Seamless branching in Scenarist

[Sequoyan]

Hello,

I've read other posts on similar subjects, in particular a discussion of branching in Maestro. But now I think it's time to discuss it in regard to Scenarist.

(If this has already been done please let me know, nothing relevant was found in a search for Scenarist and seamless branching)

If I want two versions of a movie on a DVD (released version and a re-cut) and want to allow the viewer to select which to watch from a menu, would the following work?? :

1) Encode the re-cut version as mpeg import it into Scenarist.
2) Create "chapters" according to the difference between the two versions
3) Create two titles, one PGC in each
4) Drag the track icon into the first PGC to create the re-cut title
5) Drag the same track icon into the second PGC, but then remove the undesired "chapters" to create the original released version.
6) create a menu with two buttons each going to one of the two PGCs

So would this do it?

My main concern about the above procedure is whether it would double the video_ts size.

thanks for any advice.

- The Sequoyan

[Sequoyan]

or not...

[auenf]

well, the implementation is basically the same, not sure how to exactly do it in scen tho.

but basically you only want the one cut of the footage imported into scen to start off with, which would be the unrated version.

from that one VTS, you need to create 2 'titles' in there, not sure how to do that in scen, but its using playlists in maestro.

create one 'title' to play the whole VTS, the other 'title' skips a bit of it.

i havent played with scen so im not sure exactly how to do it, but thats how you want the project to end up.

Enf...

[Sequoyan]

Thanks for the post...

That's what I've tried, but the scenes/chapters/cells/programs (depending on what you feel like calling them) are not seamless playback that way.

Do you know how to make them seamless? Does anyone know this?

thanks for any help...

- The Sequoyan

[Jestorius]

You can change the Cell propeties to seamless. It is covered in the manuall. But if you search the forum... as I can remember there is a very good explonation here. The guy had a tread with pictures and tips about the same thing.

[Sequoyan]

Thanks for the post Jestorius.

1) As I stated in my first post I did a search for relevant threads and found none. If you found one, please post a link. Thanks.

2) You're right that Scenarist has a function for specifying seamless playback. However if Scenarist determines that seamless playback is not possible with the cell in question it prevents the author from setting the seamless flag.

That's the problem I have, how to get the cells to accept the seamless flag.

Any thoughts?

- The Sequoyan

[Jestorius]

I try to find that tread. It was very good and I may also need it.

[Jestorius]

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18715&highlight=scenarist+cell+seamless If I'm not wrong this is it.

[Sequoyan]

the thread looks great, I've printed it and will try it out when I get home. I'll post whether I get it to work.

Thanks

- The Sequoyan

[Sequoyan]

It's no good.

The thread does not explain how to get the cells to be seamless.

I have a few things I'm going to try...

Any other ideas?

- The Sequoyan

[Jestorius]

frrom Cupid59:
"You have one only movie. Put chapters point in track editor in your movie.
Go to scenario editor, and drag and drop your movie under the title you want.
Now, you can select in scenario the chapter(s) you don't want at program level, and delete it (example, you delete program with number 3). You have now a "hole" in scenario in place your deleted program, and follow cell icon, have a NSM to indicate "non seamless". You can see, the program over this cell have the number 3. Now, from track list at right down, you can open your movie and see all chapters (click on little + at left of icon). Drag from track list the deleted chapters (if you do not renamed, is the number 2 because start from 0)in to scenario, and drop over the previous program, numbered 2. You can see now the program 2 with two cells, and cells icons indicate SM again. Your movie is all again in scenario, but chapters point is "invisible". "

- It works

[Sequoyan]

I printed that thread last night and tried it and the cells were Non-Seamless.

Are you sure we're talking about the same thing?

I need to have one PGC that has cells 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and another PGC that has cells 1, 3, 5

They must playback seamlessly.

I followed cupid's instructions precisely and it does not do what I need it to do.

Are you certain that you are doing the same thing I'm trying to do and that it is working?

Thanks Jestorius

- The Sequoyan


---------------------------
I've just followed the instructions and have succeded in doing what Cupid instructs. But this is not seamless branching. What I want to do is leave out chapters and have seamless playback.

any ideas?

[Jestorius]

There are two types of Multistory: "Non-seamless" and "Seamless".
Non-seamless Multistory

Non-seamless Multi-story is where you have multiple PGC's (could be in separate Titles of the same VTS) that play the same video content. For instance, if you want to have a training video that is divided up into, say, five segments. You want to be able to play all five segments in linear order, linked seamlessly together, but you also want the user to be able to select an individual segment and play it alone. Finally, there is no room on the disc to duplicate all the video.

To do this, you can create six Titles in a VTS -- the first for the "Play All" sequence, and then one for each individual segment. First, drag & drop each of the segments onto a single PGC in the "Play All" Title to create the linear playback version, setting "seamless" links between each as you go. Then, drag each segment to its own Title, creating one PGC in each of the individual segment Titles. In this way, you have multiple PGC's that will refer to the same VOB file on the final disc. This allows you to define different behaviors for playing back the same physical content. You can even rearrange playback order or playback mode (random/shuffle) using this technique, though you may have some limitations regarding the seamlessness of it.

Seamless Multistory

Seamless Multistory (also referred to as partial interleave) works in a similar way to multi-angle. Several multiplexed VOB files are interleaved together in a manner that allows one to seamless branch from a single "angle" to any one of the "stories". The one key difference between partial interleave and seamless branching with multi-angle is that partial interleave allows each of the "angles" to be of different durations (within certain constraints).

Unfortunately, Scenarist is not currently able to do partial interleave. It is a feature that had been on the drawing board for a long time at Daikin. However, at that time there was relatively little demand for it, and a lot of demand for various bug fixes... I remember hearing an estimate at one time that the partial interleave feature would take nearly the entire engineering staff working 3 full months to implement before we had anything to begin testing. Since they would have to touch virtually every aspect of the core software in order to implement the feature, it was expected that at least another 3 months of testing and bug fixes would be requires before anything was release-ready. Needless to say, we never got these 6 months while I was at Daikin to add it.

In any case, what is demonstrated on the DVD Demystified disc is, in fact, seamless branching with multi-angle video. A single-angle "shared" segment plays, and then seamlessly transitions into a multi-angle segment in which one of the 3 angles has been pre-selected. This technique works quite well, but requires that all of the segments be of equal duration (among other things).

Hope this helps.

Mark Johnson
Administrator

------------------ from dvdmadeeasy

[Sequoyan]

Well ok, that says it all. It's not possible.

I've read that there are only two authoring systems that can do it and those are not available to the public.

Oh well...

I'm going to play around with the multi-angle seamless branching.

Thanks for the info Jestorius

- The Sequoyan