How? Video "still" with audio track...

[odlumb]

I've been looking for an answer to this question for days, without success.
Time to post and beg for help!

The best way to explain what I want to do is to start with an ordinary Title, so imagine a Title with a one minute video clip and a single accompanying one minute audio track. Now imagine that every frame of the video is exactly the same. Well, that's a waste of good space, so let's use a quality NLE to cut it down to one frame. But now there is a problem, because I want the audio track to play from beginning to end. How do I tell my authoring tool (ANY authoring tool) to play the one frame video clip in a loop until the audio track terminates?

I want my title to behave much like a menu which plays audio (usually music) while the menu is on screen. It is my understanding that when one creates a menu from a still image, the authoring tool creates a short MPEG clip, because all video and menu assets on a DVD are stored as MPEG. So in effect, I want to duplicate this exact behavior, only in a Title, not a menu. I could easily accomplish what I want to do with menus, except my audio tracks are large and exceed the DVD spec size limitation on menu assets.

A multi-stage solution is acceptable, i.e., create the contents of the VIDEO_TS directory and patch the results afterwards with PgcEdit or IFOEdit.

Please, anyone? Many thanks in advance!

Edit - Another possible scenario - Imagine X audio tracks, a video with X frames, and a Title with X cells. If one could assign each cell a separate audio track (how?) and set the cell playback time (how?) to be the length of its corresponding audio track, that would accomplish the same thing. But so far I have not found anyway to do this, i.e., assign separate audio tracks to individual cells. I suppose one could concatenate all the audio tracks into one large track, assign that track to the Title, and then set the cell playback times to be the length of the corresponding segment in the track. But how does one set cell playback (or start) times which don't correspond to video? And again, how does one play just the single video frame belonging to that segment in a loop while the cell playback time is expiring?

I might be making things more complicated here, a solution to the original posting would suffice, but I'm willing to go any route which will get the job done.

[r0lZ]

I have tried to do something similar in the past, but I haven't found the right tools. My goal was to create a music DVD with a different still picture for each song.

As far as I know, MuxMan is the better tool to do that. But in the past, it was impossible to instruct MuxMan to use the audio duration as the duration of the cell. As a consequence, I have extracted the duration of all audio files with josoto's DelayCut program, and I used that information as the length of the cell, in the MuxMan project. Unfortunately, this method is not accurate enough, and the video and audio were not perfectly in sync. Pity.

At that time, I have asked mpucoder (author of MuxMan) to add an option to associate a still frame with an audio file automatically. It was not one of his priorities, but maybe this option exists now.

Anyway, in your case, MuxMan+DelayCut should be sufficient, since you have only one cell to create. It is not very important if the end of the cell doesn't match exactly the end of the audio.

Note that MuxMan can accept a BMP instead of a MPEG file as input.

I'm not sure you need MuxMan Advanced (not totally free) or if the basic version is sufficient.

[odlumb]

Thanks, look into this...

rOIZ - Thanks for the info.

FYI, DVDLabPro (and possibly DVDLabStudio) has an "object" in its GUI inventory for doing exactly what you want to do - a separate picture for each track. It's called an "Audio Title", and works more or less like a Video Title except one supplies a still image instead of a video clip.

There are two reasons why I'm not going this route - one, DVDLabPro is, IMHO, very buggy. I tried to compile an extremely simple audio CD with just a few tracks, nothing fancy, not even a root menu. The program failed to compile, although the compiler exited without issuing any warnings or errors. This was by no means the only incident - half the projects I attempted with DVDLabPro failed to compile, although the compiler not once ever complained about any problems.

The other reason is that the Audio Title object, unlike the Video Title, does not allow BOV, which is precisely the mechanism I need to accomplish what I want to do. So for me, DVDLabPro is out... Since they offer a fully working demo (I have to give them credit for that) you might try it out to see if it suits your needs. If you decide to do so, be sure that you get and install the v.218 update after installing the v2.0 dowload.

The lack of BOV in DVDLabPro's Audio Title makes it almost worthless in IMO, because once an audio track has been started there is no recourse but to let that track play to completion or return to the Root Menu (if there is one) with the title button on the remote. One can't do anything else, because there are no buttons! I suppose if the track is only two minutes long that's acceptable, but it's intolerable for 30+ minute tracks.

I will look into Muxman. I suspect (but I'm not sure) that all one really needs to do is set the cell time (cell #1 if each audio track is in its own VOB) to the length of the audio track and the associated video clip, being much shorter, will simply loop like a motion menu until the cell time expires, i.e., the audio track ends. It would be nice if one could do this with a post-compile program like PgcEdit or IFOEdit, but I haven't found any tool (yet) that can do this. I suspect that's because any changes in cell playback times require a remux of everything, in which case Muxman is the only choice (until some software company decides to build this capability into their GUI). It seems so easy, just an additional checkbox to indicate if the Video Title should use the audio clip or the video clip as the timeline, or better still, a textfield to input an arbitrary cell playback time value and then check for errors or inconsistencies at compile time. But I haven't seen this yet in any DVD authoring program I have tried (haven't had a shot at Scenarist).

