Problems with menus, once more.

[Areku]

Hi!

OK, I'd like to know the specs of a subpicture (image with buttons) file so I can import it from PHOTOSHOP onto Maestro and it does not mess up colors and shapes...

How many pixels width x height? How many colors? Which format to import best? PSD? What about transparent layers, if any? Needed?

Also, on "connections", what should I link to for the Chapter-End Action and Chapter-Menu Key attributes of each movie??

Last, but not least, do I need to recompile THE WHOLE PROJECT (ie including movies!) to just adjust changes on a menu??




MANY MANY Thanks!!!!

[Vizio]

1. For the last question, YES you do need to recompile the whole project, as far as I know."Been there and waiting". Thats why you test the menu and check the connections before you compile.

2. The Menu with subpic in Photoshop is easy. First create a background as a background layer then you add a layer and create the subpicture. The subpic layer can only hold 4 different colours that can be replaced by Maestro. You canot have any transparent in any layer. You canot have the alpha channel inkluded in the .psd file.
So only two layers one BG and one Subpic.
i´m not sure abut the colourdepht on the subpic but its 4 bit or 8 bit
the pixel size depends on the TV system if its PAL 4:3 then in Photoshop create the BG and subpic with pixels 768x576 and when done resize the image to 720x576, and do not keep the aspect ratio. On NTSC I´m not sure of the exact height. And if you want to and have the skills you can do 3D animations to have really cool buttonclicks with movies going from one button to another menu, itys just your imagination that puts the limit.

3.On the connection part what are you going to do with the movies. If movie1 is going to movie2 then the connection should link on movie1 to chapter1 on movie2 the chapter menu button can link to any thing you want but most often to the chapter menu end up on that chapter part on a chapter menu.

I hope this will help you some on the way to create the perfect DVD title.

Best Vizio

[MickeyNBK]

I make my bacgrounds and sub pics jpegs quality 12. I tried a PSD and the colors came in all F'dup.

[auenf]

use BMP, much more reliable, 720x576 for PAL, 720x480 for NTSC, only use pure Black (#000000), white (#FFFFFF), blue (#0000FF) and red (#FF0000).

using jpg doesnt make it any smaller on the final disc, it is encoded to mpeg-2 when you compile.

Enf...

[Nogami]

Photoshop works great for making menu buttons in Maestro:

You need to understand how photoshop layering works. You need the BACKGROUND layer and ONE foreground layer. Here's how you do it:

Make a 720x480 graphic

Your BACKGROUND layer needs to have all of your main menu design, nice graphics, etc.

You need to create ONE layer on top of the background. It contains ONLY your buttons as pure RED/GREEN/BLUE, non-antialiased overlays. Everything else should be photoshop transparent (the little checkerboard pattern). You can have text or shapes or whatever, but they are all solid colors surrounded by the photoshop transparent pattern.

So for example, if you are putting rectangles around your video when you select it through the menu, all you would have on this layer is a pure green rectangle (0,255,0). Everything else would be transparent.

This works great and means you don't need to have 2 seperate files for each menu. Give it a try.

[mikeathome]

Hi,

you can start by stealing (that's what it is obviously) a backround+sub from a comercial DVD.

Go rip the VTS_xx_0.VOB of the desired DVD onto your Harddisk (can be upto 1GIG (with multiple languages and cool transitions in it; T2 !!!).
Fire up Vobrator and have ehm demux the VOB to another folder (for speed, use a folder on another HD).
Fire up SupRib and grab the SubPics from the VOB. Set to same size same colors.

Further procedure depends on materials you want to use:
- MPEG-2 Video stream as background (looping animated menues) -> use the .m2v from Vobrators demux together with the audio track
- still frame background -> either use MPEG2VCR to export a .bmp from the desired .m2v or do a DVD2AVI project, import that to e.g. AviUtil and export a still frame in .bmp format, or import the m2v into Maestro, create a chapter point on the timeline and export a .bmp from this chapter point, plenty of possibilities.

