How to modify menu subpictures ?

[tigrilito]

Hi all,

I modified the background image of a still menu which includes moving around a few buttons. I can easily change the button position in pgcedit but I have trouble with the button highlights...
Using SubRip gives me the subpictures as a .bmp file which I can edit however I have no clue how to get the modified version back into the menu (I tried with muxman but it did not work).

Does anybody know how to do this ? If possible I would like to avoid having to use a full blown authoring tool...

Thanks,
tigrilito

[violao]

You canot mux bmp or similar bitmap file into vob. You need to encode it to rle and mux it as subpictures. Although you may do this with spumux (part of dvdauthor) the problem is that for working menu you'll need 3 bitmaps, 1 for basic image, 1 for highlight state and 1 for select state. You can omit basic image bitmap if your buttons are already clearly visible in m2v background. The common approich is to start from Subrip's bitmap and just change colors of button shapes for different bitmap files. Keep in mind that your maximum is 4 colors, 1 for transparent background, remaining 3 can be used for image, highlight and select bitmaps. When you have all bitmaps you need to create xml file such as:

<subpictures>
<stream>
<spu start="00:00:00.00"
highlight="lang.high.png" select="lang.sel.png"
autooutline="infer" autoorder="columns"
outlinewidth="2" force="yes">
<button label="1" up="6" down="2" left="6" right="2"/>
<button label="2" up="1" down="3" left="1" right="3"/>
<button label="3" up="2" down="4" left="2" right="4"/>
<button label="4" up="3" down="5" left="3" right="5"/>
<button label="5" up="4" down="6" left="4" right="6"/>
<button label="6" up="5" down="1" left="5" right="1"/>
</spu>
</stream>
</subpictures>

This example doesn't use basic image bitmap, only highlight and select. <buttol label="...> section is used for button navigation. If you use indexed png that you can set alpha channel in the file itself. If you use bmp then you'll need additional attribute: transparent="hex_rgb_color_code".

Then you need to run:

mplex -f 8 -o vob_file m2v_file [optional_audio_file]
spumux xml_file < vob_file > vob_file_with_subpictures

Final vob file will have 1 cell containing your menu, but empty nav packs and no button commands. It should be possible to replace original cell with this one and do a mock strip with Ifoedit and define button commands in some other application. If not then you'll need to create a simple dvd with just this one menu using dvdauthor and then strip this cell from it and proceed with cell replacement and mock strip. It's tedious procedure, but I can't think of any easier.

[lark]

since you ar already using pgcedit to edit the buttons, why not use it replace the menu created with violao's instructions as well (& define the btn commands).

regards
t :)

[tigrilito]

Thanks for the instructions violao.
Looking around for mplex and spumux I only found Linux binaries. Would you know a place where I can get Windows versions ?

[lark]

have you tried
dvdauthor@sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=59028)

regards
t :)

[violao]

I believe most recent version will be found in DVDAuthorGUI (http://www.videohelp.com/~liquid217/dvdauthorgui.pl) package.

[tigrilito]

Thanks a lot guys, I have all the pieces now.
Only problem is that IFOedit crashes during the mock strip :-( I must have done something wrong... Will try again from scratch.