Dvdlab Pro 2 Help with invisible buttons

[mistateo]

Also, I am fully aware that region free dvd players that will do both PAL and NTSC exist, and would have been FAR EASIER to just buy one than doing what I am doing. But I haven't done any video encoding or dvd authoring in over 15 years. In that time I went from a bum on a log to a software engineer, so I enjoy the challenge aspect in addition to satisfying my absolutely ridiculous OCD by "completing" my collection.

[_Al_]

no problem at all, I just posted an advice, which was a nonsense, so I overwrote it with never mind

[Skiller]

Did you ever get a chance to replicate the functionality with overlapping buttons?

Yes, I played with it and was able to replicate it. See attachment. It was harder to do than anticipated. I had to assign the chapter buttons to another color group than the episodes buttons and having only 4 colors, as usual, to spend in the subpic does not help.

And then I had to come up with a clever way of assiging the colors for highlight and activated so that it does not break the illusion.
What I mean by that is because the buttons are overlapping, you would actually see that the chapter text is also activating along with an activation of episodes so you gotta match the colors and transparencies so that this is hidden.

Even navigating with the mouse in PowerDVD works fine. Didn't expect that.


Note there is no actual video to play here so it'll take you nowhere if you activate a button.

Do you use the "text" object and attach links to it, or just have text with no links and draw rectangles and add links to those?

I write all the texts in Photoshop and only draw rectangles in my authoring app (plus all the subpic related stuff explained above). The actual overlapping of the rectangles was archived in PgcEdit.

[mistateo]

Did you ever get a chance to replicate the functionality with overlapping buttons?

Yes, I played with it and was able to replicate it. See attachment. It was harder to do than anticipated. I had to assign the chapter buttons to another color group than the episodes buttons and having only 4 colors, as usual, to spend in the subpic does not help.

And then I had to come up with a clever way of assiging the colors for highlight and activated so that it does not break the illusion.
What I mean by that is because the buttons are overlapping, you would actually see that the chapter text is also activating along with an activation of episodes so you gotta match the colors and transparencies so that this is hidden.

Even navigating with the mouse in PowerDVD works fine. Didn't expect that.


Note there is no actual video to play here so it'll take you nowhere if you activate a button.

Do you use the "text" object and attach links to it, or just have text with no links and draw rectangles and add links to those?

I write all the texts in Photoshop and only draw rectangles in my authoring app (plus all the subpic related stuff explained above). The actual overlapping of the rectangles was archived in PgcEdit.

WOW!!! It works! I got a bit sidetracked with a failing hard drive. I was trying to "index" my 6 GB movie file in DVDLab and it kept crashing. Re-ripped to a different HD and re-encoded and all seems fine now. I will try to replicate this with photoshop/DVDLab Pro in my project and post my result. Hoping I won't need to bug you any further. Can't promise since I am not very good with DVDLab pro since I have only been using it about a week (all previous authoring was drop dead simple in TMPGEnc Dvd Author).

[Skiller]

I would gladly help if you need it because I like your project. And the fact that this is finally something more elaborate than the usual "how do I put this mkv on DVD" questions.

Here are some screenshots that may help you recreating this in DVDLab. I use DVDMaestro (which is ancient but you know, once you know how to use a tool you keep using that tool) and I suppose these things should be pretty similar in DVDLab.


This is the actual subpic BMP I made and indexed in Photoshop:


[Attachment 62163 - Click to enlarge]

So as you know we have 4 colors we can use. I used the colors this way:

1) Red: Chapter text
2) Black: Background
3) Blue: Episode highlighter (underline)
4) White: Chapter text anti-alias

You have to decide if you want to spend the anti-alias color for the chapter or episode. In my case I chose an underline so I didn't need the anti-alias there and used it for the chapter text.


Episode button:

[Attachment 62164 - Click to enlarge]


Chapters button:

[Attachment 62165 - Click to enlarge]

[Cornucopia]

When I still do DVDs anymore, I still use DVDMaestro also. Imo, was it always the 2nd best one out there (best being Scenarist, which I could only work with occasionally), and will continue to use it as long as I can.

Scott

[mistateo]

Is there a compelling reason to switch from DvdLab Pro 2 to DVDMaestro from a feature standpoint, or is it mostly preference and usability?

I am doing a 2.5 hr block of anime episodes utilizing the "chapter playlist" feature with a branching object driven by which language track was selected (some consecutive scenes are exclusive to English, some to Japanese) with 2 subtitle tracks. It also has a separate 45 min series "movie" with 1 audio track and no subs. It also would have to support double layer dvd's and selecting where to put the layer break (currently I got lucky and the transition from episode 4-5 falls in the eligible area). It also has to be able to index i-frames for chapter placement accuracy. Needs to be able to write to either an ISO or in folders on the hard drive for preliminary testing. Also may end up needing VMG menus, haven't yet determined if I need them.

[DB83]

Does DVDMaestro even exist these days ? I just found one quite old topic and just wet myself on the cost of that

[Cornucopia]

DVDMaestro stopped being sold when the company's assets were bought by Apple, and then basically scavenged then trashed. What IP they scavenged, they put into their DVD StudioPro app (unfortunately not enough of the good stuff, IMO). Part of that disconnect was issues with porting Win-->Mac. And Apple won't sell Win apps, so they preferred to junk it rather than sell again to another company (which would have been a competitor to DVDSP).
Can you find it in the wild? IDK. I have hoarded my copy since my 2001 job, where that was one of my roles. It doesn't work on OSes newer than Win2k without a bit of tweaking, so it isn't a great candidate for sharing types.

