DiscWelder Chrome - DVD-A Hybrid Authoring Problem

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Compyfox

New member
Joined
Mar 22, 2006
Messages
3
Hello.

First of all I have to say "thank the gods I finally found a forum where my questions might be answered". A board dedicated to surround production and lots of DiscWelder users - I just hope the best. ;)


Okay, to my "little problem", which is kind of important cause I'm in the middle of a production and the stuff was planned to be released in early march already (but you know that... there always happens something - in this case a HDD crash) - so I'm kind of on a timer (till mid april). I'm working on a soundtrack project, called "Chrono Symphonic", which is a royalty free tribute project to the videogame "Chrono Trigger". The regular edition was released in january already, however I'm working on a "special edition" with additional tracks and even one or two of those tracks are planned to be released in 5.1 too.

The project was (and still is) planned to be released on Audio CD (redbook), while the surround tracks might be encoded with SRS Encoder (if they fix the bug with SX3 till end of the month), else my only option is DVD-A, which also turned out as the "best solution to release everything on one disc" for me (and I can learn how to get into that section). But this is just one aspect of the medal.


So much for the background story what I plan to do - on to the problem.
I only have access to DiscWelder Chrome at a friends studio. He's one of the crazy people who is like "yeah I gotta have it" and then he barely uses it or only the basic functions. The last couple of days I hung out in his studio I had the chance to take a deeper look at it, which brought me to the idea releasing that project on DVD-A too (still have the original stereo files in 48kHz 24bit before they were rendered down). Like I said... my friend is more like "advanced options? *pft* I go the standard way" and I'm not the person who likes standard textlinks and boring backgrounds.


Anyway... I'm not skilled as designer myself, I'm an engineer, so to get bit better access in terms of menu creating, I used DVD Menu Studio from MediaChance to create a BMP Backround and a BMP subpicture. Those were then loaded into DiscWelder (Custom Menu creation), I drew buttons for navigation, linked them together (4 pages), made my links to the tracks (I used 4 testtracks - 1 in 44kHz 16bit and 3 in 48kHz 24bit on 3 groups), double checked everything and activated "mirror VIDEO_TS".

After creating the image and testing it with a normal DVD player (cause I don't have a DVD-A player yet) the following occoured: nothing. And by that I mean... I fire up the created image with a DVD player (software) of my choice: PowerDVD, Media Player Classic, the standard one from Windows 2000 - the behavior is all the same. The menu shows up giving me he main page. I can then use the arrow buttons to choose which menu I want to access, but as soon as I access that menu, the DVD player stops on an instand. It doesn't even open the next page, it simply goes to "stop". Even tested that with a hardware player - same behavior.

So I went back to DiscWelder, did some bugtesting, analysed the menu again, double checked everything, redrew the buttons. After the rendering it's the very same behavior. "Okay" I thought "now let's do a test... what happens if I say 'don't route to this particular sub-page rather than going to the next page' (trigger 'next')?". Said and done, changed the link to "next" rather than "submenu CD01", rendered it, loaded it in the DVD player... now the funny part starts: I really can access the "next page", but then the player stops again, or hangs himself up.


No matter what I do, I can't get behind this issue. I browsed the manual (which is limited to "it should work"), looked in the internet to find a solution - nothing. I give up and simply scream: "HELP!"


This is where you come into place. Somebody of you discovered such issues and can help me (most important)? Or somebody knows where to get tutorials for "creating DVD menus" and knows what to do and what not?

I can provide you with snapshots if you want, my demo DVD renderings (packed 280MB each, extracted 970MB - royalty free music), ...whatever helps finding the bug. But please help me if you can!


DiscWelder is indeed a nice tool, and compared to others cheap for what you get. It can't be that you can't even produce custom menus (for DVD-A and/or hybrid video layers) but only use the standard links with a tool for 3000USD.

Thanks in advance.
 
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Compyfox said:
Hello.

First of all I have to say "thank the gods I finally found a forum where my questions might be answered". A board dedicated to surround production and lots of DiscWelder users - I just hope the best. ;)


Okay, to my "little problem", which is kind of important cause I'm in the middle of a production and the stuff was planned to be released in early march already (but you know that... there always happens something - in this case a HDD crash) - so I'm kind of on a timer (till mid april). I'm working on a soundtrack project, called "Chrono Symphonic", which is a royalty free tribute project to the videogame "Chrono Trigger". The regular edition was released in january already, however I'm working on a "special edition" with additional tracks and even one or two of those tracks are planned to be released in 5.1 too.