Off to get Muxman...

Thanks! Anyone else have suggestions?

[r0lZ]

Thanks also to you, Odlumb. Very precise information!

I don't know DVD-Lab Pro well, as I have only used it in the past to create some simple menus. Anyway, the Audio Title object is probably not exactly what I'm looking for. If it is, as its name implies, a single Title with one audio track, probably it doesn't allow to build a Title with several chapters, each one being an independent audio track. This is what I need, since my project is to compile several CDs on one DVD. I need one different Title per CD, with one chapter per CD track. And I need also a way to automate the creation of the project, since I would like to put many tracks on the compilation. Muxman is a good candidate for this kind of job, since its project file is pure ASCII and relatively straightforward.

The BOV limitation is not really a problem for me, since I can create them with PgcEdit. There will be no subpic, therefore only invisible auto-executing BOVs are possible, but that's OK for me. Also, it should be possible to skip to the previous or next track/chapter with the remote. Your poor experience with Lab doesn't incite me to try this way, though.

You cannot use the cell time to control the duration of the cell. The cell time adds a pause on the last frame of the track, without audio, after the cell has finished playing. Since the audio stream is inside the cell, it will be played completely before the pause begins.

What you want is to be able to mux the audio track and one still image in one single track. Of course, you cannot use PgcEdit or IfoEdit for that job. They are not muxers. As I said, Muxman can do that, in the title and in the menu domains. If you want to create only a single menu or title with one audio track, it is certainly sufficient. You can probably specify one or two seconds more as the track duration, just to be sure.

The problem I had with muxman is related to the fact that I want to create several chapters with separate audio. I cannot find a way to specify exactly the audio track duration, and therefore the still image is muxed a little bit too early or too late. When it's too early, the consequences are very bad: if you skip to the next chapter with the remote, the video track is empty, and the background image is not refreshed.

Mpucoder is aware of this problem and has promised to add exactly what you suggest: a "match audio track duration" flag instead of a specific duration.
BTW, you should also try DVD Planner. It's a new muxer, similar to muxman, also with a free basic version. I haven't tried it yet.

[odlumb]

You can?

rOIZ,

Let's see, a couple of things...

DVDLabPro's Audio Title does have "markers" similar to video chapters. But without BOV they seem to be of very limited use, because you have to be in a menu to link to them. I suppose one could concatenate a bunch of tracks together and place markers at the splice points, and then jump to individual segments in the concatenated audio track. But how do you get back (other than mapping the title button on the remote to the menu)?

You can create BOV in PgcEdit?!? Really?!? I have used PgcEdit to examine BOV already present in the VOB, and I know you can change palette, size, position, command, etc., but I've never found a way to create new buttons. You have me drooling, this would solve a major problem I'm having at the moment...

Also, can you direct me to the documentation for the input scripting language for Muxman? All I have been able to find are a few cryptic examples at http://www.mpucoder.com/Muxman/mxp/index.shtml
and there is not one line of explanation. Maybe the people who use Muxman think these examples are self-explanatory? If so, I'm in trouble...

I started playing with Muxman yesterday, and I seem to have stumbled on a way to set the VTS duration to the length of the audio tracks combined, while setting cell playback time to the length of the individual audio tracks. I imported nine relatively short .m2v files, each with a corresponding audio file quite a bit longer that the video. After compiling, here is what PgcEdit told me:

VTST 1 , 1 TTN 1 (1:57:11) Title 1 - Chapters: 9, Programs: 9, Cells: 9
********** pre commands:
********** post commands:
********** cell commands:
Playback time: 01:57:11.04 (at 30 fps)
PG Playback mode: sequential
PUOs: 0 (0x00000000)
NextPGCN: 0
PrevPGCN: 0
GoUpPGCN: 0
PGC Still Time: 0
Audio stream 1 status: 0x00008000 (stream=0)
Chap. Prog. Cell Type Layer Ang VOBU Cell Cell Playback End Entry First Last Last VOB Cell
(PTT) Flags Break Still Still Cmd. Time Time VOBU ILVU VOBU VOBU ID ID
Time # sector End Start End
0 1 1 1 2 yes - no 0 0 00:08:15.02 00:08:15.02 0 0 48980 49056 1 1
0 2 2 2 2 yes - no 0 0 00:12:46.08 00:21:01.10 49057 0 124536 124611 2 1
0 3 3 3 2 yes - no 0 0 00:04:11.01 00:25:12.11 124612 0 149747 149821 3 1
0 4 4 4 2 yes - no 0 0 00:13:31.06 00:38:43.17 149822 0 229696 229769 4 1
0 5 5 5 2 yes - no 0 0 00:11:30.07 00:50:13.24 229770 0 297820 297895 5 1
0 6 6 6 2 yes - no 0 0 00:18:22.00 01:08:35.24 297896 0 406181 406254 6 1
0 7 7 7 2 yes - no 0 0 00:11:50.09 01:20:26.03 406255 0 476267 476343 7 1
0 8 8 8 2 yes - no 0 0 00:15:51.27 01:36:18.00 476344 0 569963 570040 8 1
0 9 9 9 2 yes - no 0 0 00:20:53.04 01:57:11.04 570041 0 693094 693170 9 1

