Subpicture menu dilemma (NTSC to PAL) [so close!]

[t4ki0n]

Okay so some background info first: I've demuxed an NTSC DVD and muxed it back as PAL. IfoEdit was used to touch up the IFO's and all is set.

The menu VOB of this DVD uses a subpicture that correlates to a cell of a few buttons in the VOB's navigation pack. This navigation pack is not present in my created (PAL-muxed) VOBs but is of course present in the original VOBs.

I've used PGCDemux to create a SUP file and converted it to a Bitmap using DVDSupDecode. I then resized the Bitmap (stretching it) to a height of 576 instead of 480 (since this is PAL), and then made sure to include it when I made my menu VOB (using muxman). Basically I muxed the m2v with the bitmap, along with my ac3 file and sup file. Therefore, using DVDSubEdit I could verify that the subpicture for the buttons is present but my navigation pack is still lacking the info for the actual buttons (positioning/size/etc.).

I can use the remux feature of VobEdit from the original menu VOB with my created menu VOB, and that way the menu works fine, but the button highlights appear higher than their normal places since the original VOB is NTSC (the subpicture is 480 pixels in height). Using MenuEdit does not help because even if I reposition the buttons, the subpicture itself is not the right size and therefore the button highlights start to get distorted.

[manono]

Hi-

Although I've done everything to convert menus (although from PAL to NTSC), I didn't quite understand all that you said. Anyway, did you export the menus and colors, and then later on import them again into the new PAL menu? Check out the Exporting and Importing sections of my Editing Menus/Replacing Menus guide here:

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1606732#1606732

It's for something different, but the principle's the same. You don't get the menu buttons unless you either create them yourself, or import them from the original DVD. You'll most likely have to change their position and enlarge them along the y axis by 20% as well, since they're going to be for PAL now. That Menu Editor pic in the Exporting section of the guide shows you where to do that in PGCEdit.

[t4ki0n]

Thanks for the reply! Yes; I came across your guide already and I can definitely get the menu out of the original VOB with PGCEdit.

The only problem is that PGCEdit will not even open my created PAL VOB. That is because it does not contain any menu to edit in the first place and throws an error saying that the VOB might be CSS-encrypted (which it's not) or that the navigation pack is corrupt. Then the buttons for that error window are to skip all errors like these or to skip just that one.

[manono]

Hi-

The only problem is that PGCEdit will not even open my created PAL VOB.

PGCEdit doesn't open vobs. It opens DVDs. I take it that's what you meant to say. If it says you have corrupted nav packs, that's a sign that something went very wrong somewhere along the line. There doesn't have to be a menu for it to open a DVD without problem.

I've demuxed an NTSC DVD and muxed it back as PAL. IfoEdit was used to touch up the IFO's and all is set.

You might provide a little more information about how you did these things. I take it you converted any video to PAL (720x576@25fps), and converted the NTSC menus, including both the background video as well as the sub pics to PAL, and authored everything into its own separate DVDs using Muxman. Then you replaced the original NTSC DVD with these newly created PAL DVDs? Can you go into a little more detail about exactly how you put all the pieces back together again? Because, again, if you have messed up nav packs, you did something wrong somewhere. In order to get the buttons back into the DVD, you have to be able to open it in PGCEdit. I know of no other way to do it, without creating brand new menus using some elaborate authoring app.

One thing you might try is to open the main PAL video DVD (a movie, I guess) in PGCEdit, and see if it opens OK. If it does, you can then try and import the menu. This assumes you have a good PAL menu you created, even if it doesn't have any buttons yet.

[t4ki0n]

Alright; taking a step back then. The menu VOB that I remuxed and was trying to open with PGCEdit did not have the buttons of the Cell that the IFO is referring to (if that's how it works).

That is because I did not do what your guide explains with VobBlanker by using the Replace option on the menu VOB footage.

Anyhow; an easier and sort of similar yet faster way to do this (rather than having VobBlanker make a new copy of the entire DVD) is to use the Remux feature of VobEdit. You open the original VOB and remux its contents with your converted m2v. This method cannot be done when converting between PAL and NTSC however, because it does not give you the freedom of muxing the new VOB with your modified bitmap and/or SUP file(s).

So everything is okay now. It's just that I need to find a way to convert the BMP (that I resized for PAL) into my SUP file properly. It always comes up distorted for some reason.

[manono]

Hi-

Make an SST file following the guideline here:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=99306

Use the SST and BMP instead of the SUP file (Muxman muxes SST files, as well as SUP files).

[t4ki0n]

Thanks; I've done it that way and after much struggling, have decided to use DVDSubEdit to see if it even finds a subpicture after muxing and it didn't.

I finally decided to check muxman's log file (surprisingly helpful; I don't understand why not just spit out the verbose error message in the GUI), and it turns out that it ONLY accepts 575-pixel height 4-bit BMP files when the .SST file refers to it. Not 576, not 574, but 575. And this is the latest version I'm using.