Be aware of the fact, that Vobrator only exports .pcm w/o WAV header (in case the audio track is in that uncompressed format). In this case you either have to use a Audio Editing program to add a wav header to the audio or use the Vstrip/DVD2AVI combination (VStrip to strip out the parts in the Menu VOB by Vob ID and DVD2AVI to demux the Audio from this (DVD2AVI will add a WAV header)). Maestro does NOT accept .pcm, only WAV,AC3,DTS,MPEG-1/L2 (MP2).

For looping animated menues you can perfectly synch A/V in Maestros timeline. I posted the procedure in another post.

mike

[Areku]

Thanks for all your replies guys, I'll test them all, but now just another question came to my mind...

Why sticking to just 3 or 4 colors on the subpic layer?

As mike@home said, I can use a screen capture of the original DVD menu, putting them as BACKGROUND and in Maestro defining areas of subpicture layer surrounding the options I actually want to enable, right???

Or am I forced to import any graphic, even if empty, as subpic layer in Maestro??

As for the connections, I was curious on what do each field mean, just because every project is different, and sometimes movie1 will link to movie2, sometimes movie1 will get back to main menu and sometimes movie2 will get back to submovie 2 menu...

SO, can any1 define in ez words what the attributes "MenuKey" and "EndAction" mean in Maestro?

For now, since I can't preview video correcly, I'll stick onto projects with no chapters.

Thanks!

[auenf]

the subpic HAS to be 4 colours, black, white, red and blue, you can assign those colours to any rgb value in maestro later, as well as a transparency value, but this is a restriction of the dvd spec.

also remember not to use any anti aliasing in the subpic either.

either create a 2 layer psd file, or two separate psd or bmp files, that is ideal.

Enf...

[mikeathome]

Hi,

MenuKey: Where to jump when u press the Menukey

EndAction: what to do / where to jump when play of that chapter finished (don't link all chapters, which are in sequence on the timeline together, 1'st not necessary, 2'nd most likely Error Message 'Too Many Connections'). Link only those which are out of sequential play order.

The TitleMenu Entry (the second in the table) is the main menu (what you want to play when the TitleMenu key is pressed on the remote.

Stay with the Basic Connections dialog, means do not use Next/Previous linkage. In titles authored like that, the Skip Next / Skip Previous button won't work anymore.

mike

[Areku]

OK

I played around with importing backgrounds and subpicures...

Tried JPG, BMP and PSD, and background displays fine, but subpicture does not get the correct colors, even if I use the "basic" ones (Red & white).

Any other ideas?

I still have no preview features (audio works fine but video can't be displayed for some weird reason!) :(

[Jestorius]

Make your bgr in Photoshop. Save it as a BMP. Add a layer to your bgr image. Make all the buttons ( only black color, no antialiasing). On the same layer select the transparent area of the buttons layer -> Fill -> White.

Choose Merge layers. Save it as a BMP. Import all the assets into Maestro -> Click Menu -> First drag over the BGR image and the Subpicture (black and white) over the bgr.

The white color is transparent and all the buttons has the defined color.

[Areku]

What I made is to create a really nice background and the buttons on the background layer as well, so I can use antialiasing...

Then import it in Maestro as background and then NO subpicture layer imported at all, but defining the buttons as expected.

Everything seems to work fine on Maestro and on PowerDVD...


Now I wonder WHY is the subpic layer needed at all?

[Jestorius]

Your background is designed with buttons as well. The "button" subpicture is just to select a part of the button to change color.

If you just make a menu without subpicture and draw the buttons, the changing area is allways a rectangel. With subpictures you can defin any shape you like.

[Jestorius]

I just started a group on Yahoo today. As I get time to make same tutorials or materials to share it gonna be uploaded to the group.

Just to demonstrat how the Menu with Subpicture works I made a simple menu :

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dvdmaestro/files/Menus/menu1.rar

Import it into Maestro and play with the colors. It's only pictures not tutorial. I guess after 5 min. you gonna find out how to make the buttons.

