Change Camera Angle question

levis wrote on 10/25/2007, 6:51 AM
Hello, I have a project in DVDA 4.0 where I would like to give the user ability to change camera angles. I see there is an option to do this by inserting multiple tracks in the timeline then changing camera angles using the remote on the DVD player. The downside it seems, is that this function is not available on all DVD players (including mine).

So my question is - would it be possible to write a script that would emulate this feature by placing a button on the video offering the user to switch camera angles when selecting this button?
Ideally the video would switch over seamlessly to the alternate angle when the button is selected.

The only other work around that I can think of if this isn't possilbe, is to insert a button on the video that links to a separate media file. The downside of this option of course is that the video would link to the beginning of the chapter, plus this would double the disc space used.

Any suggestions you may have would be greatly appreciated,
Thank you,
Carolyn

Comments

MPM wrote on 10/26/2007, 8:10 PM
IMHO angles are a bit rare now-days, being often replaced by what MAC DVD Studio Pro calls "Stories", or what Encore calls "Chapter Play Lists"

You see a DVD title is actually just a list of cells (think chapters) to play, and in what order. By changing that list around you can have one video play all sorts of ways. I think you are limited in being able to only target chapters, and there can be a delay because of scripting, even though you're still playing the same video, just switching titles. Keeping the bit rate down a bit can help.

I've no idea how you'd target a time inside a cell (chapter) for the switch to appear seamless, or if it could be accomplished. The player displays the duration, and where you are in that duration, but I *think* this is an internal function of the player, possibly based on timestamps in the video, but more importantly I don't *think* it's stored in any register that the DVD's script has access to.
http://dvd.sourceforge.net/dvdinfo/ has info on SPRMs -- registers the DVD can access through it's scripting.

You can use BOV to handle the switch. You can use graphic subs or BOV that come on when a switch is available, and you can force those on or let the viewer turn them on/off.

The down side is that you can only duplicate the titles on a menu in DVDA -- you have to do additional editing of the title PGC in PgcEdit to change the list and/or order of cells to play.

I'd also suggest that you should do a lot of testing -- you *might* want to create separate sections of video, then join them in Cuttermaran or similar, then tweak the audio back in Vegas. Sometimes jumping over chapters with a stand-alone player a slight bit of artifacting is noticed, I *think* because of the P & B frames in continuous video... You shouldn't have this in separate joined segments, and don't have it when cut-editing mpg2 in Cuttermaran.

In a nutshell then, scripts are only available when you do something. If you use BOV that would qualify, but then you can only easily jump to a chapter in another title, and the scripting needed is already laid down by DVDA. Instead of duplicating the full title video & burning it to disc twice, adding a chapter of video a, then a chapter of video b, etc., you have just one video file -- essentially how angles in DVDA work. After rendering the DVD to hdd, editing in PgcEdit you then order and eliminate chapters/cells. The trickiest part is plotting this all out beforehand... Title a might be cell 1 -> 3 -> 6, but the chapters as far as your menus and links go would be chapters 1, 2, & 3 when you're done.