DVD slideshow GUI - development thread.

[tin2tin]

Quick fix version uploaded under the same name at the DSG download page.

- EXIF bug fixed.
- Match duration to audio bug fixed.
- Avi/avs load thumbnail bug.

When you run the new version it will say 0.9.1.2(but not at the download page - I don't have the time to update that as well)

[fvisagie]

Very kind of you!

Best regards,
Francois

[ZQX]

Thank you very much!

[fvisagie]

Better results with previous version?

Hi All,

Having done the upgrade to 0.9.1.2, I compared its results with those I got with 0.8.6.8 on the same set of 102 photos.

Here are some of the things I noticed:

• Both the average and peak bitrates were much higher
  Therefore the m2v file size was more than 3 times larger
  The file was now progressive instead of interlaced
  But it didn't look as good!? Especially gradual colour gradients were previously smooth and pleasing, but now they tended to come out blocky. Photos also come out darker than the originals (or those in the 0.8.6.8 slideshow).

So I replaced 0.9.1.2's HC.ini and HC_fast.ini (not knowing exactly which is used where) with the versions from 0.8.6.8. For what it's worth this is how they compare:

0.8.6.8 HC.ini:

*cq_maxbitrate 3.0
*dc_prec       10
*WAIT          0
*BITRATE       7000
*MAXBITRATE    7500
*AUTOGOP       15

0.9.1.2 HC.ini:

*dc_prec       10
*WAIT          0
*BITRATE       7000
*MAXBITRATE    7500
*AUTOGOP       15 
*AVSMEMORY     3024
*PROFILE       BEST
*PROGRESSIVE
*PRIORITY      HIGH

0.8.6.8 HC_fast.ini:

*WAIT 0
*PROFILE FAST
*SILENT
*BITRATE 1
*MAXBITRATE 1
*CQ 1

0.9.1.2 HC_fast.ini:

*WAIT 0
*PROFILE FAST
*SILENT
*BITRATE 1
*MAXBITRATE 1
*CQ 1
*DC_PREC 8
*NOSCD
*NOSEQ_ENDCODE
*NOSMP
*NOVBV
*PROGRESSIVE
*PRIORITY HIGH
*SILENT

After replacing the ini files, colour gradient results looked as good as those I got with 0.8.6.8.

However, the slideshow was still slightly larger than previously. Also the photos still came out darker than before, unacceptably so especially for low-light photos.

Because the ini files were now the same as before, this made me wonder whether 0.9.1.2 also prepares the photos slightly differently before encoding?

Can anyone shed more light on this, and where I could look for these settings to make them the same as with 0.8.6.8?

Thanks kindly in advance,
Francois

[yoeri2]

Hi there,

It took me a couple of hours to make my Canon AVI files work within DVD slideshow GUI, because of the AVISource MJPG coded error. Mike99's post helped me out in the end. To make a complicated story simple, I'll list the steps I took:

1) Installed DVD slideshow GUI
2) Installed ffdshow
3) Started the VFW configuration (= ffdshow video encoder configuration)
4) On the Decoder tab in the list with Codecs, go to MJPEG and change 'disbled' into 'libavcodec'.

Hope that helps someone out one day!

Grtz,
Yoeri

[tin2tin]

Version 0.9.1.3 uploaded under the same name at the DSG download page(No change visible at the page only in the download).
- Png images with alpha(without animation) had some bugs which are now fixed.
- Looked a bit into the colorspace conversions.

Took me a full day. Sigh.

[ZQX]

Tin2tin, I'm sure there are a lot of people here who appreciate your hard work. THANK YOU!!!

[fvisagie]

tin2tin, I am one of those ZQX is talking about! Thank you, always.

I feel so sorry for you. It sounds as if you're under some pressure at the moment. I know that feeling well . I hope you manage to find a happy balance between the important things in your life.

Kind regards,
Francois

[tin2tin]

To try some of the new possibilities(from 0.9.1.4) with VSfilter add this example to the main DSG folder and open it in DSG.
(Right click: Save target as...)http://download.videohelp.com/tin2tin/Example_Subtitles.dsg

You can read up on the additional options here: http://www.animereactor.dk/aegisub/readme-vsfilter.txt and some more here: http://aegisub.cellosoft.com/docs/ASS_Tags

(I found a few minor bugs and reuploaded 0.9.1.4 - so if you downloaded before this post - please re-download it)

[ZQX]

OK, tin2tin, now you are just spoiling us rotten!

I will experiment with your new release ASAP and let you know.

THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR BRILLIANT SOFTWARE!! (I'm not just blowing wind up your arse. I have test-driven ProShow and while it is more featured (?), I can still get MUCH more appealing results with your software!!! I am in love with the "Kandinsky" animated background - where does this come from? Did you invent it? Is it possible to tweak the colours??)

