editing with alternate scenes and audio

[}{eywood]

I have a movie on a DVD9. It has 4 audio language tracks and 11 subtitle tracks. I'm removing the alternate languages, but leaving the subs. I'm replacing the audio tracks with two alternate audio tracks for the film. What I want to do is author the movie so that it will play in its original form or with the alternate audio tracks, but when it plays with either of the alternates it needs to also replace the first and last chapters of the movie with ones I altered. The first one will have different credits, and the last one will be an alternate ending.

The original DVD only uses up about 6 1/2 gigs of the DVD9, so there's room to add the stuff I want. I just need to figure out how to substitute the chapters automatically when the alternate audio is selected. I want the main menu to have options like "play original version", "play alternate version 1" and "play alternate version 2", so that the different versions can be accessed right from the main page. There will also be some extras, but those should be on another menu page.

Is this possible? and if so, how hard will it be? Can anyone recommend a method/program to do this? And how can I add a photo slideshow to it also?

[guns1inger]

Is it possible ? Yes.

How hard can it be ? If you have the right software and knowledge, and are prepared to completely re-author the disc, moderately difficult.

To swap out the chapters you either need to squeeze two copies of the film onto the disc (with all associated audio and subtitle tracks being duplicated as well), or use an authoring tool that allow for seamless branching, and edit and re-encode your video to allow for this to be authored. Only few higher end tools support proper chapter playlists, and even fewer support true seamless branching.

[}{eywood]

Oh yes. I was expecting full reauthoring. In fact, what I have now is 25 mkv files on my hdd. each chapter ripped without loss. These are as is on the disc, with all extra audio options and subs. They take up 4.98 gb. I plan to remove the 4 alternate audio tracks on this and replace them with two of my own. The two additional bookending chapters will have no problem fitting on the disc. I suppose what I'm looking for here is someone to tip me off on the right software, and maybe walk me through the process of this. I'm not a video person normally. I am very knowledgeable about audio, and am known across the concert trading community for my mastering abilities, but for video I am, at best, a novice. So I appeal to those of you out there with skills to assist me in my endeavor

[guns1inger]

You are already making it difficult by breaking up the film into parts. You no longer have 25 chapters. You now have 25 titles. MKV is also a poor choice. I understand why you chose it, however no professional software works with it. What you really need to do is get all your streams - video, audio and subtitles - out as elementary streams in their complete lengths, then look at what editing you need to do you create the complete title you need for authoring.

What you need to end up with is a title that looks like this

21111111111111111111111111111112

Where 1 represents your original video, and 2 is the extra chapters. You then author the disc so that the title either plays like this

111111111111111111111111111111

or this

211111111111111111111111111112

Depending on the users choice.

[}{eywood]

MKV is the choice because all the composing parts (video, audios, subs) can be easily extracted in seconds, then remuxed back in just as fast. When I get to the point of actually putting everything in a program it will be mpeg2 video and audio in the format of my making (I'm hoping PCM)

[hech54]

MKV is the choice

It's the wrong choice....but then again you seem to already know it all so....."Have a nice day".

[}{eywood]

Dickhead. MKV is just a container, not a format. the video within is mpeg 2, the audio ac3, and my new audio is PCM. its only in mkv for the time being to keep it all organized until I get to the point of actually assembling all this stuff, which will be after this forum helps explain it all to me. so how about you not comment on my thread unless you have something constructive to say, *******. Oh and way to go quoting me out of context

[}{eywood]

Oh. I also forgot to mention that I need to slow down this movie to its correct running speed. it currently has a 4% PAL speed up. I want to retain the PAL format, but correct the speed so that the music in the film is pitched correctly

[hech54]

Let's sum up the situation so far shall we?

what I have now is 25 mkv files on my hdd. each chapter ripped without loss

Dickhead

*******

Oh. I also forgot to mention that I need to slow down this movie to its correct running speed. it currently has a 4% PAL speed up. I want to retain the PAL format, but correct the speed so that the music in the film is pitched correctly

Oh this is gonna be good. Let me predict that this thread will go nowhere....then you will come back and say that you figured it out yourself, it worked perfectly...but you won't elaborate how you did it.