The project was (and still is) planned to be released on Audio CD (redbook), while the surround tracks might be encoded with SRS Encoder (if they fix the bug with SX3 till end of the month), else my only option is DVD-A, which also turned out as the "best solution to release everything on one disc" for me (and I can learn how to get into that section). But this is just one aspect of the medal.

Firstly, SRS is far from your only option in Matrix encoding! It's probably the worst choice, as besides the bug you already mention there is a nastier one (at least, there is in my copy) where the rears are raised by almost 3dB relative to your original mix on decode. This is an appalling mess. Personally, I hate the thing. But I'm rambling & I apologise. The other option is the very-soon-to-be-released Dolby ProLogic II VST encoder from SurCode. I have been testing this for a while now, and it leaves SRS in the dirt.

Compyfox said:
So much for the background story what I plan to do - on to the problem.
I only have access to DiscWelder Chrome at a friends studio. He's one of the crazy people who is like "yeah I gotta have it" and then he barely uses it or only the basic functions. The last couple of days I hung out in his studio I had the chance to take a deeper look at it, which brought me to the idea releasing that project on DVD-A too (still have the original stereo files in 48kHz 24bit before they were rendered down). Like I said... my friend is more like "advanced options? *pft* I go the standard way" and I'm not the person who likes standard textlinks and boring backgrounds.


Anyway... I'm not skilled as designer myself, I'm an engineer, so to get bit better access in terms of menu creating, I used DVD Menu Studio from MediaChance to create a BMP Backround and a BMP subpicture. Those were then loaded into DiscWelder (Custom Menu creation), I drew buttons for navigation, linked them together (4 pages), made my links to the tracks (I used 4 testtracks - 1 in 44kHz 16bit and 3 in 48kHz 24bit on 3 groups), double checked everything and activated "mirror VIDEO_TS".

Stop right there! You are immediately out of spec here - the Mirrored Video_TS is strictly not for production discs, and will never pass verification for 2 reasons:
1 - The content in the Video_TS should be linked from the Audio_TS. Okay, Warners amongst others seem to ignore this part of the specs, and truth be told it's not considered a serious violation. Automatic mirroring on the other hand is going to ensure that the resulting Dolby Digital 5.1 stream is not considered valid by Dolby Labs, you will not get a TMA from them, and you will not be able to use the Dolby Logos on the product.
You also run headlong into Menu issues as you cannot be certain that the structure is going to be DVD-Video compliant.

Compyfox said:
After creating the image and testing it with a normal DVD player (cause I don't have a DVD-A player yet) the following occoured: nothing. And by that I mean... I fire up the created image with a DVD player (software) of my choice: PowerDVD, Media Player Classic, the standard one from Windows 2000 - the behavior is all the same. The menu shows up giving me he main page. I can then use the arrow buttons to choose which menu I want to access, but as soon as I access that menu, the DVD player stops on an instand. It doesn't even open the next page, it simply goes to "stop". Even tested that with a hardware player - same behavior.

So I went back to DiscWelder, did some bugtesting, analysed the menu again, double checked everything, redrew the buttons. After the rendering it's the very same behavior. "Okay" I thought "now let's do a test... what happens if I say 'don't route to this particular sub-page rather than going to the next page' (trigger 'next')?". Said and done, changed the link to "next" rather than "submenu CD01", rendered it, loaded it in the DVD player... now the funny part starts: I really can access the "next page", but then the player stops again, or hangs himself up.


No matter what I do, I can't get behind this issue. I browsed the manual (which is limited to "it should work"), looked in the internet to find a solution - nothing. I give up and simply scream: "HELP!"


This is where you come into place. Somebody of you discovered such issues and can help me (most important)? Or somebody knows where to get tutorials for "creating DVD menus" and knows what to do and what not?

I can provide you with snapshots if you want, my demo DVD renderings (packed 280MB each, extracted 970MB - royalty free music), ...whatever helps finding the bug. But please help me if you can!