So I fed it the BMP type that it wants and now it FINALLY worked and I modified the button positioning to suit the PAL size.

Hurrah! So my menu stuff works just great now! And? And? The buttons in the menu take me to the wrong locations in the movie. I went into all the advanced sections with IfoEdit and modified the playtime and entry sectors for VOBU's for start and finish of the Cells for Chapters.... one.... by one... by one.... [bloodshot eyes]. Even the whole calculation of hex to decimal values for PAL playback time and framerate..... I couldn't find any other way to do this! I spent HOURS! PGCEdit doesn't have a feature to edit the timings of the Cells!

Anyhow; I did that up to a certain cell/chapter and it was working out WONDERFULLY! (testing the dvd as I was going along).... Until I found that my IFO has an incomplete/lacking set of VOBU pointers!!!! I could no longer tell it which sector the chapter ends at amongst my Cell-editing. The IFO skipped about 500,000 of the entry points!

I looked through AAALLLL the PAL/NTSC guides and couldn't find any info on preserving/converting over the cells and chapters. Of course I now identified the culprit of another problem: TMPEG Encoder muxed my main movie VOBs without nav-packs (or useless ones at that). So I remuxed my main movie using muxman (nice, even, 1gig VOBs with normal nav-packs). Then I used IfoEdit to recreate the VOBUs so it scanned my VOBs and it corrected the IFO to include them however it wiped out all my Cells! So now I'm fiddling here with PGCEdit hopelessly recreating the cells one.... by one... by one.... I saved the DVD and reopened the IFO in IfoEdit but it doesn't see these new cells, even though they are EXACTLY identical to the original IFO on the DVD.... *sigh* There's no way to import the cells using PGCEdit either.....

I'm only a few days new to all this DVD manipulation stuff but as you can see I can understand things very well and know what it is I need to accomplish.....

[manono]

Damn, what an adventure! And you're completely new to all this?

I demuxed the menu sub pics from a PAL DVD I have and it gave me some BMPs at 720x574. So, although I don't know if Muxman actually requires them to be 720x575, it's good that you did wind up finding a workaround for the problem you have. I go from PAL to NTSC, and never actually have to mux any PAL menu sub pics. Also, the SST file it gave me when I demuxed with SubRip was similar to - but not exactly the same as - the one in that guide to which I linked:

st_format 2
Display_Start non_forced
TV_Type PAL
Tape_Type NON_DROP
Pixel_Area (0 574)
Display_Area (0 2 719 574)
Color (0 1 2 3)
Contrast (0 15 15 15)
E2 (255 0 0 ===)
E1 (0 0 0 ===)
PA (0 0 255 ===)
BG (255 255 255 ===)
Directory H:\SHANGHAI_EXPRESS\test

#
# Palette entries:
#
# 01 : RGB(255, 0, 0)
# 02 : RGB( 0, 0, 2)
# 03 : RGB( 0, 0,255)
# 04 : RGB(255,255,255)
#

################################################## #######
SP_NUMBER START END FILE_NAME
1 00:00:00:07 00:00:00:08 test.1.bmp
2 00:00:00:08 00:00:00:11 test.2.bmp

The buttons in the menu take me to the wrong locations in the movie.

Did you modify the cell framenumbers from the NTSC to the PAL framecount? NTSC is based on 29.97fps framecount, while the PAL one is based on 25fps. So each frame number in the NTSC Celltimes.txt must be changed by a factor of 0.8341675 (25/29.97).

There's no way to import the cells using PGCEdit either.....

Well, not directly, but if the movie is the only PGC in its VTS, you can import the entire Muxman authored DVD of the movie with correct chapter placements into the DVD where everything is messed up. Then the new one will have the chapters in the right place (if the one being imported has them in the right places). And the menu should point to the correct chapter points.

Open the messed up DVD in PGCEdit. Highlight the movie (make it grey). Then go File->Replace VTST Titles. Follow the instructions from there. I might suggest making a backup of the original. It's actually going to replace what was there originally. If something messes up, there's no going back. And the menus remain unchanged, but if they were correct in the original, they should also be correct in the final.

You should also be able to do this in VobBlanker. But I suspect that when you authored with Muxman (and TDA) that you wound up with the chapter points set all wrong for PAL.

[t4ki0n]

hehe yea I've only been doing this for a few days but I've been using computers almost my entire life so I have a programmer's logic... anyhow i did try that Replace VTST last night but didn't want it to do what it was doing for some reason. I thought i'd have a fresh start today continuing where i left off and used the Author new DVD feature of IfoEdit to mux my m2v using the Celltimes.txt and everything is perfect! you know how you're doing something like a math test and u get so caught up in the high-level thought that the answer was simple and so blatantly obvious all along? it's kind of like that between last night and today! and yea I made a quick PHP script to convert the celltimes by multiplying them by 0.834...yatta yatta. (25/29.97)... DOH! i coulda done it much quicker using excel!!!!! see what i mean? caught up in high-level thoughts! hehe.

*sigh*..... yes... it was an adventure indeed.