Apologies, all the column formating gets lost in the paste. But as you can see, all the cell playback and end times are correct (corresponding to the audio, not the video), and in fact when I played the result it did exactly what I wanted, i.e., the video looped until the associated audio track terminated, and then the next video/audio began to play.You probably already knew this. I can use this mechanism to do what I want if I can figure out how to create BOV, either in Muxman or PgcEdit. Onward...

[goonix]

AUDIO WITH STILLS

Here are scripts for MuxMan 0.15p that creates "audio with stills" on a video-DVD.

They make absolutely synchronized stills and audio without knowing the exact time of the audio tracks.
These example scripts create 2 titles with 10 tracks each.
But they can expanded (copy and paste) up to 99 titles with 255 tracks each.

The first example is relatively simple:

www.goonix.biz/download/misc/audio_simple.mxp

We need 2x10 audio tracks (01.wav...10.wav, 11.wav...20.wav) and the related video stills (01.bmp...10.bmp, 11.bmp...20.bmp).
For the small cell at the end of the PGCs we additionally need black.bmp.
If you don't want the track display, you can use black.bmp for every audio track.

The second example is more professional:

www.goonix.biz/download/misc/audio_pro.mxp

We additional have a title display for 10 seconds (T1.bmp, T2.bmp) e.g. for displaying the CD cover.
Therefore we need the file 10sec_silence.wav.
And we can skip forward and backward through all titles with the PREV and NEXT buttons of the remote.

Examining both scripts, you shurely can make your own prefered version of a "Audio-DVD".

EDIT: Small changes to the scripts. Now they should work perfectly.

goonix

[r0lZ]

DVDLabPro's Audio Title does have "markers" similar to video chapters. But without BOV they seem to be of very limited use, because you have to be in a menu to link to them. I suppose one could concatenate a bunch of tracks together and place markers at the splice points, and then jump to individual segments in the concatenated audio track. But how do you get back (other than mapping the title button on the remote to the menu)?

Well, I suppose that you can define the Titles as non sequential, add a dummy somewhere in the same TTN, callable with the GoUp (Return) button. From the dummy, it is easy to go back to the menu.
The non-sequential Title has some drawbacks, though. In particular, the time map is (theoretically) ignored, so you will not be able to seek to a specific duration within the Title. But I think that this operation is impossible anyway in a still+audio Title.

You can create BOV in PgcEdit?!? Really?!? I have used PgcEdit to examine BOV already present in the VOB, and I know you can change palette, size, position, command, etc., but I've never found a way to create new buttons. You have me drooling, this would solve a major problem I'm having at the moment...

Yes, you can create simple buttons with PgcEdit. Just ask to edit a cell without button and a confirmation dialog will ask you if you want to create a button, and how many groups. At this point, you can create as many button as you want from within the editor.
Note that it is not possible to modify the subpic stream in PgcEdit. So, with this method, it is only possible to create buttons without highlights (or with whatever highlights are already present in the subpic stream). It is possible however to draw a simple coloured rectangle as the button highlights by modifying the colour scheme (and especially the transparency of the background color.)
To create a BOV, the method is similar, but you have to scan the domain for BOVs first (even if there are no subpiuc streams defined in the domain). This operation is automatic in the menu domain, but is optional for the Title domain, therefore you have to force it. This is a requirement so that you will not overwrite existing BOVs without ever knowing they are there.

Also, can you direct me to the documentation for the input scripting language for Muxman? All I have been able to find are a few cryptic examples at http://www.mpucoder.com/Muxman/mxp/index.shtml
and there is not one line of explanation. Maybe the people who use Muxman think these examples are self-explanatory? If so, I'm in trouble...

