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  1. Member
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    Working in DVDlab PRO. I have a motion menu with the buttons already integrated as part of the video. There is also an audio track in the motion menu, and both the video and audio tracks are the same length. Both video and audio tracks span three menu cells, defined as follows :

    Cell #1 : Three seconds long; this portion of video does not contain the buttons. Leads directly to cell #2.
    No button highlights are defined in this cell.

    Cell #2 : About 41 seconds long; this section of video contains the buttons. Leads directly to cell #3.
    Several button highlights and their links to the movie have been defined in this cell.

    Cell #3 : About 41 seconds long; this section of video contains the buttons (same as cell #2) and is set to loop.
    Several button highlights and their links to the movie have been defined in this cell, the same as cell #2.

    The effect should be that the button highlights do not appear in the motion menu until the start of cell #2 and persist throuth cell #2 and the looping cell #3, but when I test build the DVD, the button highlights never appear when the motion menu gets to cell #2 or #3.

    Any ideas, please ? Thanks much !

    TheCap
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  2. Member DB83's Avatar
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    I have not made a motion menu with dvd lab pro only a static one but I would expect the principle to be the same as the video is just a backdrop for the menu buttons.

    But have I interpretated your comments correctly when you say "with the buttons already integrated as part of the video". I take that to mean that you have pre-encoded your motion background with objects in place to represent the buttons ???

    In the authoring packages I have used to make motion menus the motion background and menu buttons are seperate objects - you add the buttons on to the background and link them from there. If dlp does this differently then I stand back.

    But even so I can not see how you can have a single menu with the first part having no buttons. I would have thought the way to do this is to have three videos/menus representing each part. The first simply links to the second(like a 'first play video') and with the buttons drawn on to the background they surely must then appear.
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    The buttons that are integrated into the video are images that are part of the video itself. The buttons that I'm adding with DLP are supposed to behave as highlights to the button images that are already "in" the motion video menu.

    I'm unaware how any DLP objects would function (ie. links, navigation, etc) if they were simply rendered into the motion menu video itself - I'd lose control over them, wouldn't I, since they'd be just pixels in the video frames ? The DLP buttons (highlights over video) are still "programmable" in DLP, even as they lay over the button images already in the video.
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    To a degree you are correct - you can not create a link to a pixel, or group of pixels, in a video.

    The buttons already integrated into the video are just 'markers' for the real buttons that have to be 'drawn' on to the backrgound - in your case the video.

    So you draw a button for each of your quasi buttons and set highlight color and transparency levels for each one. This is what I did for the static DLP menu and each button was then highlighted as I navigated through the menu.

    I really think the issue is not the highlight buttons, as long as you have set up each button, but the complexity of the attempted menu structure. Try it with three menus and not one.
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    There is only one menu, with three cells. Cell #1 is an intro with no button pictures or DLP button highlights. Cells #2 and #3 have button images in the video and DLP button highlights. Then menu structure is as simple as it gets - one VMG menu, three cells and - for test putposes - one DLP button in cells 2 and 3. Very stripped-down.

    I understand that the buttons in the video are just markers - the DLP buttons (highlights) are overlaid on top of these markers. The highlight and transparency level are set for the DLP buttons in cells 2 and 3 ... but no sign of those DLP buttons show up in the final motion menu when the action moves out of the first cell and into the second cell.
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    I understand what you are saying.

    What I would be tempted to do is strip this menu down even further just to check that these highlights really are working and it is not the complication of the cells.

    So just one cell and one motion menu with the buttons that should appear. If they then do not appear it is not the cells that are to blame.
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    Ok ... a little experimentation.

    One cell and the DLP buttons show up and work as expected.

    TWO cells (or more) and things go wrong.

    In the first case, the first cell has no DLP buttons, the second cell has one DLP button. No DLP button highlights ever appear at all, even when we move from cell 1 to cell 2.

    Second case : a DLP button (highlight) in cell 1 and an identical one in cell 2. The DLP button highlight appears right away and stays up through the intro section - all of cell 1. Then as the video enters cell 2, the button highlight from cell 1 VANISHES - the DLP button highlight in cell 2 (identical to the one in cell 1) never appears.

