Star Wars Episode 2 Reauthored

[AlainDelon]

This title has 3 angles(credits) so i ripped the 1st angle with Smartripper and got a 5.52gb m2v file.This was reduced to 3.28gb through a 3-pass CCE recode(ave Q:5.51!).I wanted to keep one of the 3 menus(the menu vob is 620mb with 3 different "themes" and only one seems to work on a pc but on standalones they are supposed to rotate every time you insert the disc)so i demuxed the menu vob by cell id and kept the theme1 type cells only,stripped out the sub pictures and demuxed.Then imported everything in Maestro including commentary ac3 and subttles(i feel the Comic sans MS font size32 fits this type of movie particularly well).Now to the intricate details;recreating all transition menus between the "a" and "b" style chapterloopmenus.Since i'm not yet familiar with the command sequence editor,i ended up creating 26 different transition menus covering all combinations(1-5a to 6-10b etc).It's not a big deal sizewise because each transition is less than 3mb.I'm sure this can be done using only 4 menus(a-a,b-b,b-a & a-b)in the sequence editor.But now i have a perfectly working recreation that works exactly like the original and looks beautiful exept it has 1 menutheme and no French or Spanish tracks and is sized at 4.30gb.Also remember to force the menus to 16:9.Mine has an even smoother intro than original because of only one type of menu-i joined the pre,intro & premain menus to one and it plays to the main menu without any pause at all.

[UTec]

Kudos to you my friend. I know exactly what you're talking about. I re-authored the Phantom Menace DVD with Maestro last summer. I was pleased to see the menus in Attack Of The Clones are structured exactly the same as in Phantom Menace with 3 entirely independent menu themes.

BTW, those themes don't exactly "rotate". A theme is selected at random each time the disc is re-inserted in the player.

I just bought AOTC yesterday incidentally and it's the next project in line. Like you, I only kept one theme (Naboo) when authoring PM but this time, I want to try and reproduce the random themes with AOTC :)

Phantom Menace was by far the most difficult project I did. But also the most fun. The menus are the most complicated I've ever seen on a DVD. Command sequences is what made it all possible of course (this is the Maestro equivalent of PGC pre and post commands in Scenarist).

How I did it:

1. Menu sources

Creating the menu sources was the worst headache because VOBedit didn't exist yet. All I had was VOBrator which can only demux by VOB id's. The main problem was (as in many cases) that the main menu intro and the main menu loop cells are concatenated in the same VOB id. Since Maestro can only branch back to the beginning of a menu loop, I had to cut a "loop only" part out of the "menu intro+1st loop" .m2v and .ac3 files.

Then I used the TMPGenc Mpeg tools for the split. Other problem: the mpeg tools in TMPGenc cannot work directly on Mpeg2 elementary streams. So I first had to multiplex the .m2v and .ac3 together which would create an Mpeg2 program stream. Once I cut it, I then had to demultiplex the PS back into a .m2v ES.

Now the PS that TMPGenc made converted the .ac3 into Mpeg1-Layer2 sound once multiplexed inside the PS. So when you demultiplex it, the resulting output is an mp2 sound ES which is useless for authoring. So I had to cut the .ac3 file separately with another tool: BeSplit, using one-mile long, impossible to memorize command lines... (I know, I know.. I could have used HeadAC3he but hey, I'm still learning :D )

It took quite a bit of trial and error before I managed to get resulting video and audio streams which had time durations close enough to give satisfactory results in Maestro. I repeated the same procedure above for the bundled "chapters menu intro and 1st menu (Chap 1-5) loop".

Fortunately, all the menu transitions were in VOB id's of their own so a simple demux did the job for those.

2. Authoring

After the hassle I'd been through creating the sources, I figured that re-authoring would be a piece of cake by comparison. Wrong. Upon closer examination of the chapter menus, it dawned on me that which transition video is played depends on a)which menu you are in and b)which menu you are calling... Uggh.. I thought "I can't make this work using straight links, this is conditional branching!"

Then I noticed a little something called Command sequences. But first, I had to learn how it works. Thanks to the knowlegeable people in this forum, I did.