DiscWelder is indeed a nice tool, and compared to others cheap for what you get. It can't be that you can't even produce custom menus (for DVD-A and/or hybrid video layers) but only use the standard links with a tool for 3000USD.

Thanks in advance.

Sorry to be a pedant, but your problem is twofold.
1 - you're using the Cracked version.
2 - you really need to create the Video_TS outside of Chrome, and import this into it. Much easier, and you can now be certain & sleep soundly in the safe & certain knowledge the disc will oblige, and play as authored.
(The problem with the paradox cracked version is essentially there are some nasty bugs there. Being a cynical old sod, I suspect this is quite deliberate. Why? Because I have never seen the version involved - build 06 was never released publicly.)
But that is all beside the point.

Menu creation in Chrome is a funny thing. You have a mixture of Active Menus & Passive menus. Active menus, when used, allow buttons onscreen whilst music is playing, and also allow navigation of the disc without interrupting the music. It's very powerful and very easy to screw up - I have done the latter so many times it would be embarrassing if I gave you a figure. :eek: But it is even easier to test burn to RW discs, so I can check correct behaviour.
And if you are automirroring with complex menus, the potential for cockup is very wide indeed. Again, I know from doing it myself :eek::eek:.
The usual solution is a combination of Active & passive menu design. This is invisible to the end user, and has a side effect of making automirror useless.
And the bugs in the cracked version are serious ones.

There are ways & ways to achieve what you want to do - and it is NOT as expensive as you think. Far from it.
 
Neil, what is the best Windows 7-based method for creating a 4-color bmp? I was using Windows XP Paint for this but having now upgraded to Windows 7 (32), the new Paint doesn't seem to want to do 4-color bmp. I'm trying to get DVD Menu Studio / RealDraw Pro to work but I just keep ending up with a letters that are very light and basically a very loose collection of pixels. I know there must be a better way to do this.

(I wonder if I could take the Paint application from XP and port it to 7?)

Andy
 
Neil, what is the best Windows 7-based method for creating a 4-color bmp? I was using Windows XP Paint for this but having now upgraded to Windows 7 (32), the new Paint doesn't seem to want to do 4-color bmp. I'm trying to get DVD Menu Studio / RealDraw Pro to work but I just keep ending up with a letters that are very light and basically a very loose collection of pixels. I know there must be a better way to do this.

(I wonder if I could take the Paint application from XP and port it to 7?)

Andy

It turns out that you can take MSPaint from XP, rename and copy to the Windows 7 directory. It then works as it did under XP. Just rename so that you don't overwrite the Win 7 MSPaint version.

If there is a better 4-color solution, I am curious about what that would be.

Andy
 
The way I have always done it is to use PhotoShop, and set it to an indexed bitmap.
It's really vital to only have 3 colours (plus your background, which should be white so it becomes a transparency) or things can go horribly wrong.
(It's actually even worse in Sonic, as you can import an off-spec menu (even one with a gap in it's file name which is one of the major no-no's in all Sonic's tools) - you just cannot compile it - you get an mkhisp error - which apparently means "make highlight sub-picture").
It's worth persevering with though - but a word of warning here...always use TIF or BMP images, uncompressed. Do not use JPEG. The more graphics you use per track, the more chances are they will end up getting squished in compiling as well. Use highest quality sources you can for art. Avoid using text as buttons too.
 
The way I have always done it is to use PhotoShop, and set it to an indexed bitmap.
It's really vital to only have 3 colours (plus your background, which should be white so it becomes a transparency) or things can go horribly wrong.
(It's actually even worse in Sonic, as you can import an off-spec menu (even one with a gap in it's file name which is one of the major no-no's in all Sonic's tools) - you just cannot compile it - you get an mkhisp error - which apparently means "make highlight sub-picture").
It's worth persevering with though - but a word of warning here...always use TIF or BMP images, uncompressed. Do not use JPEG. The more graphics you use per track, the more chances are they will end up getting squished in compiling as well. Use highest quality sources you can for art. Avoid using text as buttons too.

Neil, thanks for the response. I'll have to look at getting a PhotoShop copy. For now, Paint/XP is doing well.

I was looking up how to add audio to a Chrome II menu. At first I thought it would be an active menu but then I realized what active menus are actually for (while the music is playing). Is there a mechanism to add audio to a Chrome II menu (either as a PCM file or as part of an MPEG video file)? If it is an MPEG video file what happens to the menu still image that would normally be there? I saw a mention of the capability in one forum, but nothing specific.

