SD footage amigo for DVD

Are these all parts of the same video that should play contiguously? Or are they separate titles that will be picked individually from a menu? If the latter, there's no real need to combine them. You could render the as separate MPEG2 files and import them all into DVD Architect.

Kelly, a vast overabundance of Titles is what I believe he is trying to get around.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=859596&Replies=15

MV10 is spot on.

Chienworks,

If you get a chance please skim through the thread MV10 linked. That was my original plan. I really need several beers, some pancakes and a bag of gravel me thinks!

I've replied to that DVDA thread however I'm not exactly certain what your intention is. There's a distinct difference between having a lot of individual clips that play one after the other and one big clip with chapters in it.

With individual clips you can have Play All and a Play One menu items and you can control this through End Actions.
With a single clips, which is much simpler, chapter marks simply let the viewer jump to that point in the clip, you have no control over what happens at the next chapter mark i.e. the clip will play out to the end. That might not be at all desirable.

Bob.

Farss - Here's my intention:

Exercise video/instructional which will accompany a fitness device featuring 60 individual exercises + (3) five minute routines - not a typical 30-60 minute continuous routine such as P90X or Zumba.

The device's exercises are categorized into 6 different menu pages (respective to target areas/exercise style, i.e. abs/obliques, low back, glutes, hips/thighs, Pilates, and martial arts) - all of which are linked to a top or main menu. Each of the 6 menu pages contain up to 7 play buttons, each of which will activate a specific, linked exercise video (1-4 minutes in duration each).

For example: if you wanted to do crunches for abs, you would select the Abs/Obliques menu page from the top menu, then the "crunches" play button from the Abs/Obliques menu page, which would play the brief linked video segment titled "crunches." When the "crunches" video finishes playing, you are returned to the Abs/Obliques menu. All menu pages have links to the top menu should the viewer choose to switch exercise categories.

I put a lot of time and thought into the design of this disc, as nothing is more frustrating than skimming through a long, linear video looking for a specific movement or technique during a workout. Hence I segmented each exercise into brief selections, all of which include an opening title intro, a snappy set-up, body position and anatomical target screen, then the move itself from multiple camera angles - all shot in a cyc studio.

As some of the exercises are complex and require practice (primarily the martial arts moves and Pilates), I felt it wise to add loops of every exercise which could repeat indefinitely so the viewer could practice the moves without the redundant title openings, sound FX and music each exercise video contains.

I've already completed the loops section of the disc, by combining all 60 exercises and rendering them out to two titles. Each loop points to a chapter marker/play button. It works quite well; however when I select the chapter repeat button on 3 players I have for testing, the brief loops surpass the subsequent chapter marker by a couple of frames - interrupting the seamless loops I carefully prepared. I guess the kind of precision I'm looking for in this case isn't possible, unless there is a trick to which I'm not privy.

So at this point, I'm on the fence as to finishing the disc; do I condense the 60 videos into say 6 titles, or do I just import all 60 and link them directly to each relative play button? I also have the 3, five minute routines and the set-up/intro videos to add to the disc as well.

If this still seems unclear, I can put together a graphical flow chart to make this a bit less turgid.

Thanks for the help everyone!!
Steve M.

Steve, your author design would seem to be valid and there really would be no argument with your flow chart. What becomes important in this process in a realistic way is not what authoring program you have chosen to work with - but how practical will it be in a burned disc media format playing on various set-top players.

You have mentioned some testing - and you will need to test a lot - A LOT - i repeat on many many players. I use a test-bed of 15 different players.

Now if you are intending to master and press discs - I would suggest you step-up significantly in your authoring program chosen and coordinate testing with a commercial disc press outfit - if that is really the target for distribution method.

On the burn side you are going to have to test and retest. What method will pass on one set-top player may not work on any other.

VITG,

This will be mastered and fully tested by the replicator so I'm not overly worried about burning issues. Once I determine the proper finishing plan, the replicator will thoroughly test the disc before mastering. I believe the replicator will accept an ISO image to preempt any burn issues on my end prior to mastering. The final pressed disc will be on DVD9.

[I]"So at this point, I'm on the fence as to finishing the disc; do I condense the 60 videos into say 6 titles, or do I just import all 60 and link them directly to each relative play button?"[/I]

Import them as 60 individual videos.
You really need to be pedantic about things like naming conventions so you're quite clear what each one is.
Also from memory in DVDA you can give unique names to instances which will also help. DVDA also lets you wrangle the physical order of the files as they'll be burnt to the DVD, this may or may not be of some significance.

As to your looping problem, the only way I've ever had something loop seamlessly is by keeping it very short so it all fits in the players buffer, that's fine for menu backgrounds but of no help with your problem. What I would propose is having a fade up from black at the start of each clip and a fade down to black at the end. Now the trick I found is to not use a fade envelope as you need a couple of frames of actual black at the head and tail, so I used say 30 frames of black and a crossfade at the head and tail leaving a couple of frames outside the fade.