(EDIT: Installed your latest version and tried to load the dsg file - "Sorry this file is for an older version" or something??)

[tin2tin]

A link problem. Try now. Or if you just downloaded DSG in might be included in the download. The latest DSG upload(same name) allows subtitles longer than 100 characters.

[fvisagie]

Hi tintin,

It's BEAU-TI-FUL!

I've been using SSA subtitles (the predecessor to ASS) for video projects now for some time, and adding support for that to DSG... wow!

Thank you!

Kind regards,
Francois

[tin2tin]

Version 0.9.1.5:
(Uploaded as 0.9.1.4 no visible homepage change)

- Preview of PAL 16:9 wrong colors bugfix.
- Preset window optimations.
- Italics and Bold option now works on ssa subtitles and hardsubs.
- longer subtitles allowed.
- Subtitle box bugfix.

On the animated backgrounds: It's done with a combination of FreeFrame filters in FFrend and then exported as meta filter. This filter can be loaded into Avisynth with a FreeFrame plugin.

So if you want to make you own, get FFrend, get some FreeFrame filters, play around with it, export as metafilter(.dll), and take a look into the .avs background files to see how that meta filter can be loaded via avisynth script into DSG. (All freeware). And most importantly share your animated backgrounds if you come up with something nice.

BTW. DSG uses ssa subtitles. I've just realised a lot has happended to the ssa parser since I originally added it - and now it supports most of the ass tags as well. I couldn't get \move and \pos to work though. Let me know if you can figure that out.

[fvisagie]

Hi tin2tin,

I'm having a bit of trouble (browser/proxy cache) distinguishing the 0.9.1.5 download from the previous filename containing 0.9.1.4. Is the filesize of 0.9.1.5 20,350,532 bytes?

Thanks,
Francois

[tin2tin]

In the properties of the installer and in the tooltip it says 0.9.1.5.
Size: 19,4 MB (20.349.428 byte)
Disk usage: 19,4 MB (20.353.024 byte)

[fvisagie]

Thanks. And to be downloaded off http://download.videohelp.com/tin2tin/download.html, i.e. https://www.videohelp.com/~tin2tin/DVDsGUI0914.exe in this case?

Because I'm not getting it no matter how I clear my browser's cache. It must be a caching proxy or something in between somewhere. So unless I have the download URL wrong I guess I'll just keep retrying.

Thanks,
Francois

[fvisagie]

Not to worry, finally got it via another Internet connection. Thanks for your help.

Kind regards,
Francois

[tin2tin]

New version:
0.9.1.6
- More Presets window optimations.
- Code clean up.
- Max subtitle length: 168

0.9.1.5
- Preview of PAL 16:9 wrong colors.
- Preset window optimations.
- Italics and Bold option now works on ssa subtitles and hardsubs.
- Longer subtitles allowed.
- Subtitle box bugfix.

There is some kind of instability caused by the Media Player in the Presets window which makes DSG hang. I've been trying to track this down. But still I haven't succeded finding some kind of repeatable workflow which will provoke the error to happen. Instead I've cleaned up the code using the mediaplayer function and I hope it might dissappear that way. But if you can finde some way to make a repeatable workflow cauing the error - let me know. This instabilly thing(glitz?) is in all versions with the mediaplayer embedded in the Presets window.

[SpotFinder]

Collective brain trust, I am new to this so please be gentile.

How do I create my own custom FreeFrame plugin?

My end goal is to create my own custom FreeFrame plugin that I can then use in another app that uses AviSynth. I know that my other app (DVDslideshowGUI) supports AviSynth FreeFrame plugins. It appears that all of the existing FreeFrame plugins used in AviSynth are DLL’s.

I know that FreeFrame is simply a framework and not an app. And that FreeFrame plugins can be used in a slew of host apps / NLE’s, but my question is this…

It seems that all of these host apps will save a clip as an AVI and that’s all fine and good, but what if you want to make your own FreeFrame plugin using a string of multiple readymade plugins or simply an effect you’ve created on your own that you wish to replicate?

At this point I’ve not committed to a specific FreeFrame host app/NLE yet so if one allows you to generate your own plugin/DLL I’d like to know.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and help.

[Safesurfer]

You might want to check out the Freeframe site http://freeframe.sourceforge.net/

[SpotFinder]

Yeah, I've done that but I cant seem to find an answer there. I've downloaded the latest FF software but cannot make heads or tails of any of the files. It seems the most recent version is an SDK for programmers to implement FF into their own software (I could be wrong). I could be missing something though.

I can't help but feel this is something simple and I've either overlooked something or just not queried correctly.

Thanks for your help.

[Safesurfer]

Did you look at the Readme.txt file? Here's the contents. Also have a look at the Specification.html file.