    Third case : same as second case, except there is no DLP button in cell 2. Same results as case 2.

    Very, very odd.
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    Once you set highlights in video you have to "Render Motion",otherwise the button highlights will not show.
    Under Menu, bottom of the drop down "Render Motion".
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    Originally Posted by tinker View Post
    Once you set highlights in video you have to "Render Motion",otherwise the button highlights will not show.
    Under Menu, bottom of the drop down "Render Motion".
    Funny thing is that the highlights function perfectly with only one cell in the motion menu - no "render motion" required.

    I was also under the impression that the only thing "render motion" does is to integrate static objects (pictures, button images, chapter movie clips, etc) into the background video. How can dynamic DLP objects - like the button highlights and their attached properties (position, size, navigation, links, etc) be accessed or modified after they've been rendered into the background video ?

    Also - tried the "render motion" route. For some reason, the action only rendered the first cell - 3 seconds long - and the m2v file it generated was completely black as well.

    Still no luck ...
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    The only thing I can see from the online instructions is that a motion menu with highlight buttons has an intro cell, a loop cell and (optionally) an exit(maybe not the correct word here) cell. The exit cell must be specifically programmed for using the registers.

    But in your scenario you have an intro cell, 'another' cell and then the loop cell. That 'other' cell may well be the culprit. As I said earlier, I have no experierence of motion menus and/or cell manipulation with dlp. I see the benefit of it as menu transitions are seamless whereas in my scenario of more than one menu they are not.

    It is likely you have over looked something and it is rather like clutching at straws to suggest a solution. What I would suggest is that you archive the project file - without your main video - and upload it here or somewhere else. An 'expert' may spot the problem then straight away.
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    This is beyond frustrating. Even reading the manual and following what few tutorials I can find for "delayed buttons", nothing works.

    When cell 1 has no DLP buttons and cell 2 has a DLP button, the button in cell 2 never appears.

    When cell 1 has a DLP button, it stays visible only until cell 2 begins, at which point the cell 1 DLP button disappears - makes no difference if cell 2 has a DLP button in it or not.

    Hasn't anyone written a step-by-step tutorial on how to use delayed buttons in a DLP motion menu ? How about the Menu Playback setting values for each cell - the ones in the PBC tab ? What are those values supposed to be for each cell ?

    Please - this HAS to work ! The manual insists it should work, but even though I'm trying to follow the directions, it's failing.

    Anybody ???
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    I just did a test to make sure that your setup with three cells will work and it is fine.
    What is a little confusing, that in your first post you mention that you have a video with buttons integrated. I assume that the buttons are a text to which you will add highlights like circle, rectangle, underline using DLP.
    If you are trying to highlight integrated text, so letters will change colour, than you will have to make text in DLP, otherwise it is not going to work, unless your original video contain a subpicture layer, but I do not think that it will import into DLP like that.
    To make delayed highlights.
    Get your video into the menu.
    Create three cells
    Create your highlight buttons in cell two, copy and paste those into cell 3 so they stay in the same position.
    Set "Link" to each button.
    Sett the buttons to "Invisible Normal" in each cell.
    Render motion.
    Your delayed buttons menu is complete.
    Last edited by tinker; 11th Jul 2011 at 23:46.
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    Originally Posted by tinker View Post
    I just did a test to make sure that your setup with three cells will work and it is fine.
    What is a little confusing, that in your first post you mention that you have a video with buttons integrated. I assume that the buttons are a text to which you will add highlights like circle, rectangle, underline using DLP.
    If you are trying to highlight integrated text, so letters will change colour, than you will have to make text in DLP, otherwise it is not going to work, unless your original video contain a subpicture layer, but I do not think that it will import into DLP like that.
    That's pretty much right - the DLP button highlight objects are just rectangles that cover the face of the already rendered graphic buttons in the video.