I think DVDLabPro has a LOT going for it function-wise, but IMO Maestro's UI still has it beat.


Scott

[Skiller]

I use DVDMaestro on Windows XP and (probably because of that) the so called "real time preview functionality" on an external monitor does not work. It tells me that at every start up and it cannot be fixed but other than that it works just fine. Because of that the Navigation Simulator also won't play any MPEG2 and just shows stills but I rarely found that to be hindering. You still understand what's happening by the information it displays at the same time.

I also like Maestro's UI. It doesn't have any fancy bells and whistles (I'm glad it doesn't) and is surprisingly intuitive.

I am doing a 2.5 hr block of anime episodes utilizing the "chapter playlist" feature with a branching object driven by which language track was selected (some consecutive scenes are exclusive to English, some to Japanese) with 2 subtitle tracks.

Ah yes, that requires coding some command sequences to, for example, store the viewer's preferences (language, subtitles) in a GPRM and then (re-)apply those accordingly whenever switching between features with different languages and subtitles. Yeah, this DVD is advanced stuff.

It also would have to support double layer dvd's and selecting where to put the layer break

The layer break is really just a cell in the right place that is considered as the layer break during burning.
I prefer not to care about it at all during authoring and rather use Vobblanker to split a cell in a suitable place, if needed.
In Imgburn you then select this cell to be used for the layer break and it'll burn it correctly.

Also may end up needing VMG menus, haven't yet determined if I need them.

No, you don't need them.

[r0lZ]

Holy Cow, PCGEdit is AMAZING.

Thanks for your appreciation !

It's confirmed – the buttons are overlapping! Awesome!!! I'm stunned!
Button 1 and 2 are overlapping by a whopping 283 pixels!
I can't believe I just learnt something new after ~15 years of authoring, some of which were really complex discs. I did not think this is even possible without breaking the menus

Overlapping buttons are certainly not a good practice, but there are examples of interesting use of them. For example, I remember having seen a DVD with a secret button leading to an easter egg. The menu contained 4 buttons at exactly the same coordinates on screen. Only one of these buttons reacts approximately normally. Let call it the "main button". It is normally highlighted when you come from another regular button of the same menu. When the main button is highlighted, you can either activate it and jump to a regular bonus, or use the direction buttons of the remote to jump to any other regular button of the same menu. But one of the directions jumps to the first overlapping button hidden beneath the main button. Of course, the highlight does not change, since the button is at the same place and has the same highlight parameters. The user simply thinks that that direction is not enabled. From that first hidden button, you can now again activate it or jump to any other regular button of the same menu, or to the second hidden button. Same thing for the third hidden button. And when you have reached that third hidden button, activating it leads you to the easter egg instead of to the regular bonus !

Of course, that works only with a remote, and if you play the DVD on a PC, you must use a player that can emulate a real remote with the arrow and Enter keys of the keyboard (like PgcEdit) to reach the easter egg. Not sure if all software players will activate the first overlapping button when it is clicked with the mouse. If, per chance, it activates the last one, it will play the easter egg immediately !

Anyway, as far as I know, although making overlapping buttons can be illegal, they work without problem with any standalone player, as I can't imagine the player checking if the buttons overlap before selecting or activating them.

[Cornucopia]

Yeah, they aren't "illegal" in the sense that it breaks the spec and disallows compilation, but more that it creates a condition of uncertainty of response during playback.
My guess is that industrial verifiers will flag it (not sure if it's a deal-breaker for pressing or not - probably not if this was already found in a store-bought title), and certain authoring tools may or may not let it be created.

Scott

[NickSaggy]

Been in use of Photoshop for a very long time. I don't understand your query.

[Skiller]

???
Wrong thread maybe or private messaging?

[NickSaggy]

Must be a wrong question.

[mistateo]

Thank you to everyone who replied. I have replicated the feature in my project and it is nearly indistinguishable from the original, other than a very slightly different font. I now have other questions about other topics (seamless branching vs angles, programatically highlighting menu buttons, etc) so I am going to start new threads.

@r0lZ
Is your donation link still good on PGCEdit 9.3?
Your program was absolutely critical for my understanding of this process and allowing me to easily import color palettes, color schemes and overlap buttons etc. It is capable of far much more than I listed or ventured into, quite marvelous.

[r0lZ]

@r0lZ
Is your donation link still good on PGCEdit 9.3?
Your program was absolutely critical for my understanding of this process and allowing me to easily import color palettes, color schemes and overlap buttons etc. It is capable of far much more than I listed or ventured into, quite marvelous.

Thanks for your positive feedback !
Yes, the donation link is still working, although not much useful those days !

[mistateo]

@r0lZ
Is your donation link still good on PGCEdit 9.3?
Your program was absolutely critical for my understanding of this process and allowing me to easily import color palettes, color schemes and overlap buttons etc. It is capable of far much more than I listed or ventured into, quite marvelous.

Thanks for your positive feedback !
Yes, the donation link is still working, although not much useful those days !

Well hopefully I made it a little more useful than it has been recently.

[r0lZ]

Yes ! I have received your donation. Thanks !

[Skiller]

Glad to hear it turned out all working nicely, mistateo.