DVD slideshow GUI - development thread.

[george84]

Now the add audio data as subtitle function should be ready for some testing

I did a short test with an mp3 which has its info in UTF-16 format. This is standard, because Music is international. I have german composers (Händel) french singers Céline Dion, and so on.

Problem:

For non ASCII characters I get wrong display in subtitles of final video. For example the character é (Hex E9, LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE) is not displayed correctly.

Analysis:

If redirect output of tag.exe to a file then é gets code Hex 82. This is é in ASCII extended. In my subtitle file .ssa I have also some real UTF-8 text (hindi). So I have a ssa with mixed coding (ASCII Extended and UTF-8) , which doesn't make sense. I use mkvmerge to multiplex mp4 and ssa. Mkvmerge tries to automatically determine the character encoding. It seems, that mkvmerge decides to use UTF-8.

It seems tag.exe doesn't support UTF-8.

Solution

Only use UTF-8 in .dsg and .ssa.
This means tag.exe output could be converted from ASCII extended to UTF-8. This is not a full solution.
or use a mp3 tool which supports unicode, i propose the cli version of mediainfo

[george84]

ffmpeg version

When doing a mux with mkvmerge I always get a warning about missing CTTS records in video. Video is generated by ffmpeg and I realized it is quite old. I tried to use the newest version of ffmpeg. As I can specify the path in "external applications" I thought this was possible.

However, in this case the video doesn't encode, and I get no error message.

My wish: ffmpeg is about 2 years old, maybe you could do an update if you have time.

[tin2tin]

Seems like I'll have to investigate further into what options there are for working with special characters in wxBasic. I think Mediainfo(2,3 mb) is a too big rock to kill a very small bird. Maybe there are other smaller cli tools out there which can do the job.

I know ffmpeg is a bit old, but the version DSG is using creates files in a very high quality format for YouTube which to my knowledge has been removed in later versions. BTW. many encoders(ex. Super, WinFF...) can read .avs(avisynth) files, that way can slideshow be encoded to any format in a lossless process.

[george84]

Very Slow export of ssa files

Problem

I have a slideshow with 200 slides. When I export ssa then this takes a long time.

Analysis

I seems DSG is processing all jpgs and creates a folder with a lot of temp files.

Solutions

At time of export DSG has already all necessary info to generate the ssa. All subtitle info and all timing info is available, so it could skip the temp file generating.

[tin2tin]

The subtitles are created with the Avisynth script to be as exact as possible if any customized transitions or slides do not have the durations there are supposed to have. That's why all the slideshow files must be created in order to process the avisynth script(but not encode).

I know that it is a long time to wait for a ssa(text) file, but compared to how much time it will take a transition & slide checking routine to feed all the durations of those in to DSG to make proper calculations(and me to code that stuff), I think the little extra time it takes to save ssa files is an okay trade off, though I know it isn't perfect, but it is at least working.

[george84]

Bug in creation of ssa files

.avs(avisynth) files, that way can slideshow be encoded to any format in a lossless process.

Problem

When doing my own encode of avs file (using StaxRip or Avanti) my subtitles show up at least twice on each slide.

Analysis

An avs with subtitles creates a file DVDsGUItemp.ssa. There are several problems with this file.
1) I have the impression that it is never deleted.
2) When encoding two avs, one after the other, then the second avs will append its subtitle info to the first one. So the file gets bigger and bigger.
3) It is not clear to me why I get two lines, when encoding a single avs. It seems the encoder executes the avs twice.

Solution

I like the fact, that avs can create a ssa. This way I could do a single export from DSG, and it would spare me the extra export of ssa. So when correcting this bug you could maybe also adapt this handling.

So my proposal are three points, the last one I consider mandatory.

1) DSG export of avs creates an avs which always contains code for ssa subtiles, but if Project Settings have Subtitles not checked, then the avs instruction textsub(.... is not executed (out commented)

2) At end of avs, e.g. the file DVDsGUItemp.ssa is renamed to <name of avs>.ssa. (or it could even be copied to directory where avs resides)

3) When avs opens DVDsGUItemp.ssa, then it opens not for append but for create.

