Short DVD intro?

[multiplex]

Hey all!

I have posted a few other questions regarding some DVD issues that I was having for the upcoming local film festival here and I have been trying in vain to put together a 10 second DVD intro (with DVD quality) for the past day. My deadline is fast approaching and I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish in time!

I was wondering if there was anyone in the forum that would be able to put one of the menus together for me, and then explain how it was done so that I can do the rest of them myself without continually buggin' you guys :P

I noticed that there were a few posts on my previous threads about people being more than willing to do something like this for me, the only problem is that for each movie (I have 10 in all to do) there is a slight difference in the text and by no means would I want to burden someone with something like that, even though the intro is so short.

If anyone is interested, I need to make a 10 second intro for some DVDs that I've already removed the menu from, having the DVD start, play the 10 second intro, and then cut right to the movie.

The intro is supposed to be (roughly; I have a loose outline) 10 seconds of a black screen, with the film festival logo appearing, and then some text regarding the local sponsors, within the 10 second time-frame. I know that it's a really easy job it's just that I'm not sure if I have the know-how or the resources to pull this off.

Any and all help is appreciated. I don't have tons of professional editing software, but if this can be done at DVD quality with freeware, please let me know! Thanks a ton

If anyone would like to tackle this with me and show me how it's done, please let me know as well. My extreme gratitude to anyone that offers.

Take care!!

[45tripp]

I was wondering if there was anyone in the forum that would be able to put one of the menus together for me, and then explain how it was done so that I can do the rest of them myself without continually buggin' you guys :P

for free?

(edDVed)

[manono]

Do you have pics of both the festival logo and the text needed, samples for one of the movies? Easiest would be if they were already created and resized as a 720x480 BMP, but it's not strictly necessary.

And is it to be 4:3 (probably) or 16:9? I'm assuming NTSC.

And, as described, it won't be a menu but just a First-Play video, similar to the studio or production company logos you often get at the open of retail DVDs, before they go to the menu.

[multiplex]

Yes, I do have the picture and the text, and it is NTSC. How would you recommend I go about doing this? Which program would be the best to use that is also simple? If so, is there a tutorial that you would recommend?

Thanks a ton,

Take care!

[manono]

How would you recommend I go about doing this?

Why not upload the pics first, let us play with them, and then have you look at the results to see if that's what you had in mind? Tutorial? None that I know of. Me, I'd use AviSynth for the job, frameserve into CCE, and author using Muxman. But there are lots of ways to do it, commercial and freeware. I could explain how to do it if the results meet with your approval. None of what you've described is very difficult to accomplish. But no one can do anything without some pics to work with.

[multiplex]

Manono: I will upload the picture and the text for one of the movies and I'll let you play around with it and see what you get. Once done, I'll take a look at it and then I'll download the programs used in order to cater it to the film festival's needs, and do the remaining videos in the same fashion on my own. I kind of feel bad even passing off a concept to someone else, but if you're offering that's great!

I'll upload a little picture of the logo, as well type the text at the bottom of this message that I need in there as well.

Thanks a lot!

Talk soon!

TEXT FOR FIRST MOVIE:

A GRAND RIVER FILM FESTIVAL PRESENTATION

BLINDSIGHT

Presented by: TD Canada Trust, United Wave And Choices For Youth

Special thanks to: The Corporation City of Cambridge, Waterloo Region Record, Cambridge Now, KOOL FM 105.3 / OLDIES 1090 and Rogers TV



That is all the text that is needed. There just needs to be 5 seconds of a black screen at the beginning, the logo and the text appearing (whether simply appearing or fading in and out - not sure how easy that is to do), and then an additional 5 seconds after the text of black screen before the movie starts. The total is loosely a 10 - 20 second introduction.

If you need any additional information, please let me know.

Thanks again.

P.S. The logo has a permanent white background I believe. I think that I can remove it in photoshop if I give it a try but you don't have to worry about that if you don't want to, I'll work on my own time with perfecting everything once I know how to do it - I don't want to burden you with details.

Cheers!

[manono]

Geez, I asked for a pic with the text, and not a bunch of words that I have to make into a pic, because I won't be able to make them to your liking. Also, I don't use Photoshop and don't intend to learn. If you want the white removed, you should have removed it yourself.

As I thought I made quite clear, my intention was to make a First-Play video for your DVD given 2 pics from you with which to work. However, based on what you said, it now looks to me as if you want both the text and the logo appearing at the same time, and not consecutively. So, give me a while and I'll be back. Since I have no interest at all in creating pretty text, you'll almost certainly want to heavily modify what I wind up with. Is there to be no sound in this thing?

first_play.zip

OK, I made a DVD for you. Download it and unzip it and then play it as a DVD, like with PowerDVD or somesuch. It's 1.45MB zipped up and 1.9MB uncompressed. Given that you'll want to change the text size, font, colors, positioning, and the logo to get rid of the white background, is this something similar to what you had in mind? What encoder do you use? Have you had any experience at all using AviSynth? If not I can walk you through it so that, assuming you can create a pic to your liking for each of the movies, you won't have much problem creating First Play videos for each of your movies. And, as I explained in the other thread, to get this thing to play before each of the movies, open the movie in PGCEdit, go Title->Import First-Play (Startup) Clip, and follow the easy instructions from there.

