Slight pause between "first play" and the first menu.

Sticky Fingaz wrote on 5/28/2004, 8:05 AM
I have an intro on my DVD that obviously goes right into the main menu, but there's a slight pause in between the two, making the "seamless" introduction seem pretty ugly. I know I've seen DVD's that had an intro turn into a menu without a gap, so I am wondering if it's possible with DVDA or not, or is just a limitation on something else.

Thanks in advance folks!

Comments

richard-courtney wrote on 5/28/2004, 3:57 PM
The seamless method usually involves putting the intro and menu in the
same titleset but with different cell ids. DVDA does not use this method.
The player must jump around reading different files and causes the delay.

I am working on a utility to split the titleset into two cells and enable the
buttons only in the second cell. I want to be able to fade menu buttons
into view in most of my projects. When it is ready I will let everyone know.
kameronj wrote on 5/28/2004, 4:02 PM
RCourtney....sound like an interesting utility. WIll look forward to checking it out.

But to answer the initial post - I have created dozens of DVDs with intro media that goes very nicely from the intro to the main menu. Very seamless infact.

But I'm pretty sure if I took the same DVD to, let's say my mother's house and put it in her DVD player....I may get a totally different experience.

So..yes, it's possible with DVD1 (and 2). But Rcourtney's utility may be a better bet.
Sticky Fingaz wrote on 5/29/2004, 8:05 AM
Ah so your saying it may be my DVD player and to try a different one?
ro_max wrote on 5/29/2004, 9:40 AM
Yes, that might explain what you see. I have about seven different set-top players and they differ in seek times, fast forward speed and ability to cope with difficult disks (both burned as well as commercial). For example: one (Toshiba 210) does not play mpeg audio on a dvd but does so on a VCD and SVCD. Go figure.
kameronj wrote on 5/29/2004, 12:46 PM
Ah so your saying it may be my DVD player and to try a different one?

What I'm saying is:

RCourtney....sound like an interesting utility. WIll look forward to checking it out.

But to answer the initial post - I have created dozens of DVDs with intro media that goes very nicely from the intro to the main menu. Very seamless infact.

But I'm pretty sure if I took the same DVD to, let's say my mother's house and put it in her DVD player....I may get a totally different experience.

So..yes, it's possible with DVD1 (and 2). But Rcourtney's utility may be a better bet.
JSWTS wrote on 5/29/2004, 8:16 PM
DVD-A doesn't support delayed subpicture appearance, which is what most Hollywood dvd's use to give the delayed appearance of buttons/menu highlights. They frequently have a build up of the background and graphics with eventual appearance of the options for button selection. It's (the menu options/text) generally built into the motion graphics background, and the subpicture for button selection is only a highlight. That's why the text can look so smooth (subpictures can only be 4 colors, leaving non-aliased edges). DVD-A doesn't allow you to define the timing of the subpicture appearance, so you have to 'fake' it with the first play intro into your main menu. On computers it will probably be a very fast transition, if not seamless. On set top players the transition from one video clip to the next will result in a short pause. The length of that pause will vary from player to player, looking better (shorter pause) on some than others.

Jim
24Peter wrote on 5/31/2004, 9:15 AM
I tried creating my menu with fading buttons, etc. in Vegas and then using invisible (transparent) buttons on the video in DVDA2. Kind of worked except you couldn't have any active highlight until the button was actually pressed so I opted for text buttons that appeared right away but let the graphics fade in behind them.
Sticky Fingaz wrote on 5/31/2004, 9:56 PM
The only problem I see with this is, doesn't the "intro" that fades into the menu repeat itself when the whole menu repeats?
richard-courtney wrote on 6/3/2004, 6:10 AM
That is where the bulk of the problem exists and where the logic to
modify the flow is taking so long.

I posted a partial solution in
this thread.
JSWTS wrote on 6/3/2004, 6:24 AM
One of the ways you can avoid having the intro graphics play over and over would be to create an identical looking menu, but without the intro piece. You would have the original motion menu with fade in of text/etc as your first menu, but set the end action of the menu to lead into the duplicate menu (but without the fade in portion) and have that menu loop on itself (thus avoiding the replay of the fade in buttons).

Jim