DVDAfterEdit Can Handle High-End DVD Authoring Tasks

The 24 Clip, Play list DVD Studio Pro 2/3/4 ® Project Template, is implemented with DVDAfterEdit's unprecedented text editing/authoring capability

First, the Navigation Functionality of the Template Project Described The startup menu presented to the viewer, is a "regular" DVD Menu. Selecting any of the clips, will play the clip, and then navigation will return to the menu. The function buttons along the top of the screen, will; Play All the clips, Loop All the clips, or Loop All the clips randomly (no clip repeats until all have played). Nice. The "Select List" button takes the viewer to the another menu, where they build their play list, of just the selected clips.

The number of clips can be customized; from 2- 24

The Second Menu Allows the Viewer to Define Their Play List Once in the second menu, all the buttons' functions change, and a "Preview", "Reset" and "Back to main menu" button are added. The clip buttons when selected, will now add the clip to the play list; from 1 to all 24 clips are added to the play list, in the order (or disorder) they're selected. The function buttons along the top of the screen, will then Play just the selected clips, according to their "function", just like in the first menu. Preview The "Preview" button can be activated by the viewer to see a short section, which you define, of each clip in the play list, in the order the clips were added. Sweet.

Of course, you can completely customize the menu graphics in the project, including how and where the buttons line up

Duplicate Clip Selection If the viewer has already added a clip to the play list, and they select the clip a second time, a menu screen appears asking if they want to place the clip again, at the current position in the list, or not. Reset Play List At any time, the viewer can activate the "Reset" button to start over, and quickly rebuild the play list.

The duplicate clip feedback screen, is yet another professional feature of the project

If you would like, be sure to check out the functionality yourself. Download the DVDAfterEdit Play List Project Demo DVD. The demo, is a zipped VIDEO_TS folder (only 1.2 MB in size). The VIDEO_TS folder can be written to DVD recordable, or played directly in a software DVD player.

Here's How You Set Up the Template, Using DVDAfterEdit and DVD Studio Pro 2/3/4®

(btw, you want to know the "scary" thing? :-) With a little work in DVDAfterEdit, ANY DVD authoring system can implement the 24 Clip Playlist Template! )

First, What you need: DVDAfterEdit and DVD Studio Pro 2/3/4®

DVD Studio Pro 2/3/4®, because of it's low cost, and all the pro features it can multiplex into a finished VIDEO_TS folder, make it the authoring system of choice, for many, to feed DVDAfterEdit. Without a doubt, DVD SP 2 and DVDAfterEdit equal a $35,000 high-end DVD Authoring System. DVD Studio Pro &r is incapable, by itself, of authoring a 24 clip Play List project, for instance.

What's included in the 24 Clip Playlist Template Project download (available to you immediately upon purchase of the program)

The play list package comes with a DVD Studio Pro 2® project, complete with proxy assets, which you'll replace with your own menu graphics and Mpeg 2 video clips. It's about a 4MB zip file (Stuffit Expander 7.x will open the zip file on the Mac).

The Steps In Detail:

One of the most interesting text files you'll see, is also a part of the material in the download. This text file contains all the commands for the soon to be play list DVD, that you'll paste into the finished DVD SP VIDEO_TS folder loaded in DVDAfterEdit .

1) Asset Preparation: Most of the work will be getting all your clips ready; edited and then encoded to Mpeg 2. Also, you'll need 3 cool menu graphics and their simple highlight overlays designed, to replace the proxy menus, shown above, included in the template project. Note: the Photoshop multi-layer menu design method is not supported; your menus will need to be constructed with simple highlight overlays (like the menu highlighting on almost ALL mass replicated professional discs). That means the normal, unselected look of your buttons will need to be embedded in the menu graphic, just like the proxy menu assets are designed. You can have from as few as several, or up to 24 video clips total in the project. The video clips must be encoded as separate Mpeg 2 files, as each one will replace a proxy Track asset in the DVD Studio Pro ® DVDAfterEdit Play list Template. So once you have all your assets constructed, and this means you've seen your menus on an NTSC or PAL monitor, and are satisfied, and you've spot checked all your Mpeg 2 clips on both an NTSC or PAL TV and computer monitor, and are happy; you'll load the template project.

