Which DVD authoring application is good at seamless branching?

[AnitaPeterson]

Hi there,

I was wondering if any of the DVD authoring applications currently on the market is good enough to make seamless branching DVDs.

There is a certain film which I love, and I have it in two versions - one is on LD, and is unavailable on DVD in its original form, the other is a HDTV capture, but it's a Director's Cut version. Two scenes (one being at the very end) are different - one in each version - and the theatrical cut has a different soundtrack.

I'm wondering how hard would it be to make a seamless branching disc with both versions.

Let's say someone uses the pristine HD version of the Director's cut as main source, and then:
1) adds the extra audio where appropriate, as an alternative track;
2) cuts the extra scene (that is, separates it) and adds the "original ending" from the best available LD source of the original (video-enhanced and cleaned, to match the rest as best as possible);
3) allow the end-user to watch either version from the main menu at the beginning - Just like in the case of the original DVDs for "The Abyss" and "Independence Day".

Of course, I'm looking at a dual-layer disc.

How feasible is this?

Which DVD authoring package would allow it? Would there be considerable (and noticeable) lags during the scene-switching?

[adam]

You don't need seamless branching for that. Any DVD authoring software that allows multi title authoring can accomplish this, you just won't be able to jump back and forth between the two versions once you've selected one.

Its really not very difficult to author such a DVD.

Separate out the extra scenes from your HDTV source but keep your cut points. In other words you'll have movie up until the first extra scene. Call this A. Then you have movie following the extra up until the next extra. Call this B. Label your two additional scenes C and D and the original ending E.

Now to author the original cut you'd create a title and add your scenes in this order. A,B, E.

To author the director's cut you'd do them in this order. A, C, B, D.

Which title you play is determined by your menu and those parts similar to both titles (A and B) are only stored once. If you set the jumps between scenes to seamless (whether you can do this depends on authoring software) then there will be no lag between the scenes.

[AnitaPeterson]

Excellent! thanks!

[Mirkoschieder]

What if I wanted the DVD to jump back into the original program like in the White-rabbit-feature on the matrix DVD?

[guns1inger]

I believe there are only three that actually support it in any fashion - Scenarist and DVD Lab Pro on the PC, and DVD Studio Pro on the Mac. There are also certain extra rules that need to be followed when encoding your material to ensure correct authoring. These involve GOPs (closed), bitrates and GOP lengths.

You could also do what you are after with chapter playlists if you encode everything into a single title. You can then create a different playlist for each version. This is how the X-Files dvds incorporated deleted scenes.

DLP can also do BOV (button Over Video) to give you the complete "White Rabbit" effect.