I don't know much more than you. My method to understand how it works is to generate some simple projects with the GUI, and to analyse the project file. But this format is also relatively straightforward when you know the internal organisation of a DVD-Video. Also, I think mpucoder has used a format very close to the format of Scenarist. Maybe you can find some info by searching the Scenarist doc?
You should also visit mpucoder's forum.

Apologies, all the column formating gets lost in the paste.

To conserve the original format, you have to put the text between [ code] and [ /code] tags (without the spaces.)

But as you can see, all the cell playback and end times are correct (corresponding to the audio, not the video), and in fact when I played the result it did exactly what I wanted, i.e., the video looped until the associated audio track terminated, and then the next video/audio began to play.You probably already knew this. I can use this mechanism to do what I want if I can figure out how to create BOV, either in Muxman or PgcEdit. Onward...

Your example looks like the test I've made in the past. But you have to be sure that the durations are really precise. A difference of one frame can be a real problem! And since the audio track durations are not necessarily exactly divisible by a the duration of a frame, the errors are cumulative.
Have you tried to use the Next/Prev buttons on your remote? Do you see the right video still in each chapter?

[r0lZ]

AUDIO WITH STILLS

Here are scripts for MuxMan 0.15p that creates "audio with stills" on a video-DVD.

[...]

Examining both scripts, you shurely can make your own prefered version of a "Audio-DVD".

Thanks, goonix. But can you explain where is the "trick"?
I cee that you define the duration of the Video Play item to Default, the Audio Play has no specified duration, and Scene Time=00:00:00:00. Is it sufficient to force muxman to retrieve the real duration of the cell in the audio stream?
I think it was impossible to do that the last time I worked on my Audio-DVD project, but I don't remember if I have tried this precise syntax.
I will try again soon...

But they can expanded (copy and paste) up to 99 titles with 255 tracks each.

I have too many tracks to do it manually, but I have already a tcl script to generate the project somewhere. All I have to do is to modify the durations, and rip and convert the audio tracks again.
Thanks for the info!

goonix
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 1

I can't beleive it's only your first post here!
Anyway, welcome to Digital Video Forums!

[goonix]

Is it sufficient to force muxman to retrieve the real duration of the cell in the audio stream?

It seems to be sufficient because it works.

I have already a tcl script to generate the project

Copy, paste and correct the scripts is really a lot of work. A tcl script would be nice for the community.

Maybe its a good idea for a new program?

And you know that MuxMan can make a menu with working buttons within the same script. You only have to paint it in PhotoShop before (background and highlight). This way you get a complete working DVD in one pass.

But I think a menu isn't necessary for a "Audio-DVD".

BTW: It seems to be possible to create the BOVs with MuxMan. I will make a test.

goonix

[r0lZ]

Well, the script is not usable for the moment by the community, as it has no GUI. It is really related to one specific personal project.
I have written also another script to generate automatically the menus (with the background images and buttons highlights) and the background images for the Title domain. The script takes the artist, album and tracks names automatically from the file names, and generates an user-modifiable text file. With this file, another script generates the BMPs for the menu and the backgrounds. Finally a third script builds the muxman project.
But none of those scripts are good enough to be released publicly.
Anyway, I think there is a similar but more professional Audio-DVD project generator, also for Muxman. I don't remember where I've read that, though. Maybe at Doom9?

And yes, it should be possible to generate the BOVs with muxman, although I wonder if it will accept to create a button if there are no subpic streams defined in the domain.

[blutach]

Welcome goonix

Regards

[goonix]

Thanks for the welcome, r0lZ and blutach!

Here is the result of my BOV-test:

r0lZ is right, MuxMan creates BOVs only if a subpic stream is defined.

goonix

[r0lZ]

Pity. But it is certainly possible to define a dummy subpic stream with a monochrome BMP.

[r0lZ]

@ goonix:
Yeah, your method works. I've made a simple test and almost everything is perfect.

The only problem is that there is a short but noticeable pause between each cells/chapters in the Titles, although the cells are linked seamlessly. I suppose that it's because the durations of the audio tracks are not exactly divisible by the duration of one video image, and therefore that Muxman pads or offsets the audio tracks somwhow. It's not a problem in a compilation of independent songs, but in a "medley", the pause is unpleasant.
Any idea to avoid this problem?

[goonix]

Thanks for confirmation, r0lZ!

You are probably right. Every track (video and audio) is handled as a separate segment, so we must have complete video and audio units in it (they can't cross the segment borders). Because it is a Video-DVD, MuxMan tries to make the video without a noticeable pause. It is unlikely that the video units and the audio units match exactly the same duration. Therefore we can get a short pause in the audio stream. For a normal audio compilation, you will never notice them. But for a medley or live CD without pauses between the tracks, it is annoying.

Only mpucoder knows how to avoid this. Maybe we need a "Audio-DVD" statement or something.

goonix