[Jestorius]

If you are using only a background picture in the menu-editor you make your buttons by drawing a quadrangular shape around a part of your bgr. Maestro makes a dummy subpicture to your selection. You can assign Subpicture, Button-selection and Action color to your buttons.

You can see that the color is changing in the VideoMonitor window if you simulate the navigation.

Becouse you didn't defin a Subpicture to your menu and the dummy subpicture has the same shape as your quadrangular selection the color-changing area is always the same as the button you draw.

If you use the "any shape subpicture" and draw a selection area (button) around the subpicture and make the color for it 100% transparent, than the only place where the color-changing is reflected is the shape of your Subpicture.

Just play with the colorsettings and you gonna learn more.

[cana-10]

BEAUTIFUL !

I understood !!!

thanks Jestorius !
it's ok for it !

to view it on my dvdhome player,
I try to burn minidvd on a cdrw (with nero, and with Maestro) but my dvdhome player say : "bad disc"... what happens ?

Usually, minidvd runs good in this dvdhome player (burn with dvdit)
(I verify spec. bitrate from video is ok and it's ok...)

any idea ?

thanks

Cana-10
:O)

[Jestorius]

I don't use Nero, I have VOB.
I just burn the discimage to the CD-R/RW with VOB UDF Video DVD wizard. It works all the time. My Philips standalone doesn't have cDVD support so it is only playeable with RelMagic Hollywood Plus to the video monitor.

[mikeathome]

Hi,

create ur Video_TS / Audio_TS with Maestro.
Don't burn with Maestro, burns UDF only, wrong format.

Burn with VOB or better PrimoDVD (RecordNow). Use ISO/UDF Filesystem (bridge).
Nero works on cDVD/MiniDVD as well burn ISO/UDF bridge only !
Use strong standard settings. Ensure all folder in Capital Letters only. There's a setting for that somewhere, don't remember.

works,

mike

[cana-10]

thanks for your reply mikeathome,

for the moment i must working with a medion's cd-rw writer (4x, 4x,32x), so i just can create mini-dvd.

In Nero, if i burn an iso/udf cd, are you sure it will work ?
Do You remeber where you saw strong settings for burning ?

i'll try with primodvd 2.0, i find settings information on this link :
http://mpucoder.kewlhair.com/Derrow/primo.html

do you see anything to change ? or can i work with this settings ?

I don't understand the problem, because minidvd (on cdrw) writing by dvdit 2.5 plays without soucy in ma standalone...

thanks for help !

Bye

Cana-10
:O)

[mikeathome]

Originally posted by cana-10
thanks for your reply mikeathome,

for the moment i must working with a medion's cd-rw writer (4x, 4x,32x), so i just can create mini-dvd.

In Nero, if i burn an iso/udf cd, are you sure it will work ?
Do You remeber where you saw strong settings for burning ?

I am pretty sure, I did that way.
This are the Advanced Recording settings. Like 'Mode 1', '8.3 File Name', No More than 31 ... bla bla bla (don't know exactly). Somewhere you need to find Enforce Capital Letters for Folders. This is in the Preferences. I don't have it in front of me so I can only guess. I am sure you'll find it in Nero 5.x.x.x.

i'll try with primodvd 2.0, i find settings information on this link :
http://mpucoder.kewlhair.com/Derrow/primo.html
do you see anything to change ? or can i work with this settings ?

Don't change anything when you select DATA JOB with a DVD-R. Don't touch ! It just works from the very first run.
For miniDVD ISO/UDF ist the right choice.

I don't understand the problem, because minidvd (on cdrw) writing by dvdit 2.5 plays without soucy in ma standalone...

It's the filesystem first, than the Capital Letter of the folders VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS as well as the existance of AUDIO_TS. And a certain order of the files in the folder VIDEO_TS.

Thta need to match, otherwise the miniDVD/DVD is not recognised as valid DVD-VIDEO.

mike

[cana-10]

burning works with primodvd,

it was a problem of Mode : I must click on Mode1 to have a good minidvd working on my standalone !

Thanks !!!

Cana-10
:O)