Archive for scripting
Scripting the Play All situation
There are two ways to think about setting up a ‘play all’ situation. The first is to simply use a single track and place markers at the boundary of each clip, then use stories to hold one marker each. The play all button can then simply point to the track itself and all of the markers will play through (individual clips can be played by pointing the buttons at the [story] containers and setting the end jump of those to go back to a menu).
However, an alternative solution – especially if you already have your disc set up with clips in different tracks – is to use scripts.
If you do decide to script this there are lots of ways to do it. The first tutorial on the play all scripting takes a simple approach and uses a lot of very short scripts. You can see the logic behind the navigation far more easily this way, but it is not as elegant as it could be. If you are new to this, then I definitely recommend having a look at that article.
If you are somewhat more advanced, perhaps you’d like to try the scripted solution that uses only three scripts – one for the button targets, one for the end jumps and a final one for the menu calls. This solution makes use of SPRM8 to remember the button that you came from and attempts to intelligently use a GPRM to direct playback if you are in a play all situation. Returning to the menu makes use of a GPRM based button jump so that you land back on the button you left the menu from.
Sound complicated? It really isn’t too bad! You can download the files from here and read the tutorial that goes with them here.
Targeting the loop point, in version 3 or earlier
Using DVD Studio Pro from Apple enables us to create some exciting DVDs. As good as DVD Studio Pro is, there are some limitations which mean some things can’t be done in the way you want. In order to enhance the work you can do, you need to use an editor which works on the files you create with DVDSP. Such an editor would be MyDVDEdit by Jerome Cabanis, or the DVD Forum approved DVDAfterEdit. These applications let you ‘look’ inside the DVD structures and alter the scripting that DVDSP writes for you so that you can make your DVDs even more interactive.
One example of this is to target the loop point in a motion menu… currently in DVDSP you can’t return back to the point in an animated menu where the buttons appear after watching your footage. You either have to sit through the entire opening animation, or the DVD has to contain a second menu which is static and has the buttons on it. This, of course, takes extra space on your disc. However, with MyDVDEdit you can very easily open up the VIDEO_TS folder, locate the menu and add the necessary lines of code to add this functionality.
I have written a brief tutorial available from MyDVDEdit.com (originally hosted over at Editorsbin.com ) which explains exactly how to do this using MyDVDEdit.
Thanks go to Alex Alexzander for the editorsbin site, and to Jake Russell, who started the whole idea in my head! Jake is part of the DVDAfterEdit community, and a lot of good work is done over there about this kind of post build editing. Ian Sheppard is a good example of someone who began to develop this particular technique. Jake posted the first article I saw about it, and mine simply follows his work.