---------------
FreeFrameGL SDK
---------------

Host and Plugin Samples for Windows and OSX by
Trey Harrison - www.harrisondigitalmedia.com

Host and Plugin Samples converted for Linux, based on Trey's OSX code by
Gabor Papp - www.mndl.hu

FFGLHeat and FFGLTile Plugins by
Edwin De Konig - www.resolume.com

Delphi Host and Plugins by
John Day - www.vjamm.com

Many .h and .cpp's were taken from the FreeFrame SDK by Gualtiero Volpe (Gualtiero.Volpe@unige.it) and extended / modified to support the new functions for OpenGL effects processing.

-------------
Specification
-------------

The Specification.html file documents the functions, values, and structures used by FreeFrameGL hosts and plugins.

--------------------------
Windows C/C++ Instructions
--------------------------

Projects for MSVC .NET 2003 are found in the 'MSVC' sub-folders.

Projects for MSVC 2005 are in the 'MSVC8' sub-folders.

To test the FFGL host and sample plugins, go to the Binaries folder and run FFGLHost.exe.

You can also drag-and-drop a FFGL .dll onto FFGLHost.exe for testing your own DLL's.

Mouse movement is used to assign values to plugin #1 parameter #0 and plugin #2 parameter #0.

---------------------------
Windows Delphi Instructions
---------------------------

Developed in Delphi 6.

To test the FFGL host and sample plugins, navigate to the trunk/binaries/win32/delphihost folder, and run the FreeFrameDelphiHost.exe .

Plugins need to be within the 'plugins' folder.

0. Select an avi file to use as source material
1. Select a plugin from the dropdown list
2. Press the 'Play and Process' button

It is possible to leave the application running and hotswap the current plugin as you work on it, by using the 'Reload Plugin' button.

Parameter control is via the lower right panel, select a parameter from the list of available and use the slider below.


----------------
OSX Instructions
----------------

The source code was written and compiled with XCode 2.4 and XCode 3.0. Older versions of XCode probably won't work.

To test the FFGL host and sample plugins, launch the Binaries/OSX/FFGLHost executable.

Mouse movement is used to assign values to plugin #1 parameter #0 and plugin #2 parameter #0.

------------------
Linux Instructions
------------------

The code is based on the OSX source files and it was compiled with gcc 4.1.1.

To compile the sample plugins, open a terminal window, navigate to the Projects/FFGLPlugins/Linux folder and type make.

To test the FFGL host go to the Projects/FFGLHost/Linux folder, type make and run ./FFGLHost.

Mouse movement is used to assign values to plugin #1 parameter #0 and plugin #2 parameter #0.

------------
SDK Contents
------------

Specification.html
Official FreeFrameGL specification document

Binaries/

OSX/
Sample host and plugin files ready to run on OSX

Win32/
Sample host and plugin files (from C/C++ source) ready to run on Windows

Win32/DelphiHost
Sample host and plugin files (from Delphi source) ready to run on Windows


Include/

FreeFrame.h
Slightly modified FreeFrame.h to compile nicely on Win & Mac (no FFGL info in here)

FFGL.h
FFGL header

FFGLExtensions
Cross-platform OpenGL extension access

FFGLFbo.h
Cross-platform Frame Buffer Objects (requires FFGLExtensions)

FFGLShader.h
Cross-platform GLSL shader objects (requires FFGLExtensions)


Source/

Common/

FFGLExtensions.cpp
FFGLFBO.cpp
FFGLShader.cpp
Implementations of the cross-platform FFGL* helper classes


FFGLHost/

FFGLPluginInstance.h/.cpp
Shared base class for loading and working with FFGL plugin instances

Timer.h
Shared base class for accurate timing

FFDebugMessage.h
Shared method for sending messages to the debugger

OSX/
Files specific to OSX implementation of the host

Win32/
Files specific to Win32 implementation of the host

Linux/
Files specific to GNU/Linux implementation of the host


FFGLPlugins/

FFGLPluginSDK.h
Header used by sample plugins to simplify plugin development

FFGL.cpp
plugMain handler

FFGLPluginInfo.h/.cpp
FFGLPluginInfoData.h/.cpp
FFGLPluginManager.h/.cpp
Helper classes adapted from Gualtiero Volpe's SDK


FFGLBrightness/
FFGLMirror/
FFGLTile/
FFGLHeat/
FFGLGradients/
Source code for sample plugins

DelphiExamples/
Delphi source code and project files for sample host and plugins


Projects/

FFGLHost/

XCode/
XCode project files for FFGLHost

MSVC/
MSVC 2003 project files for FFGLHost

MSVC8/
MSVC 2005 project files for FFGLHost

Linux/
GCC makefile for FFGLHost


FFGLPlugins/

MSVC/
MSVC 2003 project files for FFGLPlugins

MSVC8/
MSVC 2005 project files for FFGLPlugins

XCode/
XCode project files for FFGLPlugins

Linux/
GCC makefile for FFGLPlugins

Readme.txt
This file (did you really read this far?)