[tin2tin]

The quick fix is to open the .avs file in notepad and change this line:

writefilestart(d,"C:\Users\tin2tin\.DVDslideshowGU I\DVDsGUItemp"+".ssa","ssa",Append = TRUE)

to

writefilestart(d,"C:\Users\tin2tin\.DVDslideshowGU I\DVDsGUItemp"+".ssa","ssa",Append = FALSE)

The append thing is a leftover from when avisynth only could save around 200 characters long strings and each subtitle had to be appended to the file, but that changed from Avisynth 2.6. DSG deletes the old temp files before saving new ones, so appending isn't a problem unless you need the avs files in other programs as you mentioned.

[BTW. two examples of DSG running with non-western characters(I have no idear why and how that works): here and here]

I'll be away from my computer untill wednesday next week.

[george84]

Wishlist: Custom styles

Currently DSG has a fixed list of style tags. It would be nice if the user could add custom styles. This way it would be possible to combine styles, e.g color + font + fontsize, or to add fixed texts as styles.

I think it would be useful if all styles were defined in a text file. Maybe two colums: style tag name ; style contents.
At startup DSG could read this file, and all style names would show up in style tags combo box.

Not urgent for me, I know that I can do everything with notepad, but nice to have.

[tin2tin]

thats how most things can be costumized in dsg, but so far no one has used that. Let me know if you come up with good tags.

[george84]

Two nice subtitle tags for slideshows in SD with a slide lenth of 4 sec(= 100 frames in PAL).
Just copy & paste each of them into two subtitle lines:

{\frx90\t(0,500,0.5,\frx360)\t(3500,4000,1.5,\frx6 50)}Rotate X In & Out

{\fry90\t(0,500,0.5,\fry360)\t(3500,4000,1.5,\fry6 50)}Rotate Y In & Out

This would be a nice example for customized tags.

NB. If you do copy/paste then you replace always all the subtitles, you don't really add the tags.

[tin2tin]

those tags are allready included in latest patch. Takeoff in 5. Offline next 4 days.

[george84]

Minor problem in Clip Timing

I am trying to understand avisynth in general and the DSG generated avs scripts. I stumbled over the problem that the first slide is in fact one frame shorter than expected. As a test I just used 4 slides with dissolve transition.
I found that the problem is caused at very end of script, where we have:

d = pointchk(inpoint, outpoint) ? d : d.Trim(0,inpoint)+audiodub(d.Trim(inpoint,outpoint ),BlankClip(Length = (outpoint-inpoint), fps = rate, audio_rate=48000)).eqaudio()
d = pointchk(inpoint, outpoint) ? d : dissolve(d.Trim(0,4).Normalize(0),d.Trim(5,outpoin t),2)

The first statement effectively doubles frame

inpoint

, so we get one more frame
The second statement removes 2 frames.
As a result, there is missing a frame in first slide.

Solution

You know best

[Gavino]

... audiodub(d.Trim(inpoint,outpoint),BlankClip(Length = (outpoint-inpoint), ...))

I don't think this is the source of george84's problem, but shouldn't the blank clip have length outpoint-inpoint+1, in order to match the length of the trim?
(or perhaps the trim should start at inpoint+1?)

[george84]

Animation very very slowwwwwwwwww

I would like to use animations. Just simple ones, pan and zoom. No rotate. I used a Preset Zoom_in, only start and end point, duration 100 frames. The settings are 1920x1080.

When I open the avs in virtualdub then a step trough the animation takes more than a second per frame. I don't have the newest computer, but you get it.

Further analysis showed that the filter zoom is so slow.

I tried a self written script with animate and Lancosz4Resize and it is about 100 times faster.

I don't understand everything in DSG generated code, especially AddAlphaBack. So maybe there are reasons why you have to use zoom.

Just my wish. Make animation faster, at least for simple panzoom.

Additional question: What is the influence of quality settings? Number of frames remains, so what changes really?

