buttons for each display mode, so that they align with the correct subpicture being displayed.

If the dvdplayer is set to 16:9 PS then the subpicture chosen to be displayed will be determined from the setting in the PGC (you can view this with either ifoedit or pgcedit). The dvdplayer then picks the button group from the NAV pk in the VOB file which has the coordinates.

TBH this is best demonstrated with an authoring application that can switch between display modes, so that you can see the alignment of the subs and create the button accordingly. Also try loading the vob file into DVDsubedit. This will show all the subs and the various display modes.

So really you should correct each menu, so that they display correctly on your 4:3 TV, and also when in the future you're TV is upgraded, the 16:9 menu will work.

You *could* also change the display mode in pgcedit/ifoedit for the menu. Change in to 16:9 NO pan-scan. The dvdplayer should then use the 16:9 setting instead, BUT it will probably look horrible on a 4:3 TV.

[r0lZ]

First, you have to understand that there is a difference between "set" and "group". Usually, a menu has only one set of buttons per cell, but in some rare cases, some parameters of the menu are "animated" during the cell playback. In that case, there are several sets of menus. I don't think it's the case in your project. PgcEdit doesn't support multiple sets of buttons, but don't be afraid: if several sets are detected, a warning will be issued when you try to edit the menu buttons.

A menu authored in 4:3 has only one group of buttons. In 16:9, there is a different group for all possible display modes. One for the regular 16:9 (as shown on a 16:9 TV), one for 4:3 in letterbox mode, and one for 4:3 in pan&scan mode. Since there is often only one 4:3 mode allowed (via domain streams attributes), the menu is often authored with 2 groups: one for 16:9, and one for whatever mode is permitted in 4:3. But there must be at least 2 groups in a 16:9 menu, or your DVD will not be playable in the missing display mode(s).
When there are several groups, there are also several subpic streams (defined in the PGC.) You will have to demux, edit and remux them all.

In the Pgc Editor, the default is to edit all groups at once. But some of the parameters MUST be different in each group, as the way they are mapped over the background depends of those parameters. Since it is not possible to change the value for all groups in the same operation, you have to switch to each group in turn, and edit those parameters only, then return to the "All" mode to edit the parameters shared by all groups.

The player (and PgcEdit) knows which group to use because it knows what is the current display mode, and each group is assigned to a specific mode. (Unfortunately, there is no rule for that. Group 1 might be used for 16:9 in some DVDs, and for 4:3 in others.)

[EDIT:] Zeul was faster than me!

BTW, Zeul, I'm sure wou mean DVDSubEdit, not PGCsubedit!

[Zeul]

BTW, Zeul, I'm sure wou mean DVDSubEdit, not PGCsubedit!

:stupid:

[Dr.Khron]

Thanks for your explanations guys, that helped alot. I went back and fixed all the menus. Once I got a hang of the that part of PGC Edit, it went pretty fast.

The mighty project is completed! The end result is amazing, but DAMN that was a lot of work. I learned alot tho, which was the point.

I ran into one problem while muxing... I was using MS Paint .Net to edit the sub maps, becuase the layers makes lining up the buttons easy. However, it was making huge BMP files, which was screwing up the process. Paint .Net is pretty cool, but it wont let you save BMPs in the smaller format.

[Zeul]

The BMP size is not the problem - it is probably that the BMP is being saved as 24bit (or even 32bit). Some authoring apps have no problem with this, others do. if you can change the settings to 4bit (16 colors). Sublayers can use only 4 colors anyway.

[Dr.Khron]

uh, thats what I meant by "Big" and "Small", 24bit and 4 bit. Becuase I needed to use a program with layers, my workaround was to do the editing in Paint.Net, and then copy and paste the final picture into MS Paint. Yes folks, Paint.Net won't let you save a file in 4-bit BMP, but good old Paint will.

Anyone have any recomendations for a good, free, picture editing program? Is there an offical Doom9 program?

[Hubbabub]

PhotoFiltre
http://www.photofiltre.com/

PhotoFiltre can do it.

In the "Image" menu you choose "Mode" and then "Indexed color..."

[Pudah]

You can increase/decrease color depth with the free image viewer IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/).

I have not used it myself, but I believe that the free image editing program GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) can save 4 bit BMPs.

[r0lZ]

I agree. GIMP is a very nice image editor for Linux, but available also for Windows. Try it!
IrfanView is more limited as it is essentially a viewer, but it can convert to almost any format, usually with very good quality.

[Hubbabub]

Another good image viewer/converter is
XnView
http://www.xnview.com/
XnView works in Windows, Linux and Mac boxes :)
XnView can also open/convert more file formats then IrfanView

[r0lZ]

IrfanView is especially good when converting to PNG.
I don't know XnView, but it looks fine. I'll try it. Thanks for the info.

[Hubbabub]

Yes, IrfanView has a very good PNG saving plugin (PNGout).

You can get the commandline version of PNGout here
http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm

[blutach]

I use Xnview and it's darn good.

Regards

[r0lZ]

I agree. It is really better than the commercial ACDSee. I like especially the good quality of the resize.
Once again, free software is better than payware! :)