For the rest I did it pretty much the same way as you. But I kept all the menu transition videos as "movies" and not "menus" in Maestro. In the end, I had no redundancy of sources except the "loop only" cuts of the main menu and chapter menu. The result:

Movies folder: 10 movies

THE Movie (at the top of the list to make it Title1 on the DVD)
First play sequence
Play movie intro (when you select "play movie" in main menu)
THX Logo (I HAD to keep that one :) )
Transition from A-->B type chapter menus
Transition from B-->A type chapter menus
Transition from A-->A type chapter menus
Transition from B-->B type chapter menus
Transition from A type chapter menus back to main menu
Transition from B type chapter menus back to main menu

Menus folder: 13 menus

Main menu intro + 1st loop (plays once, branches to loop)
Main menu loop
Chapters menu intro + 1st Ch l-5 loop (plays once, branches to loop)
Chapters 1-5 menu loop
Chapters 6-10 menu loop
Chapters 11-15 menu loop
Chapters 16-20 menu loop
Chapters 21-25 menu loop
Chapters 26-30 menu loop
Chapters 31-35 menu loop
Chapters 36-40 menu loop
Chapters 41-45 menu loop
Chapters 46-50 menu loop

Command Sequences: 3 scripts

Chapter menus navigation intialization (2 commands)
Chapter menus --> transition movies routing (46 commands)
Transition movies --> Chapter menus routing (32 commands)

I used 3 GPRM's (all in register mode) and SPRM8 which is invaluable in making this all possible.

The first script is the target of the Chapters button in the main menu intro and main menu loop menus. All it does is set GPRM6 to 1 before branching to the Chapter menu intro to signify that we're going to the first chapter menu (1-5).

The second script is the target of all the Chapter menu buttons plus the "next chapter menu" and "previous chapter menu" invisible/autoaction buttons. This one is the "piece de resistance". Here again, GPRM6 is used to determine the value of the current chapter menu and is modified just before jumping to the corresponding menu via the transition movie.

Ch menu 1-5 : GPRM6 = 1
Ch menu 6-10 : GPRM6 = 2
Ch menu 11-15 : GPRM6 = 3
Ch menu 16-20 : GPRM6 = 4
etc...

Now note that for all the chapter menus on the right side (1-5, 11-15, etc), GPRM6 is assigned an odd value. For all the chapter menus on the left side (6-10, 16-20, etc), GPRM6 is assigned an even value. Next, the value of GPRM6 into stored in GPRM5 (in order to preserve GPRM6) and a Modulo 2 (remainder) operation is performed on GPRM5.

For odd numbered menus, the result will always be 1
For even numbered menus, the result will always be 0

This result determines if a A-->B or B-->A transition sequence must be played before jumping to the target chapter menu. Now to determine which menu to jump to after the transition movie, a 3rd register is used: GPRM7. The best and easiest way is to store the value of SPRM8 (currently highlighted menu button) into it.

Depending on the value of GPRM7, GPRM6 will be updated with the chapter menu # where it's jumping to next. For the next and previous autoselect buttons, GPRM6 is simply incremented or decremented by 1 for the new current menu value. Only 2 exceptions: when jumping from the last to first chapter menu and vice-versa. This required a bit of extra conditional branching.

The third script is a simple 3-part branch table. It's the "end action" target of all the transition video's. Just a bunch of "jump to chapter menu # X according to the value of GPRM6.

Everything works smooth as silk :)

The nice part is that I can re-use the same code for Attack Of The Clones DVD. In fact, I can re-use the same project file and just change the sources. All the buttons, button navigation, highlight layer colors, etc.. can be re-used virtually as is.

And with VOBedit, quickly extracting accurate sources will be a piece of cake... No more fussing around with TMPGenc and BeSplit for hours with mitigated results at the end.

Derrow, THANK YOU!! You're a genius man! :D

[nytr0x]

Hey Utec,
Thanks for this post I've just started recreating the menus for PM (AOTC next)and was planning the menu branching with command scripts, you've just made my job one hell of a lot easier, THANKS!

How can I use vobedit to get the initial menu intros and loops into separate files? At the moment returning to the main menu displays the spaceship and jumping to the chapters 1-5 menu plays the intro, will I have to go through the nightmare of splitting with TMPGenc and BeSplit too?