[tin2tin]

The animation quality changes the sizes of the image and the background, before the animation is added to the image. The overlaying of the two elements is the real speedkiller. The bigger the clips to be overlayed the slower. So you should lower this value to speed up things.

I may have cut the first frame as an attempt to avoid an initial audio click. I have to investigate on that when I get the time. However I have very little time and energy for DSG right now.

[dnnda1030]

Problem: No audio after importing video avi file and exported to slideshow.

DVD Slideshow GUI v 0.9.4.7


I learned that I have to transform frame rate to 29.97 fps otherwise it does not let me even import the video. I was able to do that using virtualdub and the file was able to be imported. However, there is no audio when playing the video after created the slideshow, (in preview as well). It has no problem for other parts of the slideshow made from pictures with the music I imported. I tried either checked or unchecked the Use Video Audion option, the result is the same to me - no sounds at all when playing the video part (neither the audio comes with the imported video, nor the imported music).

This is the video info for the imported video avi file:

General
Complete name : L:\videos\2011 Home slideshow\pictures-proc\Num0068b.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
File size : 6.65 MiB
Duration : 40s 700ms
Overall bit rate : 1 371 Kbps
Writing application : CanonMVI06
Writing library : VirtualDub build 32842/release

Video
ID : 0
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile : Advanced Simple@L5
Format settings, BVOP : 1
Format settings, QPel : No
Format settings, GMC : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix : Default (H.263)
Muxing mode : Packed bitstream
Codec ID : XVID
Codec ID/Hint : XviD
Duration : 40s 674ms
Bit rate : 1 270 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.138
Stream size : 6.16 MiB (93%)
Writing library : XviD 1.2.1 (UTC 2008-12-04)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings, Sign : Unsigned
Codec ID : 1
Duration : 40s 700ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 88.2 Kbps
Channel(s) : 1 channel
Sampling rate : 11.024 KHz
Bit depth : 8 bits
Stream size : 438 KiB (6%)
Interleave, duration : 34 ms (1.01 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 500 ms

I can play the avi video file from the classic player without any audio problem. But after I make the slideshow there is no sound for this video part in the slideshow. Anything I did wrong?

[tin2tin]

I have no time to test now, but if a bug has been introduced it is proberly in version 0.9.4.4, so you can try out the 0.9.4.3 from here: https://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD-slideshow-GUI/old-versions#download

[tin2tin]

@ dnnda1030
Download and unzip this file into DVDslideshowGUI/Ffmpegsource/ and let it overwrite the old file:
http://download.videohelp.com/tin2tin/ffms2.zip

[tin2tin]

Updated to 0.9.4.8 with the patch3 things and the video-audio bugfix.

[GPZ4189]

Hi, I'm not sure what happened but a couple of days ago I used the program and exported an .mpg file with pictures and music and all went well. Today, I tried to make a new slideshow as an .mpg and the final file freezes up a little after a minute. I tried different photos, music, and even a different computer. I was using ver 0.9.3.0 and updated to ver 0.9.4.8 and had different error messages come up without even letting me export the file. I have since gone back to 0.9.3.0 because it will at least allow me to export the slideshow even though it continues to freeze right around the minute mark. I made no changes to my computer from a few days ago.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance,

GPZ4189

[tin2tin]

Sounds strange. Do you have plenty of RAM and free harddiskspace?
Does it still happen if you do not use audio(an audio file has caused similar problems earlier)?

What is the 0.9.4.8 error message?

Could you open the .dsg file in notepad copy and paste it into a PM to me and I'll take a look.

[GPZ4189]

Thanks for responding so quickly tin2tin. I can't remember the error message now. It happened when the program was preparing to make the exported .mpg file and it was collecting all the photos. It would stop at photo #32 and state the error. I tried with all new photos and still got the same error on #32. This only happened with ver. 0.9.4.8. I reverted back to 0.9.3.0 and tried a new install but same results.
The first computer, which I have been using the program on for quite some time with no issues is pretty old. It is running XP SP3 with 1GB of Ram and plenty of HD space. The second computer I tried it on is 1 year old, still running XP SP3 with 3GB of Ram and plenty of HD space. I'm not sure where to get the requested file you asked for to send to you. If you can tell me I will gladly send it to you.

