Scenarist SD - various hassle, is it me being stupid or what?

[neil wilkes]

2 major issues with Scenarist SD here, version 3.4.3
1 - It does not seem to be possible to Zoom in on the design window when drawing buttons.
2 - this is the worst one.
Copy/Paste in the design window is hopelessly screwed up.
Take a menu with a lot of buttons on it - a concert set list, for example in a 4:3 screen. Now, as I cannot Zoom in (see above) I tried to draw just the first button, then copy/paste the rest, making them all the same size & easier to do.
The buttons get registered on the menu, and in the details (under the scenario editor, I can clearly see "button 2, button 3" etc along with their locations as expected.
Howevcer, when trying to add links it throws a "button command not found" error, and it seems that none of the pasted buttons are registered in the button command list!!!!!

Am I being stupid here? What is Copy/Paste supoosed to be for when right-clicking on a button if not this? Also, when I right click & go "clear", it nags me with an "are you sure you want to delete button x" warning.

Aargh. Is there any other way exceot to draw every single button hotspot manually?

[kolak]

Precise button areas can be defined in Subpicture&Highlihgts tab and than choose Buttons from list. Take lots of time, but gives you precision up to 1 pixel.

[mp3dom]

The possibility to zoom-in in the design window was never implemented so you can only stay with 1:1 window at maximum.
Unfortunately Scenarist SD is a buggy software. Every new release fixes bugs but introduce a lot others new bugs. For example, the latest 3.4.3 version have (at least to me) serious problems on calculating the final size of the project (even after multiplexing!). For example it says to me that I have 100 MB room of space available but in reality I was 200 MB over the 8.5 GB. This problem is not present on version 3.3.2 which I think is the most stable release till now.

[neil wilkes]

The possibility to zoom-in in the design window was never implemented so you can only stay with 1:1 window at maximum.
Unfortunately Scenarist SD is a buggy software. Every new release fixes bugs but introduce a lot others new bugs. For example, the latest 3.4.3 version have (at least to me) serious problems on calculating the final size of the project (even after multiplexing!). For example it says to me that I have 100 MB room of space available but in reality I was 200 MB over the 8.5 GB. This problem is not present on version 3.3.2 which I think is the most stable release till now.

You're going to be surprised to hear that this post is actually really good news to me - I have also had this issue, and thought my math was faulty. I will file a bug with Sonic on this - might as well get my moneys worth from Sonic Support (it costs enough!).

Can you do me a huge favour, and let me know what other nasties have been introduced?
The main reason I updated was because I was having huge issues with letterboxed SPHL layers, with buttons not showing up, or not showing up in the right places. There is a great example of this particular bug on the second volume of the "Queen's Greatest Video Hits" where in a letterboxed playback mode it is frankly impossible to select anything from the main menu.
Does this issue appear in 3.3.2? And what would happen to my activation if I regressed a few builds?

Getting back on topic here though, this (zooming in on menus) has been filed with engineering as an urgent request - I have only recently gone over to Scenarist from DVD-Lab Pro 2 because of the appalling bugs in that application are even worse than Scenarist. I cannot use anything else, as an abstraction layer tool is out of the question because 90% of my Video_TS authoring is for DVD-Audio use, and there are some stringent spec limitations for the Video_TS that prohibit the use of any abstraction layer tools at all.

[neil wilkes]

Oh.
Almost forgot.
The second item has been reproduced by Sonic and filed as a bug. There is a workaround though.
After creating the buttons via copy/paste, clear the menu from the Scenario editor, and then bring it back in again & the buttons will be available in the command editor of the simulation/design window.

[kolak]

DVD-LAB allows for things way out of DVD spec- so be careful with it

Scenarist size/layers calculation is only estimation- it can be wrong even by 20%- don't rely on it. Try to make DDP file sand than Scenarist will show you if size/layers are fine or not- at this stage it's 100% accurate. It's very common when Scenarist shows that eg. L1 is 100MB to big, but when you press create DDP than size is fine :)
There are lots of things which could be improved in Scenarist GUI, but final DDP images are up to DVD spec and for most authoring places this is the most important thing.

[mp3dom]

The problems of the buttons on WS/LB menus were always present in almost all 3.x releases (don't know about 2.x because I've started to use it from 3.x). The bug comes in the way you drag/drop the subpicture image to the subpicture track. One workaround is to first create the empty subpicture tracks (assigning the WS/LB flag) and then drag/drop the subpicture onto it. The problem may appear if you drag/drop the image into a menu that actually doesn't contain the subpicture track. In that case Scenarist will create the subpicture track automatically but probably miss to assign correctly the WS/LB flag.

If you already have a track with that kind of problem, one way to fix it is to go to the Scenario Editor, select the PGC that contains the Menu (to show its properties) and then double click to Subpictures Attribute and Subpicture attribute #0. It will show you the subpicture mapping for WS and LB. Most probably you'll see only one stream mapped correctly. In that case manually assigns the right streams to fix the problem without the need to re-do all the buttons/routings on the menu editor.