Any bets?

[}{eywood]

well I was told by some people I know who do DVD authoring frequently that this is beyond their capabilites, and that asking here would be the best bet. I am not sure how I can do this, even the speed change is not something I understand how to do without getting flicker. If I do figure out how to do it without help from this forum I'll be sure to post my findings.

Now get off my thread if you are not here to help. if you want to condescend and ridicule go somewhere else. I am asking legitimate technical questions about a problem I must figure out how to conquer, and all I am getting for you is facetious comments.

Perhaps a reply from someone who can actually help me?

[Nelson37]

The MKV container and breaking the file into segments is counter-productive for this scenario, the "dickhead" is correct. One of the first things you will need to do is to UNDO that entire operation.

There are guides on Pal-to-Ntsc conversion, however in your case just using the Pitch Change tool in Audacity may be all you need. PAL video is 25 FPS, period.

Then you will take one, big, corrected MPG file and feed it into an authoring tool which has the parameters described above. OR have two seperate movies on one disk, which could be done with more basic authoring programs and a little extra compression. No way with PCM audio, however, not enough space.

[Nelson37]

A quick search reveals either chapter playlists made from One big MPG, with a slight pause at scene change, along with less than 11 subtitle tracks, or one of two fairly expensive to Really Expensive softwares. Audio would need to be continuous throughout each chapter, but multiple audio tracks can be done with many freewares.

GUIforDVDAuthor would handle most of the requirements and the author visits here frequently. Not many use Sonic Scenerist, and both it and DVDLab Pro have a fairly steep learning curve.

I seem to recall a thread where the GfDA author did say it could handle a large number of subtitle tracks with a minor work-around. The default is 3 or 4. I don't think it does seamless branching but if the scene changes fade to black then a chapter playlist is barely noticeable.

You are doing multiple new things, each of which complicate your project and some of which are fairly rare. Suggest you start with simple authoring options, then add the different audio, then correct the audio, then deal with the subtitles, each as separate steps.

[}{eywood]

thanks for the constructive comments. Again the reason for the multiple mkv files thing is so I can keep track of the individual chapters, and also so that I can work on the audio one chapter at a time and remux it to that chapter and see how it worked. In the end I can rejoin it all into one file with MKVmerge, then use MKVextract to rip whatever part of it I want free, be it subs, video or audio. I only have it this way to facilitate easier work while reconstructing the audio portion. Before any DVD work is done everything will be separate files and streams.

I believe that correcting the speed on the audio and video needs to be done together to maintain perfect sync. At least within my knowledge of how to do that. If there's a way to do them separately and remain accurate I'd like to know what it is.

Using Audacity or any similar tool does not fix the fact the the movie runs too fast, all it does is alter the pitch. This does not make up for the tempo being too fast, nor the rest of the film also being faster (and therefore shorter) than its NTSC counterpart. To make it longer, and therefore run at the correct speed it was originally made at, some sort of frame synthesis (interlaced frames?) may need to be done. At least that's my belief.

I realize the rarity of the situations I propose, but its the only way I can think to make this work on on disc the way it needs to be

[Nelson37]

I am not positive as I don't do PAL conversions, but I think the only way to get the correct speed and tempo would be to convert it to the original NTSC. I do know that a slight speedup is a standard method for converting NTSC to PAL. In any case, this is a secondary problem.

I understand the reason to break up the file. One, I would have left it simple MPG as there are more and better tools for working with this filetype. Two, you will ultimately need One large MPG file for authoring and now you will have multiple file joins to work with. This introduces a completely unnecessary complication that could very well cause major problems. If you need to break it up to synch the audio, fine but then make one big audio file and re-mux it to the original unbroken MPG file.

This is one area I have experience with, and I would almost guarantee that you will regret breaking the file up into multiple segments.

