Turning Subtitles Off by Menu Button

PeterWright wrote on 4/28/2011, 11:42 PM
I've written to Support and the DVDA Forum, but in the meantime ...

A client has asked to have subtitles that can be turned on or off by a menu switch, and I have done this almost successfully by adding two empty buttons and having “Set subtitle track” for these buttons set to Track 1 and Off respectively.

The problem is that I want this to apply throughout the disc, which has meant setting the Button Properties for all media links to “No change” for the Set Subtitle Track controls.

This works fine for all of the Five separate clips I have on the disc, but I also have a “Play All” Button which activates a Playlist containing the same Five clips, and even though I have gone through each item on the Playlist and changed “Set subtitle track” to No Change, the subtitles are always on when I click Play All, even after clicking the Subtitles OFF button. It switches subtitles Off for all the separate clips, but not for these same clips in the Play All playlist.

Assistance would be most appreciated.

Comments

farss wrote on 4/29/2011, 5:51 AM
Instead of using a playlist create another instance of the 5 clips and set the end action of each clip to play the next clip you want played.
DVDA is smart enough to not add two physical copies of the clips onto the disk so you will not blow out the amount of data.

I don't know if this will get around your problem or not. The one time I've used subtitle tracks I hit a problem with the control of them as well. Worked as expected from the remote but not using menu buttons and I have to say the DVDA manual is very light on details in this area.

Bob.
PeterWright wrote on 4/29/2011, 8:33 AM
Thanks Bob - sounds a good suggestion - I'll try a rebuild in the morning.

Shame really - I haven't used Playlist before, and I like it's neatness, but if for some reason it won't play properly with subtitles, then time to move on ....

Peter
Former user wrote on 4/29/2011, 11:23 AM
The button determines whether subtitle is changed. Are you sure that your PLAYLIST BUTTON isn't turning subtitles on.

Dave T2
PeterWright wrote on 4/29/2011, 5:19 PM
Dave - you nailed it! Thanks a million!

It was under the "Playlist Item" tab on the right after highlighting the Playlist Name in the Navigation Panel - I had been concentrating on the setting for each individual item within the Playlist, but there it was. Thanks again.

One other related point - the Client wanted to have Subtitles ON by default, then switchable OFF or back ON by two Menu buttons. I've told them that this is not possible, since the "No change" setting is necessary, but it can be done if they're all set to ON, and the Remote is used to turn them OFF or ON. I hope that's right...

Peter
farss wrote on 4/29/2011, 5:49 PM
You could have a hidden button that's activated at startup that turns them On or you could have a startup script that turns them on?

Bob.
PeterWright wrote on 4/29/2011, 6:08 PM
They sound interesting possibilities Bob. I'll have a read and see if I can find how ...

Peter
Former user wrote on 4/29/2011, 6:35 PM
Read about scripts, You can have a script run before the first menu that turns subitles on.

also under project properties, there are defaults. I don't know if the subtitle default actually turns it on, or just assigns the default subtitle track. You might play with that.


Dave T2
PeterWright wrote on 4/29/2011, 7:53 PM
Thanks Dave - I just tried the Properties approach, but as you guessed, it just assigns the subtitle track rather than actually turns it on, so I'll start reading up on scripts...

edit: I've just read that a project can contain up to 4,095 scripts. That's comforting.
PeterWright wrote on 4/29/2011, 9:22 PM
Well, I can't quite believe it, but I seem to have created my first script, and it appears to work!

I inserted a Script and rightclicked to make it First Play, which activates it before the Other First Play media. Then it was a matter of "writing" the actual script.

To be honest, there wasn't any "real" writing involved - after reading the Help files, I selected from two drop down windows and created a script that reads simply: Setstreams subtitle:1

First test failed, then I realised I had to use Preview Disc (Ctrl + F9) rather than Preview Current.

Everything seemed fine, then when I went to Burn I got the Warning:
"Subtitles On (The name I gave to the script) is orphaned and not reachable."

I guessed this was because it's not a script activated from a Menu Button, so I took a breath and went ahead, and everything seems to work fine.

Thanks Dave and Bob.

Now I'm getting particular. When "Subtitles" is clicked from the Main Menu, the On and Off buttons "appear" (it's really a different menu).

Final (hopefully) question. Is it possible to have the "Off" button highlighted if Subtitles were previously On, and the "On" button highlighted if they're Off?

Peter
PeterWright wrote on 4/29/2011, 10:38 PM
Oh dear..... just when everything was going well...