TBH you should be able to pull this of using only DVDA, it is tedious and frustrating but it'll get you there in the end. I'm certain there are better tools but then you've got to learn them and get the job done.

Bob.

A lot of diverse viewpoints here -- my experience is that more than a very few titles causes very big headaches when authored and burned in DVD Architect, problems that are more or less severe in various player models. In fact, we solved another user's "almost" identical looping / seeking problems completely by having him render one media file with multiple chapters. After you've read Steve's thread in the DVDA forum completely, this one is even more to the point.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=841744&Replies=16

"What you've suggested has turned out to be the problem with "end actions" in title and chapter playback.
Personally, I have never had good results with dozens of titles and few chapters in burned discs. Looping errors, truncation, long seek times, endless seek, stuck titles, and player freezeups just to name a few. Commercial DVDs have but 3 or 4 (at most) linkable titles (and dozens of fake ones for encryption purposes). It would be a waste, I think, for Steve to put 60-100 titles on a disc, in the outside hope the anomalies will disappear once it is at the replicator's. That's a little too late in the game for my comfort level.

My advice to Steve was simple, "One Title, many Chapters offers the most efficient workflow," and I intended that as a front-end philosophy -- you put the disc in, and it plays, loops, and seeks quickly as expected.

Rendering many files to spare oneself from long render times is a barbed hook imo.

That all being said, if his individual video files were all rendered with the same settings in Vegas, then they should smart-render rather quickly and give him one or even a few big files he can use with multiple menus and chapters in DVDA with little gerrymandering. If they were not already "rendered equal," they can be stitched in VideoRedo Plus with the same end result. I used the latter method for a rather substantial demo reel consisting of scenes from many DVDs and new intros and it worked, and no one I distributed it to had an issue with playback or navigation.

If the majority consensus is that Steve should revert to 60-100 individual assets to import into DVDA, something I've never gotten to work (and spent weeks trying), then I'm going to have to defer further comment on the idea and let it play out as it will.

[I]"My advice to Steve was simple, "One Title, many Chapters offers the most efficient workflow," and I intended that as a front-end philosophy -- you put the disc in, and it plays, loops, and seeks as expected."[/I]

Obviously a single title with multiple chapter points is a walk in the park compared to multiple files with multiple instances with different end actions and maybe even scripts, no dispute there from me at all.

My problem with this solution is it doesn't seem to meet the requirements.
To the best of my knowledge there is no way to make a DVD using DVDA that'll stop playing at a chapter marker and return to a menu or loop just a section of the video. Of course maybe I'm missing something, it sure wouldn't be the first time.

Bob.

Dealing with the OP's quest from multiple .veg projects to rendering mulitiple files...yes you can do that in VegasPro. Then if you want to relink them in DVDAPro, that is possible with endaction going to the start of the next file you can do that - USUALLY seamlessly - but depends heavily on the location on the disk and the nature of this transition can lead to problematic behavior on players as MV10 testifies.

At the same time you can locate markers at the begin and end of the video streams for futher control by menu links to the specific markers.

And to Bob's point - a marker by itself cannot be a control for an endpoint for the streams play - however if a stream is designed with .. calling IN/OUT points on a video stream - the OUT point is a natural exit that can be programmed to another action.

And chapter marker points can and do adequately serve as "addresses" for calling actions within streams -except as noted above in the natual "end of play" of a stream.

I would never trust a disc pressing from .iso or even from tape delivery if I could not totally debug the burned media tests. The press people have only the ability to call out errors that are intrinsic to the "script code" - much the way DVDAPRO gives you soft warnings upon an attempt to burn.

I guess I need to ask Steve, do you want it to autostop and return-to-menu after every short chapter, or after every larger "title." If the former, have we come full circle to playlists again?

OK, really weird thought ...

Render each individual file separately as MPEG2 transport stream (.mts)
Use the DOS copy /b file1 + file2 + file3 ... big_file method to combine them all into one large file. This resulting concatenated .mts file can become a single video input file for DVDA. I would imagine there's any variety of MPEG stitchers that would do just as well or better, and all of them should be able to handle it without recompression.

You'll also have to do something similar for the audio, rendering each piece into .wav, then create a new project with all these .wav files on the timeline and render that as AC3 audio.

Use Vegas to do the mpeg-2 stitching. It doesn't recompress mpeg-2's if it doesn't need to when rendering. Render each .veg file to a .mpeg-2 for DVDA, (audio as a WAV). Put each in a new Vegas project. Render out your final mpeg-2 for DVDA (and your audio as ac3). Done.

From a quick look in DVDA, I took a 4gb mpeg-2, put it in my project, set the in/out points to somewhere near the middle. I then took the file again, dropped/dragged it to my project, set the in/out points in a different spot, placed both on the menu as button/links. The buttons go to different parts of the same file & when I burn it doesn't burn two different files to the DVDA prep folder, but one file that has different sets of in/out points (not chapters)

Would that work?