Do you know how to get the original overlay colour palette and contrast for the menus into Maestro?

Thanks for your advice, Oh and of course honorary mention and gracious appreciation to Derrow too.

[AlainDelon]

nytr0x,just demux the 620mb menu vob by cell in vobedit,you will end up with 76 separate vob files.Choose the ones to keep by playing and demux those to ac3 & m2v for importing to Maestro.Sometimes you may get a media detection error for the ac3 but then just use ac3-machine to clean those up.As far as the exact original color palette,i don't know a way of extracting it but it's easy to approximate.And VobEdit is the most used program on my computer,one of the best freeware programs ever!

[nytr0x]

Thanks Alain, I answered my initial question last night, demux by cell id with vobedit. How do I use ac3 machine to fixup the errors, just run it with defaults? Does anyone know how to import the orginal menu hilight and select colours and contrasts?
Thanks.

[AlainDelon]

With ac3 machine i set the bitrate to 192 otherwise default values.If you are talking about extracting the original sub picture .bmp,that is done with subrip and color mapping is done in Maestro.

[alhall]

AlainDelon, hat where your setting on CCE??

[destemido]

UTec... i'm also doing SW ep1, and i'm also on the chapter menu..
you say that the Chapter menus navigation intialization (2 commands)
meaning 1 command sequence with two "lines" or comands inside, right??? if so, it should be something like:

1 setGPRMMD GP6 to register
2 jump to chapter 01-05

it this correct???

i really don't know what GPRM's and SPRM's mean so i'll need to search for that in derrow's guide pack!!!

[smoof]

There is an alternative...

I just did AOTC (and PM several months ago) and used the following approach.

1. Use VOBrator to figure out which VOB id's you need to keep.

2. Use IFOEdit to strip out all the unnecessary id's.

3. Use IFOEdit to modify the command tables so that it will only play the single menu theme that you saved. This can take some work.

It works perfectly for me and is much less work than reauthoring the menus.

[UTec]

GPRM = General parameters
SPRM = System parameters

GPRM's are registers which you can set to any value and then compare with other values or other registers. You use those to set and test for conditions that will make the disc navigate the way you want it to.

SPRM's cannot be set directly. They can be read and their value copied to GPRM's. Then the GPRM can be used to compare the contents and act accordingly.

The Scenarist manual although deficient when it comes to its intended goal (to help users learn how to use Scenarist) does a fairly good job at explaining GPRM's and SPRM's

[lucindrea]

i did PM last week and i think i did it the hard way ( but it does work )
basicly i took the vob0 ( the one with all the menus and stuff ) .. cce'd it .. then remuxed it with the orginal ac3 .. then used womble to cut all the differnt menus out ( their are ALOT ) .. used tmpeg to demux them all then inported them into maestro.
put all the transactions into their own movies and used alot of comman seq's to figure out what one to play , for instance when the movie first starts i got a menu to chose the theme , that sets grpm 0 to 1 2 or 3 , then each menu is either on the left or right ( grpm 1 ) , each button goes either left or right ( grpm 2) and has a mnu assoated that it will goto ( grpm 3).
so all my command seq's looked like
if grpm0=1 goto line X
if grpm0=2 ......
line X if grpm1 = 1 & grpm2 = 1 jump naboochaptLtoR
etc

end of each transaction ran another command seq like
if grpm3=X goto menu-x


it worked .. was a major pain. ... i really wish their was a way to make calls out of 1 menu , like loop a menu between chap point X and Y then jump to chapt Z when you click button 1 ... dont think thats possable in maestro ... and PM was over 32 vobs when i did it ( except main movie they wer all like 3MB )

YES i'm keeping this project fo clones ( just ripped it 10 mins ago ) .. i hope to stremline this process alot and the above posts do help.

[LakersFan]

Originally posted by smoof
3. Use IFOEdit to modify the command tables so that it will only play the single menu theme that you saved. This can take some work.

Can you please explain this better? I'm new at this and only want one menu, so your way of doing things seems the most logical. How do you find out which command table is used to play the specific menu you saved? Also, how do you edit it using IFOEDIT?

Sorry for the rookie questions, please bear with me. ;)