[SpotFinder]

No, I hadn't read the readme.

WOW! now that I have I feel I'm part way there. There is an existing plugin DLL that I wanted to modify. I can't seem to get it to load on the FFGL host.exe but I can load it and view a clip using the Delphi Host. There I can see the basic source code and do some minor manipulation.

Still reading the documentation...

Now is there a way to save the changes? Since I can't just open the DLL and change the source code, I can cut and paste the changes, but how do I save them as a DLL?

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. This is a major step forward. Still reading.

Also, sorry to be such a pain.

[tin2tin]

In this post: https://forum.videohelp.com/topic245071-780.html#1974416 on this very page - I have allready written how the FF animated backgrounds are made in DSG. Btw. keep this a DVD slideshow GUI development thread please. There is an answer for you here.

[SpotFinder]

Tin2tin,

Thanks for all your help. FFrend is the thing to use.
I just read ALL of the documentation and I can’t wait to dive in.

DSG is a really fantastic program. I love the ability to create/add my own backgrounds (static & motion) as well as being able to create/modify transitions. It seems that all the “Commercial” slideshow solutions are very limited in their implementation and customization. Great for the general public end user, but not so great for creative professionals.

I am a location scout in the film industry and so I interact with visually creative people.
I’m in the process of creating a DVD for promotional distribution, so I really need to have a sophisticated, visually stimulating presentation in order to appeal to my clients/potential clients. DSG is simply the best tool available.

Thank you, ¡Gracias! Danke! Dank u wel! Merci! Grazie! TACK!

SpotFinder

[tin2tin]

I'm a filmmaker myself(Director). When I research locations I like to do a combination of stills and video(360 degrees turn around). To produce a dvd with that combination you should check out export to .gfd(Gui for dvdauthor(used to author the dvd)), this will give you a dvd with menus, an entire slideshow, a chapter menu and one-by-one remote controlled back and forth between the series of video clips and stills. (However animated backgrounds are not allowed in this kind of export - but all elements can be edited and changed in GFD(inc. animated menus and so on)).

BTW. you can do backgrounds without FreeFrame - Avisynth itself is very powerful. Ex. if you want to use any other formats of video as backgrounds - the most of these can be imported in Avisynth. For example on this page: http://movietools.info/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=11&Itemid=4 there are some great looking free film motion-backgrounds. If you write an avisynth script with: directshowsource("yourfilename.wmv") and save it as .avs then you can load that into DSG as a looping background. If you got a missing codec problem - you need to get ffdshow an enable the decoder for that specific codec.

[webazoid]

when i'm making a slideshow and dvd, how do i change the color of all the buttons on the pictures section of the dvd? i.e. if i want to make unslected arrows white, highlighted yellow, and selected blue? i can change it indivdiaully in gui for dvdautor?

[zapster]

I wrote a little tool (intend to share it once it's a bit more stable) that takes the AVS script generated by DSG (original files MUST be used, which is why I asked about the animation/use-original-file enhancement), performs the changes you suggested earlier (as well as a couple of others I found through trial-and-error, mostly to do with centering the slide) and spits it back out (in a different file).

Then I run x264 Encoder on the generated script and turn it into an MKV, which can be muxed into a BD-compliant m2ts (or whatever one might want) with tsMuxeR

The beautiful thing is, the original script generated by DSG can be used with HcEnc or QuEnc, or anything else that your awesome tool allows.

In the meantime, I'll try to figure out what was going on with the image sizes. Pretty sure they're all the same size/dimensions, but will double-check.

I also need to create slideshows at 1080p and would like to use DSG. Did you figure out the sizing issue? And is your tool ready for release yet?

[tin2tin]

@webazoid

i can change it indivdiaully in gui for dvdautor?

Yes.
If you use DSG for the export it will make an entire structure of menus - and the you'll have to change those colors for each and every menu manually - unless you open that .gfd in notepad and do some find/replace.

@ zapster - you might want to pm him instead.

[fvisagie]

Hi tin2tin,

Regarding \mov, \pos and so on: usually if I want all SSA subtitles to start at the same co-ordinates, I specify that in the style. In my projects outside DSG \pos does seem to work for the exceptions.

I use FFmpeg for video MPEG-2 DVD encodes. Fantastic results. I notice DSG bundles FFmpeg. If ever you would like to experiment with making that DSG's main encoder, I may be able to help you with a command line or 2. The later versions also support AviSynth .

Best regards,
Francois