Scenarist - A new seamless branching problem

[matzed]

Hi,

I've read a lot of thread concerning seamless branching in Scenarist, including this one : http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62814&highlight=seamless, but until now, people wants to do seamless branching while playing a full movie with different reading scenari, i.e. scenario 1 = chapters 1 then 2 then 3 and scenario 2 = chapter 1 then chapter 2 then chapter 4.

My problem is different : i want to make a classic DVD with a menu at the beginning with 4 buttons :
* B1 = "movie 1"
* B2 = "movie 2"
* B3 = "scenes of movie 1"
* B4 = "scenes of movie 2"

I created with a DV editor one movie for accessing to the scenes. The movie has 3 parts (=chapter) :

- Part1 shows first 4 scenes from the movie 1 in one screen
- Part 2 shows last 4 scenes from the movie 1, but the beginning of this part is a transition between Part1 and Part2, so Part1 disappears and then Part2 appears nicely
- Part3 is like second part, but for returning to Part1 : it show first 4 scenes from the movie but with a transition between Part2 and Part1

Part1 has buttons on each part of the screen for the user to be able to select the scene he wants from the first 4 scenes of Movie1, and an additional auto-button to go to the Part2, allowing him to select from the last 4 scenes. Of course an additional auto-button allows him to go back to the selection from first 4 parts, but this will play Part3 (to allow the transition between Part2 and Part1...).

Wow ! Sorry for this long introduction !

Of course, what i want is when the user is on Part1 and select the auto-button to go to Part2, the player plays seamlessly. If not, my effect won't be so nice.

Ideally, when he selects button B3 from the main menu, the player will play seamlessly the Part1...

I did it, and the icon between the cells is of course the damned "NS" icon...

Anyone can help me to do it in Scenarist so those parts seamlessly ?

Thanks

Matzed

[SomeJoe]

I don't think this is possible with Scenarist.

All the versions of Scenarist I've seen (2.6 and 2.7), and even the new 3.0 version can't do true seamless branching.

True seamless branching requires that the VOBU's and NAV packs be muxed in a special way such that the DVD player is capable of jumping to the seamless branch point on the disc. This is similar to how multiangle is muxed, but it's far more complicated when different length pieces of video need to be muxed together and different paths through the video are defined by different PGCs.

You can attach your cells together however you like, but you'll never get Scenarist to show a "SM" seamless note on a cell unless that cell is in the same track and directly after the previous cell.

I even tried CCE 2.67's new "DVD Multiangle Compliant" option on a disc I was trying to do that was supposed to be seamlessly branched. This option equalizes bitrate between all GOPs, restricts auto I-frame insertion, and closes all GOPs, which are requirements to allow multiangle muxing. The same requirements would apply to true seamless branching muxing. But it didn't make any difference. Scenarist still refuses to make non-adjacent cells from the same track seamless.

However, it may not matter much. You'll get a pause between the user's button press on the Part1 of your menu and when the transition from Part 2 starts, but if you're careful with the "look" of the menu you can minimize the appearance of the pause. Furthermore, even if the branching was seamless, you would still get a video discontinuity when the user presses the button because you can't predict when the button press will occur. The motion of Part 1 won't exactly line up with the initial frame of Part 2 because the user can press the button at any time during Part 1's video. Because of this, I don't think the pause between parts is that bad.

[matzed]

Yes you're right, there is pause with a little black screen (few milliseconds) at the begining of part1, and when going from part3 to part2, that's all. For other transitions, it's like seamless, because the parts are encoded in one movie, so for the DVD player it's like going from one chapter to the next one.

There is a little pause in the sound, but nothing very important.

I think we have to deal with this limitation, and, concerning menus, it is always possible to play with effects of a DV editor. For example, to reduce the effect of the pause, i can have a flashing effect of something like that.

Well, this is for people who makes DVD from personal DV movies. And if i want to have several scenarios for playing the main movie, i'll have to use the tricks explianed in the thread i gave at the begining of the post

Thanks

Matz