having a small video clip plat over a picture in DVD Maestro ?

[dvd_master]

In DVD maestro, I would like to have a small video clip playing over the .JPG main menu image. How can I do this ?

I need lots of help with this (despite my name) so someone please!

[Adex]

Um, I think what you're asking is how to put a movie clip over a static background.

Unless I missed it in the manual somewhere you can't do that in Maestro alone, you have to create that effect in a video editing program like Premiere and then import that movie into Maestro.

If only it were that easy :(

[Faceman101]

Your name isn't very fitting.

[auenf]

try looking at the sticky at the top started by Arky.

Enf...

[dvd_master]

I did check that out, but i want to place a video over a picture, not over a video.

And there's GOTTA be SOME way to do it without having to go through all that. I just want to drop a video over a picture.

Would an animated GIF work ??

[Adex]

It's been my experience that anything having to do with DVD authoring is going to take some effort, like it or not.

You can say "all I wanna do is drop a video over a picture" but there's more to it than that, there's no way around it. Sorry.

[Arky]

There is no short cut to doing this within Maestro - like it or not, you are going to have to create a composite. It's really very easy and fast (apart from the rendering time itself, but that can run on it's own anyway) - don't think that it's difficult cos it isn't if you get just stuck into it.

You can treat a BITMAP just like a video stream, by placing on the timeline, and specifying a duration (which will be the same duration as your overlaid video stream, obviously). I probably won't be on the forum until tomorrow night, but I am very happy to help you if you need it. Just don't expect me to give you some magic ticket to do this job in less than five miutes - if you want professional-looking results, you will have to put in a little effort and earn them ;)

All the best,


Arky ;o)

[dvd_master]

I'm not quite sure i follow. How could i make a .BMP a video file to play ?

I'd really really really really be grateful if you did help me. Just kind of a step by step thing. My email is spirit_of_lightning@hotmail.com if you'd rather email, or if you have MSN.

[easy2Bcheesy]

dvd_master - you need to take your still into a package like Adobe Premiere, or Adobe After Effects. Then using that software you crop, resize and place your video on top of the still. Then you export that file as an AVI, which is then turned into a MPEG2 file.

Once you have the software, doing this is remarkably easy.

Maestro is a joy to use, but it is not a magic wand that will magically assemble your DVD for you! It just takes your *final* assets and lets you assemble them on the DVD.

[dvd_master]

I know i know! People always saying 'there's no magic way' or 'there isn't a hidden flawless method' ! I GET IT PEOPLE! I never said there was. Geez. :rolleyes:


Okay, i got what i'm going to do.

I'm just going to make frame-by-frame picture files of the menu, while only changing the small picture where the video should go. That picture will be changed to the next frame, and so on.

Then I'll use a program i got that turns pictures into video clips and make an AVI of it and set it as my background. :D

I got the full version of Adobe Premiere, but i'm still doing it this way because at least i know what i'm doing. ;)

[Arky]

No, no, no - I'm afraid you're missing the point.


None of us are saying that you have to manually create multiple stills in order to render these as an AVI!

All you need is:

1) your video stream

2) your background

3) a little patience and a willingness to apply yourself

As easy2Bcheesy said, (QUOTE):

[you need to take your still into a package like Adobe Premiere, or Adobe After Effects. Then using that software you crop, resize and place your video on top of the still. Then you export that file as an AVI, which is then turned into a MPEG2 file.]

In other words, the application you are using (for instance, Premiere) will automatically render the multiple frames required for an output composited video stream. All you need to do is to tell the software that you wish to overlay your source video asset onto a still picture, show the software what position and size you want the video overlaid, and then simply tell the software to render you a nice composited AVI file, which you can then encode to MPEG1 or MPEG2, and import into your DVD-authoring application to create a menu with buttons etc. In other words, the still picture you began with will *automatically* be regenerated at 25 frames per second (PAL), or 29.97 fps (NTSC), complete with the overlaid video...


Arky ;o)

[dvd_master]

okay i'm using Premiere. Right now, i got the picture file and the video file and all that.

I go to the Motions menu, and the mini clip is in the right alignment and everything. But when I go to the main picture's motion menu, and click that play button, the mini clip plays like it should but then the main image scrolls to the side and back. I want the main image to be STILL.

Also, when i go to Export Clip --> Movie it will only save the picture and not the mini clip over it. The picture doesn't scroll though.

One more thing: is there any way to make the quality higher for the AVI ?

[Arky]

The quality for the AVI is dependent on several things:

You should have created a still image for your background which was 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC). If you try to import a smaller picture, you will obviously get a poorer result when you render because Premiere is trying to interpolate.