I'm actually using 3.3.2 (after 3.4.3, but the problem on the final size is too much and I can't work with a wrong value here). No big problems so far.

Kolak: The final size is estimated when you are not multiplexing it. AFTER you multiplex all the tracks, the "total size" and "remaining size" are both accurate (the layer sizes are still inaccurate btw). On 3.4.3 the total size and remaining size are completely wrong even after the project is totally multiplexed (for example, compiled project with AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders is 8.65 GB and inside Scenarist 3.4.3 it says 8.4 GB while 3.3.2 correctly says 8.65 GB). It's simply impossible to work in that way.

[kolak]

Kolak: The final size is estimated when you are not multiplexing it. AFTER you multiplex all the tracks, the "total size" and "remaining size" are both accurate (the layer sizes are still inaccurate btw)


Not sure about total size- layers size are bad- still rough estimate (bit better than before muxing). Only when you create DDP than it shows 100% accurate size. I reported it to Sonic and they said- it's only estimation.

I have it almost every time as most my projects are 90-95% full DVD-9s. I trust my calculation and don't care at all when see red box in layers size :)

I've done special encode with Cinemacraft where some part of video had average bitrate of 5Mbit and rest 7Mbit. Scenarist freak out with all estimation- it was totally wrong. My friend, who was authoring it said 1s layers is 5.3 GB - I said, no- make DDPs and you will see :)

As far as I know Spruce is very accurate with this.

[neil wilkes]

DVD-LAB allows for things way out of DVD spec- so be careful with it



I did not know that - can you give me any examples?
The only times I will use this these days is when making a Video_TS for DVD-A where I have to have a slideshow with chapter points as you cannot do this with Scenarist - the only way to get assignable chapters is to use a very low bitrate MPEG-2 file, and sometimes it just has to be one image per song. Scenarist creates this using a separate VOBU for each still, and to get assignable Chapter points it needs to be in separate cells instead. As the DVDA specs say all contiguous content must be seamless it has not so far been possible to find a way around this.

[neil wilkes]

The problems of the buttons on WS/LB menus were always present in almost all 3.x releases (don't know about 2.x because I've started to use it from 3.x). The bug comes in the way you drag/drop the subpicture image to the subpicture track. One workaround is to first create the empty subpicture tracks (assigning the WS/LB flag) and then drag/drop the subpicture onto it. The problem may appear if you drag/drop the image into a menu that actually doesn't contain the subpicture track. In that case Scenarist will create the subpicture track automatically but probably miss to assign correctly the WS/LB flag.

If you already have a track with that kind of problem, one way to fix it is to go to the Scenario Editor, select the PGC that contains the Menu (to show its properties) and then double click to Subpictures Attribute and Subpicture attribute #0. It will show you the subpicture mapping for WS and LB. Most probably you'll see only one stream mapped correctly. In that case manually assigns the right streams to fix the problem without the need to re-do all the buttons/routings on the menu editor.

I'm actually using 3.3.2 (after 3.4.3, but the problem on the final size is too much and I can't work with a wrong value here). No big problems so far.



Interesting. Again, I did not know that trick.
The way I did the letterboxed SPHL was to create the menu track, then the 2 subpicture tracks, set one to WS and the other to LB and add the images - no good here. All images were created as separate images, not a PSD file, with the same naming convention used in DVDA (same images actually).

[kolak]

I did not know that - can you give me any examples?
The only times I will use this these days is when making a Video_TS for DVD-A where I have to have a slideshow with chapter points as you cannot do this with Scenarist - the only way to get assignable chapters is to use a very low bitrate MPEG-2 file, and sometimes it just has to be one image per song. Scenarist creates this using a separate VOBU for each still, and to get assignable Chapter points it needs to be in separate cells instead. As the DVDA specs say all contiguous content must be seamless it has not so far been possible to find a way around this.

As far as I remember it allows for many if comparisions (set/if), which are not allowed by DVD spec. Another thing- high abstraction layer creates code with limited control over it and you never know how your structure/scripts/commands will look like! That's why I also prefer Scenarist than Spruce. Eg. some players won't do more than half of allowed in spec pre/post commands and only Scenarist allows you to have control over it- with DVDPRO, DDLab you have no idea how many will be actually used.

Using Scenarist may be sometimes annoying, but at the end it produces most clean DVD structure and you have FULL control over it!

[neil wilkes]

Again, my thanks.
I am fully aware of the problems with Abstraction Layer tools - one of the reasons I used DVD Lab for so long is because of the ability to turn the AL off at compile time.
All I need to do is write all my own VM commands to make it all work - and we have dozens oftitles in the wild created like this.
It's the bugs in DLP that put me off, and finally convinced me to buy Scenarist SD - and I wish I had done it years ago.