"End actions" == "Next chapter" button

RichMacDonald wrote on 5/24/2004, 11:19 AM
In another thread, we learned that DVDA2 does not support auto-actions for buttons. This prevents me from using DVDA2 to create "film-strip look" navigations for my DVDs. So I'm now using Vegas to create my DVD backgrounds, but exploring other DVD creation tools. This weekend I tried DVDLab: Out of 17 clips, it did the first 15 correctly then failed to transition the 16th. Beats me what the problem was. Next I tried Encore, which worked perfectly except for one problem: "End actions" are not the same thing as "next chapter". So even though you can organize your clips to play one after the other, you cannot use the "next chapter" button to skip to the next clip.

Well actually its a bit more involved. The Encore preview showed that the next chapter button was inactive. The PowerDVD software did use the next chapter button. My Apex DVD player did use the next chapter button. My friends very expensive Sony DVD player did not use the next chapter button. Oh the joys of player incompatibilities and/or better "error checking" in the navigation code.

So I see three options:

1) Render everything as a single clip and use chapter navigation. This is not practical, as I have 30 clips and 10 different DVDs to make, each with different clip sequences.

2) See if I hack the Encore DVD VOB to treat the "next chapter" remote button as an end action.

3) See if I can hack the DVDA2 DVD VOB to turn the buttons into "auto-action". I have no idea if this is possible. I don't know if the DVD spec treats "auto-action" as a button attribute or if it requires an entirely different navigation algorithm.

Before I attempt (3), I need to know if DVDA treats the "next chapter as an end action. I have the demo and can test this, but I'm sure someone has already figured this one out.

So two questions and TIA:

A) In DVDA, are "end actions" the same as the "next chapter" button on the remote?

B) Anyone know what it takes to hack "auto-action" into a button?

Comments

RichMacDonald wrote on 5/25/2004, 5:32 PM
Bump...sorry, guess I was too obtuse in my explanation of the problem: This potentially impacts DVDA2 as well.

Given that you are using DVDA2 to generate a "play all" feature to chain a series of clips together using end-actions, will the user be able to jump back and forth between clips using the "previous" and "next" buttons on the remote?

I suspect this may not work for all players because some players treat the previous/next buttons as "previous chapter" and "next chapter". Since your clips only contain one chapter, these buttons are inactive. This is the case for 2 out of 3 DVD players I've tested so far with Encore, albeit not with DVDA2.

I can't test this with the trial version of DVDA2. I setup a test project and the preview mode *does* work, but I cannot prepare a test DVD for the true test.

Something we need to know, right :-?

Hopefully, Sony can verify that they generate the additional navigation code to work on all the stupid DVD players as well as the smart ones. Or perhaps a user has already verified this with a stupid DVD player?
johnmeyer wrote on 5/25/2004, 6:22 PM
Get DVDA. Despite many problems about which I have posted, it can do many, many things that I suspect will not be possible with Encore. I don't know about DVD Lab.

I need to know if DVDA treats the "next chapter as an end action.

The real issue here is not just Encore, DVDA, or DVD Lab, but how the DVD spec works. You can, speaking in very broad terms, either create a portion of your DVD that uses one piece of media, broken up by chapter stops, or you can put each piece of media in a separate title. On a given DVD, you can do a combination of both these things. If, either in the authoring program or in Vegas, you put everything into the same title, then everything plays continuously. There is no "end action" because nothing has ended; the playback is in the middle of the media. A chapter stop is not the beginning or end of anything; it is just a signpost. Thus, no endpoint at chapter stops.

If you want play to stop, pause, or give the user some sort of choice, you have to create your project so that each piece of media becomes a separate title. In DVDA 2.0, this is simple: You just start a menu-based DVD and drag each MPEG/AC-3 combination to the main menu. Then, you create an end action for each one, which defines what will happen when that media finishes playing. If you want an end action within an MPEG file that already exists, then the only way I know to do that is to split the file (perhaps with Womble's MPEG Wizard) and then import the two pieces.

It is possible that some authoring programs (like DVD Lab) will do this split for you. I haven't used Encore or DVD Lab, so I don't know.

In DVDA, are "end actions" the same as the "next chapter" button on the remote?

See above answer. The answer for any authoring program, including DVDA, is that you can define an end action to go to the next chapter (and DVDA 2.0 does this), but you cannot cause a chapter stop to create an end action.

will the user be able to jump back and forth between clips using the "previous" and "next" buttons on the remote?

If the DVD is authored with the media in separate titles, then DVDA 2.0 lets you define that the remote chapter + - buttons will go to the next or previous title (this is the default behavior). As you surmise, however, not all DVD players use the chapter buttons to move between titles.
RichMacDonald wrote on 5/25/2004, 9:03 PM
>Get DVDA. Despite many problems about which I have posted, it can do many, many things that I suspect will not be possible with Encore.

Thanks John. I understand. I don't like DVDLab. I don't like Encore. I do like DVDA apart from its rough edges. I haven't posted to your other threads about the problems with DVDA because I'd be redundant and I think its rude to complain when I haven't yet spent the dough myself to get DVDA...but let me now say that I have agreed with you 100% on everything you've said.

Then again, I have basically settled on the "film-clip look" as my standard pattern. Its the simplest possible navigation and the pictures are big enough to see clearly. I tried the "many chapters on each page" look but never liked the way one had to scroll to the previous and next buttons and could not control the default-selected button. DVDA did it better than any other tool, but I was unhappy with the results. So my problem with DVDA is that it doesn't provide the auto-action buttons I need for the film-clip look. Hopefully next release.

>There is no "end action" because nothing has ended; the playback is in the middle of the media. A chapter stop is not the beginning or end of anything; it is just a signpost. Thus, no endpoint at chapter stops.

And some players are smart enough to execute the end-action when there is no following chapter and some are not. Sheesh, what a mess. If there really is no way for an authoring tool to compensate, then we're all SOL: It seems like catenating the clips into a single clip then using chapters is the only solution. You've mentioned Womble before. I've used TMPGenc but its a crapshoot if the audio is going to remain in sync. And such a time-waster to check everything.