Do you have or can you obtain the original NTSC files to work with? SFAIK there is an NTSC to PAL conversion that does the frame interpolation you are seeking, it is a method using "pulldown". Again SFAIK this achieves the correct framerate without actually "speeding up" the video. Starting from the original would be preferrable than trying to correct the existing video back to its original state then converting again.

[guns1inger]

You seem to have no idea about the structure of authored DVDs, and really don't seem to want to learn, so this will be my last post to this thread.

Chapters are not separate pieces on video in a correctly authored DVD. They are simple markers with a much longer piece of video asset called a title. Breaking your video down into 25 video assets will make your authoring task 10 times more difficult, and will almost certainly leave you with multiple audio sync issues, pauses and glitches, and a very unsatisfactory outcome. Even with tools like mkvmerge you are simply asking for issues down the track.

You will find plenty of guides for things like PAL format conversion if you care to search the user guide and spend some time reading.

You seem to have your mind made up on your workflow, and wont be swayed by anything anyone here says, so best of luck.

[manono]

I believe that correcting the speed on the audio and video needs to be done together to maintain perfect sync.

That's not correct. I work with changing audio and video lengths all the time (like 3-4 times a week), and keep them separate until the reauthoring stage. The video and audio can be worked with separately quite easily without that being the cause of any asynch. Which isn't to say you won't encounter out-of-synch audio - your workflow is so screwy that I believe you're pretty much guaranteed out-of-synch audio, for the same reasons Nelson37 also believes you'll have problems along those lines.

To make it longer, and therefore run at the correct speed it was originally made at, some sort of frame synthesis (interlaced frames?) may need to be done. At least that's my belief.

You're in New York, so what's the big deal about keeping it in PAL? If you're planning on reencoding, any framerate changes can be made during the reencode. If you're not planning on reencoding, you can use DGPulldown on the M2V to get it to play as if it's 24fps, while it's really technically outputting 25fps.

[}{eywood]

OK. Gunsl1inger, I am very willing to learn. But what I have at this time is what I have. I have had no problem so far rejoining chapters to each other and syncing the audio. I have no problem with pulling an original unsplit rip off the DVD. That was the intention all along when it comes time to put it all together again. As I said the MKV thing was only a temporary step to make the audio editing easier to do, and see results of quickly during the process.

manono, Being in NY is not the main thing here. This is a DVD that will be shared with fans worldwide (Its a Pink Floyd soundtracked movie), and from what I've learned everything about PAL is superior to NTSC, hence my wanting it to remain in the PAL format. I assumed the pulldown method could be used to convert the speed, yet retain the format. Perhaps I'm wrong/

Nelson37, I fully intend to use one continuous audio track. that's easy enough to make once I'm finished with the sound here. As far as the NTSC video, isn't it a bit late to try that? Would the audio I've produced based on the PAL version be able to be synced up with the NTSC video, even after correcting the speed?

[manono]

manono, Being in NY is not the main thing here. This is a DVD that will be shared with fans worldwide (Its a Pink Floyd soundtracked movie), and from what I've learned everything about PAL is superior to NTSC, hence my wanting it to remain in the PAL format.

Yeah, sure, except that all PAL players play NTSC and relatively few NTSC players can play PAL. And except for the PAL speedup of the motion. And except for the PAL audio being a semi-tone higher and out of tune. For greatest compatibility there's no question that NTSC is the way to go. Is there no NTSC version of the film out on DVD, one that doesn't have problems of its own?

I assumed the pulldown method could be used to convert the speed, yet retain the format. Perhaps I'm wrong/

I already addressed that with:

If you're not planning on reencoding, you can use DGPulldown on the M2V to get it to play as if it's 24fps, while it's really technically outputting 25fps.

[}{eywood]

you have a point about the "except..." thing.

I haven't sound the NTSC version, no. I don't really want to go out and buy it, because I already did that once, and as far as online all I can find are rips, not untouched DVDs