What I'm trying to accomplish is simply to have background audio playing while the menu is up and have different audio for each of 5 menus.

Thanks again for your help - I know you get a lot of questions on various forums.
 
OK, I think I got it - it is a motion menu and you replace the background image with a motion mpg. I'll have to try this tonight to see how the motion menu is actually done and whether the audio is output.

(Update) As you mentioned in another thread I just read, no matter what I do I can't get audio to come out with a motion menu. I've tried 48/16 and AC3 (stereo). I've tried 4:3 and 16:9 images, too. I'm running 2.0.30. I was hoping that Minnetonka had corrected this bug with a later version of Chrome II but I guess not.

Andy
 
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You're correct about the need for it to be an mpg file and a motion menu.
However, the audio - if included - must be multiplexed with the mpg file to create a program stream, and the audio must be 16-bit 48kHz PCM.
So you would fire up your NLE, and export an mpeg-2 file with the extension .mpg that also includes lossless audio.
That ought to do it.

Check the custom menu rules on the manual, page 83, section 11.2.5 where it gives these helpful hints:
11.2.5 Custom Menu Rules
1.An “Active” Menu Background Image may contain a bitmap file, but may NOT contain an MPEG file.
2.An MPEG Video Background Image can be either elementary stream (video only), or in the “DVD Pack” format, which is MPEG2 video multiplexed with 16-bit/48KHz PCM mono or stereo audio (if the video has audio).
3.All Menus should contain at least one Linked button, or the Menu page may be “Dead-Ended”, i.e. the end-user cannot get out of the page (especially true in players without a remote control).
4.Menu pages with MORE than one button must have Navigation to and/or from each button - a button without Navigation will be “Orphaned”, i.e. the end-user cannot select it.
5.A VTS Link cannot be added to a Track with an Associated Active Menu page. In other words, the player cannot display a video and an active menu at the same time.
6.The Overlay Image must contain at most four colors (including the Background color). Also known as “Indexed” or “Delimited” color.
7.All shapes and/or text that will change color with Selection or Action must be contained within the button area.
8.The set of active Menu page Overlay colors may contain no more than 16 total colors.
9.Track Slides (Slide Show) cannot be used when an Active Menu (either Track Associated or not) is used with a Track.
10.An Album cannot contain more than 99 total Menu pages.
11.The Track command links from an Active menu are restricted to be within the same Group

And this is one of the biggest issues with Chrome - it assumes too much. It makes a major mistake when it just assumes you know the layout of DVD-A discs & how they hang together - which unless you have either pulled a lot apart or else have spec books, is never a given thing.
Menus fall into a couple of categories. First, the way the specs describe it
Single Page Menus. These fall primarily into the following types.
1 - AMGM_DOM (Audio ManaGer Menu Domain) - can be used to navigate to groups (playlists), tracks or other menus in the Menu Domain.
2 - TT_GR_DOM (Title Group Domain) - can be displayed during playback of audio tracks. The menu can be used to navigate to other tracks in the same group, or to either slides or other menus within the same track. When used in the Title Group Domain, a single-page menu is referred to in the specification as an ASV (Audio Still Video) - of which we shall come back to later.
Multi-page menus are used in an album’s Title Group Domain and consist of a series of images (ASVs) displayed during playback of an audio track. The DVD Audio Specification refers to these ASVs as browsable pictures. The display duration and display order (Sequential, Random, or Shuffle) for the ASVs in a multi-page menu are specified in Command Editor. NB - I am not sure these are even supported properly by Chrome, although I have never actually tried.

Now to DiscWelder-Speak.
It may be helpful to categorize Custom Menus into three Classes or Types:
Main Menus (also referred to as Top Menus) and Playlist Menus - these are primarily used for Navigation within the DVD-A disc. They cannot show while a Track is playing (they are not “Active”), and they can be “nested” to provide for more flexibility (multiple levels of Playlists, for example). These can contain bitmaps or MPEG Background Images.
Active Menus that ARE Track Associated - this is a Menu page that can appear when a Track is selected (only one Associated Active Menu can be used per Track). These can contain an image or lyrics for the Track, for example. These can contain bitmaps but not MPEG Motion Backgrounds.
Active Menus that are NOT Track Associated - examples would be Photo Gallery images or Lyrics Gallery images, which the end-user can access via Menu buttons and page commands (“forward” and “back”) during Track playback. These can contain bitmaps but not MPEG Motion Backgrounds.

