Another 1080p Demo Disc Project - Page 3

I don't know yet. I wanted to have more music on the disc so I tracked that clip down online. I don't think (read I'm not absolutely certain) that with display devices today that the NTSC v PAL compatibility is crucial. Most display devices will "re-handshake" in the event of a signal change.

If you notice at the top of my list, in red, are two items marked because their FPS differs from that of 23.976. In my early testing, this meant that my projector would "re-handshake" when those clips come up. The clips and disc authoring were fine. Those clips won't make the disc because they are short. I've presumed, although not tested, that the KORN track will do something similar, but at the length of a full song, it's OK, IMO, for a "re-handshake" to take place.

Yes. A few people have offered hosting space (not sure of the bandwidth available) and we could also have a torrent out there. All one would need to do is download and burn.

The content won't be encrypted in anyway.

I've received a couple of PMs where people have asked if I'd burn them a disc, with their theater image as the menu background for a price. At first I was reluctant about that, but if it helps distribution it might not be a bad idea.

I'm hoping there will be away to swap out menu backgrounds without having to re-author. The menu background is just a still-image converted to a looping video clip. The buttons, icons, selections from there are a separate overlay. As far as I understand.

I wanted to clarify something, I think perhaps my post may have been misleading. I posted the clip listing to show what clips I have collected and to state that I'm done with the clip collecting phase.

I think it's been interpreted that I was done with the disc and that what I posted was the clips, already authored and complete. That's not the case.

Additionally, while it is likely that 98% of the clips in the listing will make it to the final disc, if something really cool or good pops up on my radar I may have to bump some clips. As it stands now I think I'm already about 1gig to large in size.

I don't want to give a time frame on completion. I'm just working on this as I can. I am currently prepping all of the clips and should have that complete by the weekend. Ideally I'd like this thing to be done, tested and being distribution in a couple of weeks but I'm inclined to think that I'm going to encounter a few headaches both in and outside of this project cause that's just the way life works.

Stay tuned.

As stated above, the project has hit a slight snag, but as usually say to my boss when appropriate: "Houston we have a solution"

Several, as in around 40%, of the clips that I have collected while being perfect aren't suitable for Sonic Scenarist which is very meticulous. The theory being that perhaps these movies were originally done on Sony's Blu-print software which is more forgiving which is why even in raw form they are being rejected by Scenarist.

This problem seems to only apply to h.264 (AVC) clips as I have no issues with Mpeg2 or VC1 clips.

In addition to the video, there is header information in an .264 file that gives the decoder/software/player so information about the clip and is presumably repeated many times. The problem with Scenarist seems to be this information being in anything but an absolute strict pure form.

I have two options, which may be reduced to one and only time will tell.

1) Re-rip the Blu-rays for the broken clips and redo them under different options so as retain this header information as best as possible so that Scenarist will accept them (I've actually done this for 2 movies already Live-free Die Hard and Transformers2. Scenarist accepts these new clips). This clip re-collection phase isn't as bad as it sounds because I already know what scenes I'm collecting with the correct timestamps recorded.

2) Re-encode the video using the highest of the high settings. This is NOT something I want to do, but in theory it could have no negative impact on the video.

I'm proceeding with option 1, but if Scenarist later rejects the clips (which I've told is possible when doing the final creation to disc) then I will be forced to re-encode the clips. If and when that happens, I will mark which clips have been re-encoded.

This information is for AVC video only, no re-encoding will take place for DTS-HD, True-HD, VC1, LPCM or Mpeg2 files.

Thanks to jjoboh for all the help offline!

Another update and another chance to say "Houston we've got a solution!"

I've resolved the issue with the clips by recapturing and/or re-encoding the .264 clips.

Now, when bringing my menus into Scenarist I've discovered that my original design has overshot the allowable Blu-ray buffer for menu graphics. 16MB is allowed, and for my largest menu I was at over 33MB. I don't fully understand how that works because when I look at each graphic's filesize they don't add up collectively to more than 16MB, so I would think displaying them all at once would be under the buffer but I guess I'm wrong. The menus are encoded so maybe after encoding the size exceeds 16MB.

The problem seemed to stem mostly from having large areas of transparent space.

The solution was to do the following, where instead of having the single location to display the surround and video track information, it now floats alongside each clip selection.

This significantly reduced the transparent area of the graphics and now my largest menu is about 7MB, less than half of the allowable buffer.

Here are a couple of shots of the new menu design (I'm still using my theater for menu background, this is just for my copy. I'm planning to use the commercial theater background for the version that I distribute here)





And, as recommended by someone here several posts ago, I've added a "Main Menu" button to each sub-menu that can be seen in this image

That's a great idea and I think I'm going to implement that. I've already recorded the clip lengths, I'll just have to redo some of the menu-work but I think it'll be worthwhile. Baffled why I didn't think of it in the first place.


Thanks for the nitpick, I usually right Blu-ray, but for some reason I thought Bluray looked better when doing the text-graphic. If it's "officially" Blu-ray I'll change it.

As for your other question, you are correct. It only displays that text when you have navigated to that selection. The same thing applies to the other clips. It'll only display the clip info when you've navigated to that item.

Thanks for all of the positive comments, and thanks for the votes to keep my theater as the distributed menu background.

There are going to be 5 menus

1) Main Menu
2) LFE Menu
3) Surround Menu
4) Visual (Eye Candy) Menu
5) Music Menu

If I'm going to ditch the commercial theater menu background, I could include a different image for each menu, and can even have the menu backgrounds somewhat "alive" in the sense that every 15 seconds or so the background could transition.

This accomplishes two things.

It makes the disc relative to this community
It allows my first, and perhaps only, authored Blu-ray appear as more of a professional piece than just the work of a hobbyist.

Yes my theater does flow with the color choices, but surely there are other theaters out there that does as well. If you guys (and any gals) want to suggest images to me (feel free to nominate your own theater images) then I can work them into to one of the menus. There's no reason we can't get a 15 theaters represented.

Additionally, this slight project aside won't affect the development of the project at all. The menu background is a totally separate asset to the menu. I can plug new menus in last minute.

So, with that said. Gimme some recommendations for other home theaters to showcase!!