[I]"From a quick look in DVDA, I took a 4gb mpeg-2, put it in my project, set the in/out points to somewhere near the middle. I then took the file again, dropped/dragged it to my project, set the in/out points in a different spot, placed both on the menu as button/links. The buttons go to different parts of the same file & when I burn it doesn't burn two different files to the DVDA prep folder, but one file that has different sets of in/out points (not chapters)Would that work?"[/I]

Sounds like it might although the DVDA manual on last reading seemed to suggest otherwise i.e. that only the portion between the in/out points will actually end up on the disk.
Having said that if you had one instance with the in/out points at the start and end of this compilation video and others with different in/out points then it may indeed work.

Each instance can have its own end actions and be called from menu buttons.

Bob.

MV10 - I'll put together a graphical flow-chart illustrating my project objectives. Hopefully that will get us all on the same page. This probably seems more complicated than actually is - in so far as my intended design goes; then again maybe not. Give me a couple of hours - I'll need to brew a large pot of coffee first!!

Thanks MV!
Steve M.

PS - A big thanks to everyone who has generously shared their time and wisdom with me on this!! The depth and complexity of proper video production/DVD authoring is really fascinating; if I weren't under the proverbial gun at this immoderately late stage of my project, I'd actually enjoy this! I raise my glass - cheers!

Bob you're right, the manual says it render out parts of the mpeg with the in/out points. I didn't actually prepare, just based my idea on what it said it would prepare.

I've done some DVD's with 50 or so clips on the disc and haven't had issues. I did a lot of play a small clip then go back to the menu or, in some cases, go to another video. When I add all my videos to the disc I don't add them to a menu, I add them all to the first entry (disc? DVD? I forget) in the disc tree on the left side of the preview window. Maybe that makes a difference.

[I]" I've done some DVD's with 50 or so clips on the disc and haven't had issues."[/I]

Same here and several hundred were sold at a good price too. I only burned them on my tower burner as well, no complaints from anyone. Musicvid is saying when he's tried doing the same he had multiple issues which is curious, I cannot think really of any reason why. TBH pretty well every reported issue I've had with DVDs I've made have turned out to be dying DVD players, oh, and one bug in DVDA that's very easily fixed.

Now that I've had a chance to fully recollect the one reasonably complex DVD that had play all / play one etc. I'm very glad I did it the way I did. Because each video for each game was a separate entity it made changes fairly painless. Edit the original Vegas project, render our and re-author. If I'd managed to get it to work using in/out points with just one video any change would have involved a considerable amount of work. Potentially all the in/out points would have to be redone.

Bob.

Wow, this took way longer than I thought - I hope this clarifies my project design objectives once and for all!

http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/pcasttv/media/1flowchart_zpsc1afc0e5.jpg.html

http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/pcasttv/media/2flowchart_zps0a49c26f.jpg.html?sort=3&o=1

http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/pcasttv/media/3flowchart_zps2a3b9506.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

Please be sure to fully enlarge these in your browsers - they're big but hopefully fully explanatory!!

Thanks again,
Steve M.

To provide a bit more detail, I have six DVD players, all work fine with commercial media and burned single layer discs. A couple lag / choke on burned DL discs. Only one (the Apex I think) worked the way I wanted with dozens of titles on burned discs. My biggest complaints were long lags and getting lost between titles, sometimes needing the power cycled to restore the menu.

I believe that the problems are magnified by more complex end actions on interconnected menu grids, as Steve and Ben Nash seem to have tried, as well as the guy who was trying to replicate Laserdisc behavior the same way. My attempts at this, besides burning through a lot of test media, resulted in a lot of frustration, and involuntary jaw-clenching whenever I see someone else trying it (sorry). On the other hand, I'm sure there are some for whom this approach works fine, just that it doesn't work for everybody.

Now, with a few title submenus on a radial map (out and back from the main menu), this seems to work reasonably well on my players, but I was still unhappy with the seek times using burned discs on a some of the players.

So, in addition to the usual precautions (which have been discussed separately), aggravating factors "may" include, but are not limited to:
-- Burned discs in general
-- Burned Dual Layer discs in particular
-- A large number of titles (in the dozens)
-- Interlinked titles with different media / render properties ?
-- Complex menu / end action structure, mapped on a grid as opposed to a simple radial pattern
-- Titles linking to a subset of titles, as opposed to chapters ?
-- Individual player models and how they handle titles indigenously
-- The daily position of Venus in relation to Sirius

If there are inadequacies in my thinking and recollections here, it is due to fuzzy memories of something I worked on a long time ago, and hadn't really intended to revisit.

"Many" commercial movies, esp. newer ones it seems, have returned to more simple menu structures -- i.e., four or five destinations from the main menu, whose submenus don't interact with other titles, except to return home. Some of the older ones with very complex menu structures used to give me fits too.

That being said, it would be a worthwhile investigation to see how commercial workout, instructional, and reference videos handle this structurally. There is a need for "return-home" chapter / scene behavior, but it's not apparent in the literature what the best way to do this is. I'm sure my loss of patience is showing, but I pretty much gave up on it some time back.