The burned disc plays fine in a set top player on tv, but not in Media Player on PC.

In my XP machine, I got a message saying I needed to buy a DVD decoder for Media Player, so I spent $20 and downloaded one from Roxio, but it still doesn't work - just a black screen and no action.

On my Windows 7 machine it goes straight to the black screen.

Both of these PCs play other DVDs ok, so I assume it's something to do with the First Play script that is preventing it from playing. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that an earlier version of the same project, without the script, still plays ok.

On my Laptop (XP) I have Intervideo DVD Playing software and it works fine.

So it's Media Player - but there will probably be many end users trying to play in Media Player, so I have to sort this out. Any ideas?
Grazie wrote on 4/29/2011, 11:44 PM
Pete, can you squeeze in a WMV file onto the DVD and the DVD still be compliant with the DVD structure for a STB to play the DVD side of things?

Trying to keep things simple here . . .

Grazie

PeterWright wrote on 4/30/2011, 12:01 AM
Hi Grazie - there's plenty of room on the DVD - do you mean just add a WMV to the root directory? I'll try, but I would guess that this would play the wmv without getting into the DVD structure. Worth a try though ......

The big thing is that this same DVD, with it's First Play script turning Subtitles on, plays perfectly in other PC software such as Intervideo, and on TV with a set top player, so it seems to be a problem with WMP and First Play scripts, as it still plays other DVDs fine on the same machines.

edit: to show how bad Windows Media Player is in this respect, I installed a very ancient version of Power DVD - version 6 - they're now up to v10, I think - on both machines that were refusing to play the DVD, and it plays in both with Power DVD.
Former user wrote on 4/30/2011, 4:38 AM
Peter, to have the correct button hightlighted, you have to get into scripts again and use the GPRM and if>then statements.

When the first script runs, set GPRM1 to 1
Then if GPRM=1, then HIGHLIGHT BUTTON ON
then when you push button off run a script that sets GPRM to 2
same statement if GPRM=2, then HIGHLIGHT BUTTON OFF.

this is simplified to show you the basics. It has been a while since I actually did it so it might be a little different.

GPRM stands for General Parameter
SPRM is system Parameter
In SPRM, you can actually read the state of the DVD player, such as whether subtitles are off or on, what region the player is set for (to show a different legal screen if it is in Japan for example) and other things. I don't beleive DVDA allows access to all parameters, but to to some of the more useful ones.


Dave T2
johnmeyer wrote on 4/30/2011, 6:52 AM
If you still have any problems with subtitles, feel free to email me. I have done LOTS of DVDs with subtitles and have found several bugs having to do with how they turn on and off. You can search the forums for "subtitle" and my user name ("johnmeyer"). The main things are this:

1. You can set the initial state of the subtitles in the Project Properties of DVDA. This sometimes helps, but is not the definitive way to set the initial state. Search for my user name in the following thread, and you'll see the dialog setting I'm talking about:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=22&MessageID=617064

2. If you have multiple MPEG-2 files, you need to add a subtitle track to each one, even if you are not using subtitles on some of the MPEG-2 tracks. You can create a subtitle track that has one subtitle event which contains nothing but space characters, if you don't want anything to actually display for that MPEG-2 file. If you don't have a subtitle track associated with a particular MPEG-2 file, it used to be that DVDA would re-set the state of the subtitles. That "bug" may be fixed now.

3. There are a couple of other bugs that may or may not be fixed in the latest DVDA (I haven't yet installed it). The bug that relates to turning subtitles on and off is this one:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=22&MessageID=655632

It has to do with which language you set as the subtitle track. You can read this and decide whether it applies to you. The problem only seemed to happen if you changed from the default "unspecified" for the language and instead specified a specific language ("English" in my case). This affects what some DVD players display when the user manually sets the subtitle track using his/her remote. BTW, you have to remember that the state of subtitles CAN and WILL be changed outside of what your menu structure controls, and therefore you cannot rely on the state of the subtitles being the same as what you set within your menus, scripts, or media attributes. Thus, you should always assume that the state of the subtitle is in an indeterminate state.

4. You can use script statements to turn subtitles on and off. You then assign this script to run when the DVD starts (do this in the project properties) or when a menu is accesses, or when media is played. All you need is a

SetStreams subtitle: off

statement to turn them off. Scripts sound intimidating but they are actually amazingly easy, and starting with a one-line script like this will show you how they work.
PeterWright wrote on 4/30/2011, 9:34 PM
Thanks Dave - I'm going to have a play around to try and get the alternating highlighting working, but this won't be a crucial issue, whereas not being able to play the disc in WMP is crucial, and I need to solve this before completion.