Make sure you have all the output settings set to the highest possible quality. For example, if you have enough hard drive space, you would be well advised to create an *uncompressed* AVI, and then encode this to MPEG2, rather than (for example) creating a Div-X AVI file from Premiere, and then encoding this to MPEG2

Regarding the movement you are experiencing, I believe you are neglecting to set your "in" and "out" keyframes correctly in Premiere. When you look at the pop-up box for motion/PIP, you will notice that there is a miniature timeline towards the bottom left of the box. You also need to look at the top right of the box where the positioner is.

NOW, make sure, in the mini-timeline, that the cursor is set to the very beginning. Then look at the postioning box, towards the top right, and carefully select where you wish your background image to be (i.e., in your case, this will be slap-bang in the middle).

When you have done this, you will have automaticaly created an initial keyframe. The next step is to move the cursor on the mini timeline all the way to the very END of the timeline. Now look again at the positioner, in the top right and you will see that it is again necessary to tell Premiere where you want your background image to be positioned. Now you should have no problems, since you have told Premiere that you want the start and end postions to be identical, and therefore no motion is desired in your composite. Remember that Premiere, by default, simply assumes that you wish to have the frame moving from left-to-right, whereas you need it to be static.

Next problem - why is only one asset visible on the final render?

Well, this could be because of a couple of things:

1) Did you make sure that both assets were "ACTIVE" on the timeline before yu rendered?

2) Did you make sure you applied the assets to the project in the correct order. It might be that you have put the image on top of the video asset, rather than the video asset on top of the image, as you wished. Simply swap the items round on the timeline tracks, for a quick way to check this.

Let me know if you have any more problems. I'm rushing to get a train right now, so I won't be online for a few hours, but I will be checking back this evening.

Good luck, let me know how you get on. Also, apologies if my above description of the Premiere screen is not entirely accurate, I'm typing this on a friend's laptop, so I don't have Premiere to hand to check what's in my memory, and I don't have time to check the sticky link.

Regards,


Arky ;o)


oh, one more thing - don't be confused by the positioner showing your background image as much smaller than the available postioning space - this is not a mistake, and you do not need to alter it, inless you were intending to play around with zooming, which you are not. The reason the positioning space is so much bigger than the asset you are trying to postion, is that Premiere shows the size of the asset/video screen PLUS exactly how much space the asset would take if it was positioned OFF the screen, ALL AROUND. Perhaps this might have contributed to your poor AVI quality, if you had unintentionally zoomed your source image to fill the positioner screen..? Anyway, gotta run... ;)

[dvd_master]

I'm REALLY sorry but that didn't make much sense with me at all. I JUST got the program, so must of the stuff i have no idea what you are talking about.

Sorry.:(

[auenf]

Originally posted by dvd_master
I'm REALLY sorry but that didn't make much sense with me at all. I JUST got the program, so must of the stuff i have no idea what you are talking about.

Sorry.:(

the scrolling thing:

the motion part of premiere is mostly for moving clips around the screen, you can set a clip in the same spot for its entireity tho;

in motion, there are two 'keyframes', and more can be added (which you dont want to), the start and end, you can see it on the small timeline in the middle of the dialog, and start and end positions in the right.

click at the start and the up arrow below the little timeline moves there, and then directly below that there is position settings (zeroed to centre), you change that to where you want the movie to sit, then click on the end keyframe and set it the same, then it should be how you want it.

im sure when Arky gets around (he has been working too much and too late lately from what ive heard) to create a proper guide for that sticky, it will be a fair bit easier to understand.

Enf...

[dvd_master]

i managed to figure most of that out, but how do i save the .AVI with the mini video over it ?

[easy2Bcheesy]

Once it is rendered, go to "File" and select "Export". A Microsoft DV file will do just fine unless you have a hardware video card with its own DV codecs.

For PAL, make sure resolution is 720x576, at 25 frames per second.
If you are using NTSC, resolution is 720x480 at 29.97 frames per second (this should be in your initial project settings)...

Then export away. You'll have a large AVI file that you turn into an MPEG2 stream that is then imported into Maestro. Easy.

It is probably not any consolation, but I believe that a lot of the DVD creation software you get with an iMac does the sort of things you want - ie, take a movie, resize it and plonk it on top of a still without recourse to doing it yourself the hard way.

[dvd_master]

That's not what i mean. I get how to save it, but when i preview the main image which SHOULD have the video playing over it, it shows nothing there.
But when i go the the motion menu it shows the video being there.

How can i save the picture WITH the clip over it ?

[easy2Bcheesy]

Eh? I don't quite understand what you are getting at. To create a motion menu in Maestro, you need to create an AVI stream which is then encoded into MPEG2.