    Originally Posted by tinker View Post
    To make delayed highlights.
    Get your video into the menu.
    Create three cells
    Create your highlight buttons in cell two, copy and paste those into cell 3 so they stay in the same position.
    Set "Link" to each button.
    Sett the buttons to "Invisible Normal" in each cell.
    Render motion.
    Your delayed buttons menu is complete.
    So, the Render Motion is necessary, even though the graphic buttons are already in the video ? I've done everything in your checklist except the Render Motion - I thought it wasn't required, since the button graphics (but NOT the DLP link highlight buttons) were already in the video.

    How about the Render Motion settings ? The whole menu is 89 seconds long, so I assume that's the value for the Total Clip Time. Button Cut for the intro effect, 3 seconds, which is the length of cell 1. Sounds right, I think ... will try it later in the day and see how things shake out.

    Thanks for the advice, tinker !
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    The whole menu is 89 seconds long, so I assume that's the value for the Total Clip Time
    I do not believe that the time in render window is a correct time of the clip. I usually check time shown in a asset bin import and make it same in render window.

    How about the Render Motion settings ?
    There are some basic affects you can incorporate in your video menu like text coming into the menu from different sides, fades and so on, but in that case the text has to be inserted in DLP.
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    Good news - the render motion step lets the buttons show up as expected, right at the start of cell 2.

    Bad news - the default button 1 highlight does not automatically reappear when cell 3 loops - whatever highlight is visible disappears at the end of cell 3 and when the cell begins its loop, button 1 highlight is nowhere to be found.

    The issue appears to be in the abstraction layer code DLP generates. To simplify the setup, I removed all cells but one and re-motion-rendered the clip with no button delay. So we now have one cell, simple motion menu, whole menu looping. When I debug/trace the abstraction layer VM commands, GPRM11 has a value of 3 (set in POST before the loop), so that when flow re-enters the PRE abstraction layer code, the SetHL_BTN command never executes, because when GPRM11 == 3, GPRM12 (which is button #1) gets set to 0 and triggers a GOTO that skips the button highlight command. Looks to be a DLP coding problem at this point.
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    Surely you CAN write your own code which over-rides the abstraction layer code. If GPRM is reset before the start of the loop then you can surely set another register to save the earlier status and then call it back at the start of the loop.

    I still believe you have complicated the issue by placing the loop at cell 3 whereas in the help section it is cell 2.
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    Originally Posted by DB83 View Post
    Surely you CAN write your own code which over-rides the abstraction layer code. If GPRM is reset before the start of the loop then you can surely set another register to save the earlier status and then call it back at the start of the loop.

    I still believe you have complicated the issue by placing the loop at cell 3 whereas in the help section it is cell 2.
    First attempts at modifying the VM command behaviors failed last night, but I'm not done tinkering yet. It could be as easy as nullifying the effects of the (uneditable) abstraction layer GPRM11 = 3 assignment by setting the GPRM11 in POST to a value that won't let the PRE logic set the button index value to 0, thus skipping the highlight command. (In theory.)

    As to complicating the issue with three cells, the structure is a requirement due to the nature of the video in the motion menu : there's a 3-second intro, followed by a standard menu run of 41 seconds with a fade to black, followed immediately by a re-run of the menu run but with a new intro section that does NOT require any button hiding, as the button images are present all the way through in both cells 2 and 3. So ... cell 3 has to be the repeating cell, since that's the portion of the video that can repeat seamlessly.

    If I'm going to use the entire video in the motion menu, that's how it has to be. However, I'm experimenting with editing the 3rd section of video out of the sequence and using it on its own, which removes the need for the delayed highlight buttons - however, this latest "vanishing button 1 highlight" problem exists in this particular new set-up, so ... there you go.
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    Ok. Try this

    In the pre command sequence of your menu type the line:

    SetHL_BTN button x (where x is the number of the button you want to highlight at the start of the loop but not the register value. So its 1 for button 1 and not 1024)
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    I usually do not bother with DLP command modification, found it too complex because of abstraction layer. Once DVD is compiled I ran it through PGCEdit, delete unnecessary commands generated by DLP and fix commands so it works the way I want. This way I can use all GPRM from 1 to 15 without restriction.
    Abstraction layer is one think DLP cannot be without, since it uses graphic interface to make it easy for producing DVD.
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