2) Load the 24 Clip Template Project into DVD Studio Pro 2/3®: What will come in when you load the Template Project are the assets that make up the Play list Demo DVD. The task now is to prepare the project with your own assets and the number of clips you're planning on giving the user control of, up to a total of 24. 3) Prepare the Template Project to control less than 24 clips: If you have fewer clips to control, you'll need to delete the Tracks you won't be using, and remove the menu buttons (hotspots) that reference them, in the two menus that do. Delete the menu buttons that jump to Tracks you don't need. To delete the menu button commands for the Tracks you won't be using, click on the first menu in the Project's "Outline" view, and select the "Menu" tab to get to the menu and it's buttons. Select the last button first, the one that targets Track24, and then hit the delete key. Repeat delete for all the Tracks you won't be using, in reverse order, Track23, 22, 21, etc.

DVD Studio Pro ®will let you delete menu buttons that are still assigned to jump to Tracks, unlike the accidental delete protection found in DVD SP 1.5.

Important: Always delete the last buttons first in the template menus when you're going to control fewer than 24 clips. The remaining buttons, need to keep their order position to preserve their "System Parameter" values; so the pasted commands work later on when the commands in the template text file are pasted in DVDAfterEdit. Delete the Tracks you won't use. After you've removed the buttons targeting the not-to-be-used Tracks in both menus, it's a good time to go into the Outline View and delete the extraneous Tracks (or you can delete these Tracks first, and then the menu buttons, of course). That's easily accomplished in the Outline view. Just click on Track24 and delete it and the rest you won't use in this particular project, in descending order. So now, you will have the two provided template menus and their buttons, targeting the remaining Tracks, with no "left over" button hotspots in the menus (make sure you delete the same number of menu button hotspots as Tracks, in other words).

Replace the Assets in the Menus and Tracks with your own When all's ready, it's time to import your own assets into the template project loaded, and exchange them with the proxy assets. Switching out the menu assets DVD Studio Pro ® makes it easy (not as easy as DVD SP 1.5, though) to replace your assets. For the menus, simply drag your imported menu over the menu editor, and hold until the options appear, and let go; the menu background is placed. Then assign your specially designed simple highlights in the Menu Inspector. Your menus can be completely different than the included proxies. If you've got your buttons arranged differently, that's fine. You can drag the button hotspots, and arrange their sizes, etc., over where you've placed your own. Just make sure the button numbers don't change for each function/Track.

Replacing the Track assets For the Tracks, you'll go into each one, select the proxy asset, and delete it; and then drag the Mpeg 2 clip in you want to be that Track number. There's no need to rename the Tracks. Keeping them named from "Track1" to "Track..x" will help you know the order you're lining up the clips for playback when the Play list Project is in play all, or loop all mode. Each Track can have one audio stream and as many chapter markers as you need (you can move or delete the marker that came in with the Template, to suit your needs). Future versions of the Template project might support a special features menu that allows the viewer to select among multiple audio and subtitle streams for the clips (if we're all real nice, Larry Applegate might be happy to accomodate. :-) Or, in a short period, you'll be able to add the special features menus in the Template Project and add to the programming in the Text file to link them up to the rest of the project, on your own (although I think we should all still be real nice to Larry! :-).

Create the preview Story for each Track One of the cool features of the Play List Template, is the ability to view a pre-defined section of each clip in the play list, before choosing how to play the list. This helps the viewer make sure they've got the right clips, in the order they want. This preview of a very short representative section of each clp is accomplished with the Story feature of DVD Studio Pro 2/3 ®. For each Track, you can define a Story for that representive preview section of the clip. The Story can be anywhere in the clip, and you don't have to set it's end jump in the Connections Window (the Text file with all the commands have that authoring chore already done for you). The Play List Template comes with the first marker defined in each Track, as a single marker Story; which you can easily change which marker will be the Stories start (the next marker reached in the Track, and NOT included in the Story marker list, will be the Stories "out point", as you may know). Build the Project After you've completed the above tasks; you've deleted all the menu buttons and the Tracks you won't be using in this particular project, and replaced all the assets with your own. And then defined the preview Story for each Track, you can build the project. There's no need to author anything in DVD Studio Pro ®.