You can't have, say, a JPEG file of your still with overlaid video running on top, if that's what you mean.

However, if you are looking to create another still showing one frame of your final AVI (and I often use this in order to set up the subpicture correctly), go to the Premiere timeline, choose a particular frame from your movie and then go to EXPORT and select 'Export Still' or 'Export Frame' (can't remember quite which it is)...

[auenf]

Originally posted by dvd_master
That's not what i mean. I get how to save it, but when i preview the main image which SHOULD have the video playing over it, it shows nothing there.
But when i go the the motion menu it shows the video being there.

How can i save the picture WITH the clip over it ?

Timeline -> Render Work Area

then when it looks fine:

File -> Export Timeline -> Video

Enf...

[dvd_master]

Originally posted by auenf


Timeline -> Render Work Area

then when it looks fine:

File -> Export Timeline -> Video



Thanks that's exactly what i needed.

But, even though i make it uncompressed, the small video clip playing is really really low quality.

Screenshot:

[Arky]

Looks to me as though you've distorted the aspect ratio of the original video clip (i.e. it looks squashed). This is surprisingly hard for Premiere to deal with. I hate to say it but if you really want premium quality with distorted clips, there is really only one candidate for the job: Adobe After Effects.

Then again, if you go back and try to do the job again WITHOUT distorting the aspect ratio of the video, you may find you get an acceptable result using Premiere with the current method.

What file format is your SOURCE video, BTW??


Arky ;o)

[dvd_master]

I'm afrain I'm a little confused...

The source for the video is uncompressed .AVI ripped straight from DVD.

So if I save the AVI file the right size so I don't resize it in Adobe it will be fine ?

Or is that not the problem ?

[Arky]

Relax - you're doing just fine!


All I meant was that if your video is 720x576 (PAL), or 720x480 (NTSC), then by all means resize it (of course you HAVE to in order to make it look smaller in your menu composite), but when you resize it, be sure to keep it to the same PROPORTIONS. As an extreme example, if you resized it, but also altered the proportions so that it was no longer rectangular, but instead square, then you would expect Premiere to have a hard time making the video look decent quality. Likewise, if you have the proportions I mentioned at the top of this post, then you would aim for the same proportions when you resize (this would be so much easier to explain with a diagram!). Looking at your menu snapshot, I could be wrong, but it *appears* to me that you may not have kept the same proportions for your miniature (resized) video - it looks ever so slightly squashed.

PURELY as an EXAMPLE:

You could resize a

720x576

video, RETAINING the original proportion, by dividing it's size by a factor of 8, which would create a video file of the following frame size:

90x72

you can use whatever factor of division you choose (or a percentage instead), but make sure that you divide each side equally. In fact, the easiest way to do this in Premiere is simply to open up the motion settings dialogue box (right click on your video track in the timeline: "Video Options" > "Motion" ), and look towards the bottom left and the middle slider says "Zoom". I don't know if this is what you already did - I'm just going by what I can see from your attached image. If this IS the method you previously used to resize, then you can ignore the above advice and just look at the advice regarding interlaced material, below:

You will not get a *perfect* result with resizing, if you use Premiere, because it is not the most accurate program for such tasks, but it should be good enough for what you require, just so long as you "help it to help you" - in other words, you need to make sure that you are making life as easy as possible for Premiere, so it has less things to deal with. It is also worth noting that, unlike After Effects, Premiere may have difficulty with resized or composited video (you are doing both at the same time) if the SOURCE is interlaced. If my suggestions about being careful to retain the proportions don't work, then STILL keep the proportions, but ALSO try de-interlacing your source video before you import it into Premiere for resizing and compositing.

You do NOT need to resize your video BEFORE importing it into Premiere, in fact I strongly suggest you don't try this. You are better off just carefully using Premiere in exactly the same way that you already did, but just bear in mind my above advice and everything should be sweet.

I apologise if the above is still confusing. I hope I have explained it clearly enough, but it's quite difficult to do this with just words.


Arky ;o)

[Arky]

...BTW, I like your menu design - very artistic! :)


Arky ;o)

[auenf]

or try a smoothness filter on the motioned clip, usually clears up those jaggies.

Enf...

[dvd_master]

Originally posted by Arky
...BTW, I like your menu design - very artistic! :)


Arky ;o)

Thanks :D

I even designed the Yu-Gi-Oh logo myself.

I'm not quite sure I follow exactly but I'll do to the best of what i can understand from what you've told me and try to sorten it out.

Thanks for the help.

[dvd_master]

*sigh*

I don't see a smoothness filter anywhere, and NOW when i try to save it as uncompressed.... it's will still look bad and digital. Not like the screenshot anymore.