Extras on the edge

[Guest]

Any way to re-author,put the exrtas on the outside, and still have the menus work?.i.e. use the whole dvd potential space/freeze on the extras if the dye didnt make it to the edge?

[Arky]

What you are asking for is something quite advanced and not easy to control with conventional software tools. Having said that, given a basic understanding of the DVD spec, it is nonetheless possible to exert some influence over the placement of assets on your DVDR.

For instance, I am given to understand that ReelDVD writes assets to the disk in approximately the same order they were dragged into the ReelDVD project while authoring.

DVDMaestro and DVD Studio Pro 2 (essentially the same core program) write assets to the disk in approximately the same order they are listed in the project hierarchy/tree (located at the top left of the program interface), You can manually juggle the assets therein, to a limited extent. In general, you should be aware, with either of these programs, that the abstraction layer creates a new VTS for each physical MPEG timeline you create (obviously this does not apply to additional MPEG streams placed within the same timeline (aka Multi-Angle), because these would be interleaved with each other within the confines of the same VTS.
Incidentally, the same would also apply to Seamless-Branching portions of a DVD, interleaved in a similar manner to Multi-Angle (albeit more exotically, in a seamless structure). Furthermore, because such interleaved streams are capable of referring to PGCs from within the same Video Title (just like playlists/stories) they can be doubly-constrained to the same VTS domain as a consequence. i.e. the DVD spec prohibits the direct referencing of PGCs in one VTS from those in another).

Getting back specifically to Maestro and DVD SP 2, another oddity of their abstraction layers, aside from their 'one VTS per title' behaviour, is that they place all menus in the VTSM 1 domain. Apart from slowing down playback navigation somewhat, this also means that any menus for your extras would be automatically formatted towards the beginning of the disk, alongside those of the main feature - something to bear in mind if you have an extras motion menu of considerable size, pushing main feature assets that little bit further towards the outer regions of the disk, as a consequence.

I believe Scenarist offers some degree of control over asset placement during formatting (certainly, of ROM files, at the very least), but I have never learned to author with Scenarist, so I cannot provide you with any detail on this. I can tell you, however, that because Scenarist offers you an extremely high degree of control over which domains your assets are placed in, you are at a massive advantage right from the outset - of all the commercially-available full authoring systems (an important distinction), Scenarist is the least 'impeded' by the oddities of abstraction layering. This leads to more painstaking authoring, but the pay-offs in fine control are enormous.

As a general rule of thumb, if you are authoring extras, and wish to maximise what little possibility you have of controlling their physical destination, during subsequent formatting, you would be wise to author your extras assets in domains of their own (e.g. their own VTS), and to author these AFTER you had authored the main components of the disk. Because authoring systems logically allocate domains sequentially, as and when required, during project building, there would be a greater probability that the authoring program would allocate them to the latter VTS domains in the project, and would thus be more likely to (but not necessarily) format them towards the end of the build. Of course, all this careful planning can be totally undermined by any abstraction layer system that uses convoluted routines for allocating assets to their various possible domains. The DVD spec is actually surprisingly flexible, in certain respects, as to which domains assets may be placed in. Therefore, there is wide scope for variation, and unless you can afford Scenarist, TFDVDEdit, or similar, you are going to be at the mercy of your abstraction layer in this regard

Therefore, it pays to know both the capabilities of your authoring program, and the under-the-surface habits of the program's abstraction layer. ReelDVD, for example (notwithstanding my earlier remarks about the program), will only create 1 VTS. EVER. This severe restriction on possible domains may muddy the water considerably, if you are planning your project by means of careful sequential authoring of domains. As a consequence of recent developments in the industry, it is now technically possible to re-allocate and re-author DVD elements and domains after a project has been compiled to HDD, but this is not cheap, and currently requires a MAC.

I wouldn't be surprised if some high-end formatting-only engines allow the user to accurately specify the order in which assets are to be allocated to the disk (in fact I'm quite certain they do), but I do not have experience of such utilities, so I cannot offer you any guidance in this regard. Other forum members may be able to assist you with this.

In short, as one of us mere mortals , you are unlikely to be able to completely control the order in which your assets are burned to disk. The solution, in all honesty, is to buy decent quality disks in the first place (cheap, low quality disks are always a false economy), and keep your bitrate down as much as possible, both to increase the reliability of playback, generally, and to reduce the likelihood of filling a disk to it's maximum capacity.

HTH.


Arky ;o)

[Arky]

Nice new feature set in DVD Lab Pro, one of which is 'Change Order':





(Thanks to awichu for the heads-up)

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/dvdlabpro.html


I've always had high hopes for this program, and I am pleased to see that the Pro version has been thought out very well, with some innovative features, particularly at this price point. 2004 is truly going to be a monumental year of change in the DVD authoring industry, both on the amateur and professional levels. Never before have the boundaries between the two been so blurred. It's great to see this metamorphosis happening to DVD in the same way it has happened to NLE.


Arky ;o)