If I can I'd like to ask some more specific questions about the scripting you mentioned. At present I have the First play script (Setstreams subtitle:1) which turns them on, and when the Menu with the Subtitle Buttons is accessed, the "Off" button is highlighted by default.

Firstly, where do I place and how do I activate a second script which highlights the On button after the Off one has been activated? I should mention that as soon as either the Off or On buttons are clicked, it returns to the previous menu, so the On and Off buttons seem to "disappear", but I'd ideally like the alternate button to be highlighted if and when they return to the "On and Off" menu.

Sorry to ask such a convoluted question - it's early days with DVDA scripting for me, but having got started I'm keen to progress!

Peter
PeterWright wrote on 5/1/2011, 10:47 PM
Just wanted to post an update - I now have more or less the DVD I want, and it plays in Windows Media Player. I got rid of the First Play script, which for some reason prevented it playing in WMP, and set the default subtitle track in Properties to 1. Previously I had reported that this didn't seem to put subtitles On, but I was wrong. The reason was that I had been clicking the Preview button and finding that subtitles had not been switched on. Now, however, if I click Preview/Disc, it does in fact turn them on - I just hadn't realised that was necessary to get the defaults happening.

So just about everything's been solved. I am still trying to get the alternating highlights between the subtitles On and Off buttons working, with a script and help from Dave above and a couple of emails from John Meyer - thanks guys - but if I don't get my head around this by tomorrow, I'm going ahead and getting the first 500 replicated.

I expect most of you at some time have been in this situation - deadline approaching and things going right then wrong then right again .... life is good - I think it might catch on.
Peter
ushere wrote on 5/1/2011, 11:34 PM
well done peter.....

was very interested to learn how you did it. might prove very useful to know on a forthcoming project.

Former user wrote on 5/2/2011, 6:45 AM
Your script would end up looking something like this.

GPRM1=SPRM2 (subtitle track) -Here we are setting the variable of GPRM1 to match the condition of the subtitle track

if (GPRM1=64) the link page:'Menu2', button '1:Link - David Turner Demo (1:Scene/Chapter)' -Here we have said if GPRM=64,which is the value if Subtitle 1 is turned on, then link to a Menu in which the Button 1 is the HIGHLIGHTED SUbTITLE ON Button

Link page: 'Menu2', button '2:Link - David Turner Demo (1:Scene/Chapter) -HEre you don't need an IF statement because there are only two conditions you are interested in. IF it is not 64, then it should be 0 which is off. NOw there is a chance it got toggled to another subtitlte track in which case you may want an IF statement. This links to the same menu but highlights the OFF button.

HTH

Dave T2

PeterWright wrote on 5/2/2011, 7:15 AM
Much appreciated Dave,

I'll try and digest all that in the morning - I'm very happy to have got into scripting in DVDA, and I'm looking forward to the challenge to create my script no 2.

Peter

( once I try doing this, there may well be more questions!)
NickHope wrote on 10/27/2012, 7:20 AM
I just made a long post here on the DVDA forum about how I dealt with this issue.

(Please reply over there).
videoITguy wrote on 10/27/2012, 10:26 AM
Nick Hope, Your investigation is brilliant and I thank you. I had no idea about the differences of authoring in DVDA3 - but see my post at the end of your thread post in the other forum.
videoITguy wrote on 10/28/2012, 7:53 AM
This is a thread bump based on need to update basis:

From Thread Subject: RE: Subtitles "off" does not work on Sharp pl
Reply by: videoITguy Date: 10/28/2012 5:47:24 AM

Nick Hope, I make it a common practice of mine to REVERSE engineer commercial DVD /Blu-ray titles and that is in fact how I found out about the placement of entirely empty track. SO you may be surprised what you will learn.

Over the many years of DVD commercial production, there have been many authoring systems come and go. Just as in the amateur arena. There are many standard practices that have come and gone as well. The very first authoring system I worked on was called "Spruce" - do you recall that one?

By the way, as I author almost exclusively Blu-ray now - I have began to get out of the subtitle business and switch to using multi-angle for title info on tracks. From the standpoint of the customer- it is actually an easier interface for them with remote control in hand. I found you can offer a 2 angle track at nearly the same quality as a conventional single track.