As far as they have gone, they are almost correct - but fail to mention and allow for some important stuff...
1 - There is no provision in the specs for getting back to AMGM_DOM from TT_GR_DOM. In short, once you are in a group there is no getting out of it from a menu - not directly, anyway. There isa trick though - add a 1-second silent track to the end of every group, and point your "main menu" button from an "Active" menu at this - it will execute end action & go back to your top menu or home menu.
2 - There is no way at all to set a trap in code using Pre & Post commands of DVD, so that if you start in EXTRAS, play a track & expect to be able to fall back to the EXTRAS menu again you cannot do this in Chrome. You can only ever get back to the top menu.
3 - You cannot mix browseable & timed playback on any group of tracks. So if you start out adding a track slide, you will not be able to create any active menus associated with that track. Chrome manual does not mention this.

I keep meaning to try & put a "Hybrid DVD-A/V guide" together, and must find the time to do this one day.
 
Neil, thank you. I am attempting to follow your very simple directions. First thing I missed was LPCM not MPEG audio. So, now that that is fixed (had to get a different NLE since Sony Vegas Pro won't encode LPCM with video), I'm seeing if I'm missing something with the interleaving.

However, I really can confirm that no matter what setting you use that includes MPEG audio, it won't work with Chrome II - or at least won't play audio :)


Andy
 
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That's because there is absolutely no provision in the DVD-A specs for MPEG audio at all.
It shouldn't really work with AC3 either - LPCM only.
I do not have Sony Vegas - might have to grab myself a copy. Strange it cannot do an .mpg file with lossless audio though.
It needs to be a program stream (sometimes called (mistakenly) a transport stream) not elementary ones.
It can certainly be done in Premiere Pro.

Give me a shout if it all goes fruit shaped.
 
You're using Premiere Pro for Chrome II? Could you look at one of the files and see if it matches this? (File length is 29.8 seconds long). I've check the file in a few video players and I'm getting good audio and video.

File Type: PS - MPEG2
Encoding: MPEG2
Dimensions: 720x480
Display Size: 720x480
Frame Rate: 29.97 FPS
VBV Buffer: 224KB
Progressive Scanned
Stream ID: xE0
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
HDR Bit Rate: 8 Mbps
Profile: Main@Main
Chroma: 4:2:0

Audio: LPCM 0 (xA0)
16 bits
2 Channel
48kHz

I would have thought that was all I needed. I'm wonding if the interleaving is the issue and I don't see any way to control that.

Sony Vegas Pro is interesting because normally (when Vegas works, which is less and less with each release) I can get pretty much get any format out of it. It seems to expect the MPEG files to be separate elementary audio and video streams and so when I attempt to combine them, I only have limited options for the file muxing. Those options are limited to MPEG audio and AC3 (up to 5.1). So I'm auditioning other NLEs and so far I haven't hit the magic combination that will work with Chrome II. The TMPGEncoder will do LPCM but so far has produced no Chrome II sound.

I'd be inclined to go to Premiere Pro at this point but CS6 only runs on 64-bit computers and I have driver issues what will keep me at 32-bits for a while. I could go to CS5.5 but then I have no upgrade path. So, that doesn't seem like a good alternative, either.

Are there any limitations with Auto Start or any other menu limitations? I don't have any active menus and I deleted the logo screen. I'm trying to think of any other limitations that there might be.
 
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Don't use Premiere Pro for making MPEG-2 files - I use CinemaCraft CCE-SP3 for that. I just know it can do what is necessary using a
Premiere is what I will always use for creating the seamless slideshows though - and if your authoring software cannot do seamless slideshows then you need to make a low bitrate MPEG-2 file instead. But I am digressing - sorry. BTW, it has been 64-bit only since CS5 (dog) and CS5.5 (much better) - CS6 is superb.

Can you send me your files? I'll create the .mpg stream for you in CCE-SP3.
If you use something like mailbigfile or yousend it, and send to my email address please.
 
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