[multiplex]

Manono:

Sorry about posting the text and the misinterpretations about what was to be included. I didn't mean to bug ya by posting what I did, and I'm sorry if it caused you any frustration. The title that you put together is based around exactly what I need. I am going to be downloading both Avisynth and PGCEdit in order to be able to do it myself. All that I need to do now is touch up my logo and text, and I've got it.

If you'd be able to give me a quick run-down on how to create this intro on my own in Avisynth, that would be amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to make a sample intro for me, it is greatly appreciated. I will follow your instructions for making the intro play with PGCEdit as well. Thanks again.

Take care!

[manono]

I also asked what encoder you'll be using. The script changes depending on the colorspace accepted by the encoder. Assuming you make a pic with text and logo for each movie, the script goes something like this:

A=ImageSource("C:\Path\To\Picture.bmp",FPS=29.97,E nd=210)
B=BlankClip(Width=640,Height=480,FPS=29.97,Audio_R ate=0,Length=125)
A=A.ConvertToYUY2()
A=A.FadeIO0(30)
B=B.ConvertToYUY2()
B+A+B
Lanczos4Resize(720,480)

Take those lines, adjusted for the paths and any changes you might make, and put them inside a text file renamed as an .avs. So, for example, FirstPlay.txt gets renamed as FirstPlay.avs. Make sure to install AviSynth.

ImageSource opens the BMP you make with the text and logo. I made mine for 640x480. I set the framerate at 29.97fps, and here it's lasting for 210 frames (210/30=7 seconds). You can adjust it any way you like. FadeIO0(30) tells the picture to fade both in and out for a period of 30 frames (1 second). ConvertToYUY2 converts the colorspace for use in CCE and other encoders. If using HCEnc you convert to YV12. If for TMPGEnc you convert to RGB24. That's why I asked which MPEG-2 encoder you use.

A BlankClip is a series of black frames (at default color settings). Here I set the resolution to match that of the BMP I made, but you can do it differently if you like, but the BMP and the BlankClip must have the same resolution when joined. It lasts for 125 frames (125/30=4.17 seconds). Again, you can adjust it to whatever you like. A BlankClip has silent audio by default. In the version of AviSynth I'm using (2.57), it gets disabled with Audio_Rate=0. In 2.58 it may be done differently, not sure. It might be Channels=0. But to be joined both the ImageSource and the BlankClip must have no audio (or similar audio).

B+A+B joins the parts together, with black frames at both the beginning and the end. Lanczos4Resize(720,480) resizes the whole thing for NTSC DVD. Before sending to the encoder always test the script in VDub(Mod) to see if it opens, to get a useful error message if it doesn't open, and to check if the script does what you want it to do. You can open the script (the FirstPlay.avs) in VDub(Mod) and in most encoders just as you would a video. Then encode (I'll assume you know something about encoding for DVD). Author for DVD (I'll assume you know how to author for DVD). Then add the little DVD you made to the movie following my PGCEdit instructions.

http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/ImageSource
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/BlankClip
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/ConvertToYUY2
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Fade
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/LanczosResize

[tin2tin]

On the actual video clip. If it's a matter of making a video out of some text/images, I think DVD slideshow GUI can do that for you.

I've been playing around with you texts and logo in DSG. Check it out(16:9 NTSC): Example in flash. or in Xvid with ac3 audio.

The photos are from Flickr, music from freeplaymusic. I used Inkscape to make a svg out of that bad res image. You can get the svg here and as a Ntsc png with alpha background here.

(The viewfinder effect is not in the current version af DSG.)

Have fun

[tin2tin]

Here's another one for you(made in DVD slideshow GUI).

[multiplex]

Thank you so much! I think that I will opt for the solution with DVD Slideshow GUI. That looked stunning! Thank you so, so much for the work on the logo. I think that it is absolutely perfect, and the images look great with the sound! The only thing is that the board of directors would like to keep it simple with just the logo and the text, without the picture background. I think that I would keep the sound though, it works wonderfully!!

Is the quality of the intro, with just the logo, text, and sound, going to degrade as the DVD is burned and played on the bigscreen? I was just wondering because I didn't want to learn how to do this, and then play the DVD and realize the resolution looks like a digital camera video when it's blown up.

I'd love to do this for every movie that I make in the future. That logo intro looks so good!!

I'll keep ya posted,

Cheers!!

[tin2tin]

Thanks for your pm. However I think you should stick to this thread and do the authoring of the dvd as manono suggested. DVD slideshow GUI is only useful for making the pre-play video.

The first video is done with a through-the-viewfinder shot from flickr overlayed and added to the Dogme95 filter(in avisynth script). This is saved to a new filter and used as a post-effect over the entire slideshow.

[multiplex]

Thanks a lot. The only thing that I have yet to finish is the preplay video, however. It just seems like so much of a hassle to make the preplay video the other way. Is it not possible to make the preplay video for the movies with DVD Slideshow GUI instead of the other method?

Thanks in advance,

Take care!

[tin2tin]

As I wrote above, yes I think it's possible. What you're talking about is a slideshow of 10 sec. Write your texts in PS and let DSG render(in the right resolution) a m2v or mpg or what you need for PGCEdit.

[multiplex]

Excellent! And then from there I am going to set that clip to play first from within PGCEdit, and then I can simply burn the intro, with the movie, using ImgBurn to a DL disc and voila?

I have bought a DL burner and installed ImgBurn - it's very simliar in look and feel to DVD Decrypter.

Thanks so much!

I'll let you know if any problems arise.