Motion Transition Secrets?

jkrepner wrote on 1/5/2006, 7:34 AM

I've been making short menu transition movies that play between menus and the movies they link to, but there is a very long delay between the time you click on the link and the actual time the movie starts.

It works almost instantly when previewing in DVDA3c, but is delayed when playing on a DVD player. Even highend players have a long delay. Is there any secrets to speed this up? Would adding the transition videos to the DVD first speed un increase times? (That's just random thought) Would lowering/increasing the size/data rate of the trans video change things? Hollywood movies and some stuff I've seen from DVD Studio pro seem much "snappier."

Any thoughts are appreciated as always.

Jeff

Comments

ScottW wrote on 1/5/2006, 8:25 AM

This is a function of the player (and physics), and to some degree the authoring software and how you author. No matter what, the laser must change location on the disk, and this takes a finite amount of time.

One thing that may help is if you create your transitions as a menu, rather than a standalone video clip. Standalone video clips will end up in their own VOB's, and the DVD player must do a lot more work to locate things. Video for menus is generally all combined into a single VOB so the player can find things much easier.

The transition menu would just have the video as the background, along with a hidden button - the end action on the menu will be to activate the button. So when a button is selected on one menu, you actually go to another menu (with the transition) and then to a third menu (or video) which is the actual destination. Just keep in mind that all of your video/audio for your menus must be less than 1GB.

Another alternative with DVDA3 would be to create the transition as your intro to the menu (see below).

A technique that a lot of commercial stuff uses, is to break the motion menu up into 3 cells: intro, body and exit. The intro plays, the menu loops within the body and then when a button is pressed, the exit is played. Unfortunately, DVDA only lets us break things up into 2 cells: Intro and body. Having the exit cell available is nice because it's very easy for the DVD player to find and you can create almost seemless transitions (as long as you are willing to use the same exit video/audio for everything - which you'll note that most commercial stuff does).

--Scott

jkrepner wrote on 1/5/2006, 11:09 AM

Scott, that's an excellent idea to use a hidden button menu with a background video instead of a separate video file. That might be just the thing I need to speed things up just a hair. I wouldn't be anywhere near the 1GB limit either.

The second suggestion is a little foreign to me. I guess I didn't realize that each menu could have an intro video, I thought that it was just one for the main menu -- but that, of course, would be the first play video.

I guess as one gets more creative with this technique, they can create menus in DVDA, copy the menu to a clip board, open in vegas and then create different trans videos for each link (say a video "flying" us from the main menu to a scene select menu). I would then take this trans video from main menu to scene select menu and set it to be the first play on my scene select menu and it will be a little faster since the DVD player will know where to look for it. Right?

Thanks again!
Jeff

bStro wrote on 1/5/2006, 11:44 AM

That idea of using a menu as the transition is pretty brilliant. Have you done that yourself, and is it seamless (or almost seamless) on the players you've tried?

Rob

bStro wrote on 1/5/2006, 11:47 AM

I guess I didn't realize that each menu could have an intro video

I believe Scott's referring to the "loop point" option that was added in 3.0. Open the timeline for any menu, and you'll see a green line at the beginning. That determines at which (um) point that the menu (well) loops. Drag that line further into the timeline, and anything before that point will act as an "intro" for the menu. (This is different from the introductory item assigned to the project in general.)

ScottW wrote on 1/5/2006, 11:49 AM

The intro/body cell stuff, DVDA3 calls delayed menu buttons, or setting a menu loop point - check the help info, if you use the index tab, type the word delayed and you'll find the scoop.

ScottW wrote on 1/5/2006, 12:03 PM

Rob, yeah, a long, long time ago I did a couple of projects like that with DVDA 2.0, and my memory says it looked ok. With 3.0 it would be just as easy to build the transition into the beginning of the video for the destination motion menu and set the loop point. Admittedly, I rarely use DVDA for projects with complex menus, I usually switch to DVD Lab Pro.

jkrepner wrote on 1/5/2006, 2:01 PM

Okay, I got it now. I didn't realize that the loop point was actually tied to the menu on the timeline. It's all making sense now. Example: a 30sec menu might que from 0:00, but when it ends, it starts again from the loop point, say at 2:00. The first 2 sec would actually be my trans video that is built in to the menu.

Very interesting stuff. Thanks guys.
Jeff

jkrepner wrote on 1/7/2006, 11:01 AM

Scott,
Using your transition menu w/ background video vs. the transition video by itself has sped up the preview by about 50%! That's awesome!

I'll report back after I burn a disk - but so far it will cut the delay in half. This makes motion menus a usable possibility now (I hope).

Thanks so much!
Jeff

ScottW wrote on 1/7/2006, 12:20 PM

Preview isn't really a good indication of how things will look on the DVD. In some cases preview can do things much quicker than the DVD, on other cases preview may have to do a lot more work than a DVD player would.

jkrepner wrote on 1/7/2006, 2:35 PM

Okay, I burned a test DVD and it seems way faster using the transition menu instead of the transition video.

That was a great tip.

Thanks.