Menu transitions

Rich Reilly wrote on 10/10/2007, 7:28 AM

Is there a way to make the transition from end of media clip (of menu) to menu itself seamless? When I set it up as an end action, there is a noticeable amount of black in between the movie and the menu. This is in preview, but can't imagine a burn corrects this.
I know the spec allows this to be pretty seamless..I've seen it on other titles.

Comments

CoolBlue wrote on 10/10/2007, 8:57 AM

I had some issues too with the last frame showing as black. What I did was go to the clip properties, and change Auto Specify Length to manual. Then down on the clip area, move the flag one frame to the left.

That got rid of the blank frame for me. Also make sure your menus are in Progressive mode. Some players will show blank frame if menus are interlaced.

Andrew B wrote on 10/10/2007, 5:17 PM

I've noticed this black 'space' is longer on some DVD players. We notice a space inbewteen the copy write announcement and the menu, plus when the menu repeats (we have it in a loop) there is a pause as well.
I will try to remove the black frames, but I think this could also be a factor of your playback device...

Rich Reilly wrote on 10/10/2007, 8:43 PM

This tute:
http://www.dvdcreation.com/2003/03_mar/tutorials/dvda_menus.htm

Seems to suggest yo ucan go from menu to movie seamlessly...makes no mention of the reverse which is where the black occurs. But I have seen this work in holllywood titles.

Galeng wrote on 10/11/2007, 12:38 AM

I think part of it depends on your player. I have been using this technique for about the last 4 months. On some players it does seem almost seemless, while with other players there still is that abrupt jump, even though it is going back to an exact duplicate of your menu.

mickbadal wrote on 10/19/2007, 1:39 PM

Hi Rich,

I came up with an alternate way to do menu transitions that, in my experience, creates a completely seamless transition between the transition video and the menu, and I prefer it over the way that DVDA says to create a transition video. I'm not sure if this meets your use case, but here's the link so you can check it out:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=22&MessageID=531199

Happy hunting,
Mick

Rich Reilly wrote on 10/19/2007, 2:31 PM

Mick,
is the idea here that it works because it's menu to menu as opposed to video asset to menu?
And..any special settings for th etransition video? What type offile, progressive? etc

Rich Reilly wrote on 10/21/2007, 1:51 AM

It works great!

MPM wrote on 10/21/2007, 8:36 AM

FWIW & all, in case it gives somebody something to play with...

AFAIK there are 3 reasons for delays in switching from one vid to another, looping etc... The player itself has whatever memory installed, & (somewhat rarely with current models) if the amount of memory is low, there's a delay, as buffers fill I'd guess. Just mention this in case someone has a situation where nothing works on 1 player.

The 2nd reason, & I think the most common, is that the video may be a long ways from the menus on the disc. You can help avoid this problem in DVDA by being careful where your video is in the project tree on the left -- DVDA will place your video on disc according to that placement.

3rd, DVDA inserts a fair amount of scripting, as do some other programs, and it takes time for a player to work it's way through it. By placing video as a background on a menu page, you avoid some scripting, you help keep the video physically located near the menus, and you stay in the menu domain, rather than passing through the VMG domain to a title set.

Menus that just hold video are common on retail movie DVDs, often using an invisible button [an empty image-type button with no highlight] that auto-activates when the video's over -- set the menu length to the video duration.

Using a loop point adds a wrinkle: it takes a little longer for the video to restart having to go through scripting to find where in the video it's supposed to occur. Having 1 menu holding the transition video leading to a regular menu with a motion background eliminates that extra delay, since the regular menu only has to loop, not figure out where to loop.

The price is that you might have a longer pause because the player has to load & switch between videos -- the reason for a loop point in the 1st place because you're creating one video with 2 cells (think chapters). SO what happens if you duplicate the menu with the motion background?

You can in fact use a transition or intro video with a loop point where the repeatable motion background begins, then auto-activate a hidden button to switch to a duplicate -- identical except for the intro video & loop point. You get the smoother transition from having only one video from intro/transition to motion background, and if the 2nd menu loops, the shorter restart time from no loop point.