This is strange to me as well. My son is visiting and 2 nights ago we made a slideshow of his photos without any issues. Yesterday we tried the same thing and it keeps freezing during playback just after the one minute mark. The only thing I tried different was I used one of the background .avs files instead of the normal background_golden.jpg which I have always used.

Thanks again for all the help. I also wasn't sure if you could install over older versions or if you had to uninstall the old one first. Same thing with the programs that come with DVDslideshow.

GPZ4189

[tin2tin]

How much free space do you have on your C: drive? This is where the temp files are saved, while DSG prepares the slideshow. It would be very helpful to know what that error was.

If you could send me the DVD slideshow GUI projekt file(.dsg) which causes that error. The way to do it simple is to open your project(.dsg) file in Notepad and copy the entire text and here on Videohelp forum right click on my name to the left of this post and select 'Private Message' and paste the text into that and hit send.

[GPZ4189]

I have 90 GB of space on my C: drive. I will have to create another slideshow and save it. I have already deleted the others that did not work properly. I will work on that tomorrow, it is too late to start one now it's just after midnight. The laptop I tried to make a slide show on has 300 GB available on the C: drive.

I no longer have ver 0.9.4.8 on my computer. That was the version that gave me the error code. I reverted back to ver 0.9.3.0. It at least will make the slideshow and allow me to export it. The exported .mpg file just freezes during playback on one of the pictures for about 30 seconds while the music continues to play in the background. It always freezes around the one minute mark. After being frozen , it then starts to show the photos again and finishes out okay.

Thanks again for helping me out. I really like making the slideshows with this program.

GPZ4189

[tin2tin]

The file you send me seems to work fine here. A wild guess could be that the two 'FF_Squash_Ver.avs' transitions might not be liked by your computer. What happes if you change those two transitions to trasitions without FF_ in the names(FF_ means FreeFrame plugins)?

I do not have your images, maybe it's somehow releated to one of those. I see by the names of those images that some of the have been resized. What program did you use for the resizing?

What happens if you preview the slideshow in DSG? Does it run without problems?

[GPZ4189]

Well tin2tin,

I'm not sure myself what it was. I think it must have been one of the pictures causing the problem. I resized them all, instead of just some of them, and restarted from scratch and all has worked well. I tryed several different combinations with random transitions and avs and jpg backgrounds with the same music as yesterday and have had NO problems today!

To answer your questions: I use an old program called Resize to resize the images it works well and is very simple to use. The slideshow would freeze up in DSG when previewing it with the media player that comes with the program, that's how I first caught the problem. I was using VLC to watch it on my computer and it would freeze using that program too. I will probably stick with this version of DSG as long as it's working for me. I'm not sure what the error was in the new version, it probably did not like the one photo that was causing the problem, just a guess.

Thanks so much for all your time and help,

GPZ4189

[tin2tin]

If it all comes down to a problem with one of the photos, I would recommend you to update to 0.9.4.8, because this version will notify you about problematic images to a much higher degree than 0.9.3.0 - which will save you some trouble.

[GPZ4189]

Thanks for the recommendation of going to 0.9.4.8. I will add this to my computer at work. I like the looks of it with some of the new options like for youtube. I sometimes have to make slideshow presentations and this would be a great way to display it over the big screen. One thing I noticed was this version always left the temp folder on my computer without deleting it. Was this because of the error I received interupting the process?

GPZ4189

[tin2tin]

The temp folder is used for saving video-thumbnails and copies of slides ex. when an images is edited in Paint.Net from DSG. So it should not be deleted.

[bryankendall]

I have DVD Sideshow GUI. It works great.

QUESTION:
How do I make a DVD that "automatically starts"
or
Has a menu that I can click on to "self start" like a normal DVD ?

My set uo:
NERO 9
Alcohol 120%
WINDVD Pro
Img Burn
DVD shrink

Windows 7 64 bit with 8 gig RAM

Thank you

bryan