Menu Sub-Picture Delay, no pause??

[lionfire17]

Play DVD -> Video Intro that smoothly slides into the menu -> sub-picture appears after a delay...

A few people have already posted questions about this subject but they usually involve a pause between the "First play" video clip and the motion menu with sub-picture. I know some store-bought DVD's have that pause, but most don't. For example, the Matrix DVD has no pause in the background video when the little green square moves from one side of the text (the video) to the other side (the sub-picture)... right?

So is there a universal way that this can be achieved? I'm currently using DVD-Lab and have had no luck figuring it out. If anyone here knows how to do it with DVD-Lab let me know. If not, is there a way to somehow code it in afterwards? I'm all ears! (or eyes.. I guess)

[adam]

If you want a smooth transition between a motion clip and a still, then make them one in the same. Every single commercial DVD I have ever seen with such a menu was done like this. The motion clip and the still part are all just one mpg. As for the subpicture, you can set it to start whenever you want it to in the track.

At the end of this mpg have it jump to either a chapter point placed at the start of the still menu part, or add a second still menu. This way the still menu part loops indefinitely after playing the intro. I suggest you rip some DVDs to your hard drive and analyze the vobs to get a better idea of how menu's are authored. You will see exactly what I am talking about.

[lionfire17]

It isn't so much a transition between a motion and a still... the video in the background is still moving. Let me see if I can describe what I have so everyone can understand it better.

The DVD is a compilation of all the wacky videos my friends and I have made over the past few years. The First Play clip is of my car driving off in the distance and as the car drives up the screen it leaves behind menu options (Chapters, Play Video, and Bonus Features). My car driving off then fades away (the menu options remain) and short clips of some of our videos slowly float across the screen in the background. The background music is steady through the whole lot of it. I made all this in premiere so it's just one mpeg file.

I made a sub-picture that has an arrow for each menu item so when an item is selected there is an arrow by it. What I want to do is have that sub-picture wait until my car has disappeared in the background before it becomes enabled and you can select a menu option.

Since I'm new at this still, what kind of program should I use to analyze the vobs? I'm very interested in how this works.

[lionfire17]

So, the whole thing is kind of about delaying the sub-picture in the track like you said... but I can't find any way to do that in DVD-Lab. Any ideas? Maybe I'm totally missing something obvious.

[adam]

Sorry, I don't use DVD-Lab so I don't know specifically how you'd do that. I use Scenarist and it basically works on a timeline. Once you add the subpicture you can move it, shorten or lengthen its playtime etc... Is there not an option in DVD-Lab to set the start time for the subpicture? I'm sure there must be.

As for analyzing commercial DVDS, well now that I understand what you are doing it probably won't help you much to do this. However if you'd like to do it anyway, then just rip the DVD and then load the vobs into something like dvd2avi to preview them. The menu's are usually stored in the first vob of the titleset containing the movie, so the menu's would be in like, VTS_01_0.VOB, with your movie being contained in 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc... Sometimes the menu's are stored in the VIDEO_TS.vob, but this is fairly rare.