DVDAfterEdit 's Extensive Text Authoring/Editing Copy & Paste, etc. Capability

Copying and Pasting the Template commands from the text file, into DVDAfterEdit How the Template was created Included in the 24 clip download package is a nifty text file that contains references to all the project elements and all the authoring that jumps, links, and calls the disc's navigation between them. To get an appreciation of DVDAfterEdit's Text edting/authoring capability (as well as for the programs complete DVD spec navigation command set), know, that the way this DVD Studio Pro, 24 clip template was set up for you, is Larry Applegate authored the whole thing in DVDAfterEdit (somewhere between the California's coast and the Panama Canal, on his vacation!). Only the assets were set up like you're doing for your own project. No authoring was done in DVD Studio Pro ®. After the multiplex, Larry authored the project entirely in DVDAfterEdit , and then used the programs "Copy All PGC commands as text" to create the text file you'll be pasting in. Ultra cool. No other DVD authoring system supports this capability. Pasting in the commands from the text file So now, your not-yet-authored project has been multiplexed into a VIDEO_TS folder by DVD Studio Pro &r, and is sitting on the hard drive ready to be loaded into the program.	Here's the very botton of DVDAfterEdit 's powerful and stuffed-to-the-gills with options (there I go again :-) Edit menu.   DVDAfterEdit 's Text authoring capability ramifications are just dawning on even the program creators, close collaborators and early users. The feature has dozens of uses, from saving favorite command strings for use in your projects, saving the command structure for ANY DVD, all the way to fully authoring a DVD, or a portion of the DVD, right in the text file!
Once your project is in DVDAfterEdit, it's simply a matter of opening up the included text file containing all the commands of the Template (a portion of the file is shown at the right), selecting the contents of the entire file, and pasting them into the Mac's clipboard.

Once all the commands are on the clipboard, you can then go into DVDAfterEdit's Edit Menu and choose "Project-wide Edits/Paste Commands from Text". Done. You can now preview your Play List project in the Apple DVD player.

DVDAfterEdit 's Text Authoring/Editing Feature is Unprecedented

Preparing the PlayList command Text file if you have fewer than 24 clips to control To modify the text file for fewer than 24 clips, please do the following (this procedure makes for a "clean" VIDEO_TS folder, with no commands that reference non existent targets if less than 24 clips were used, and will keep DVDAfterEdit's ever vigilant command verification routines from barking at you! :-): 1. First, it's good to get rid of the commands in the project that jump to nonexistent titles. You'll find all these command lines in a single pre command area of VMG PGC 2, Each Track (Video Title Set, or VTS) has two titles, btw; one for the clip, and one for the preview Story. For example, Track 1 (which is listed as VTS 1, in DVDAfterEdit's Left Pane) uses TT 1 (TT stands for "Title") for the whole clip and TT2 for the preview Story. VTS 24 uses TT 47 for the whole clip and TT 48 (again, the second title in each VTS is the preview Story for each Track. You can open up each VTS in the Left Pane and see the two PGCs in them; their TT numbers are indicated next to them). Delete the jumps to the extra titles in the Text file. For example, if you have 20 tracks, delete jumps to titles 41 through 48. You can do a block delete; select the first title to delete and then shift click on the last title, then delete.   Btw, you don't really have to do this, as the non existent VTS's and titles will never play (the commands will never get executed. But again, it's just good to have a tidy VIDEO_TS folder).   2. The next thing you'll want to do is to "tell" the programming how many Tracks (VTS's) you have in the project.   The particular command line to change is the last command line in the pre commands of VTSM PGC 2. Here's the command line: Set r4 = $18 (you can do a "find" in the text editor's edit menu, to get right to the command line). Change  this "$18" to the correct number of Tracks. You can use decimal notation.   So, "Set r4 = 20" would be the setting for 20 Tracks in the project (the little "r"stands for register, or GPRM 4). Once you have modified the text file, do a select all and then copy (to the clipboard). Then go back into DVDAfterEdit, where your built Play List project is sitting, and select something (PGC, VTS, etc.) in the Left Pane (this will activate the Edit menu so you can paste the text files contents from the clipboard).

Shown is DVD Studio Pro 2's build log, turning the Tracks into "VTSs"(Video Title Set), which is how they'll appear in DVDAfterEdit's "Left Pane". Notice the PGCs (Program Chains) under each of the VTS's in DVDAfterEdit?

Then in the DVDAfterEdit's Edit Menu, as mentioned before, choose "Project-wide Edits, Paste Commands from Text...". You will get the following warning message:   "x.. amount of command sets from the clipboard can not be applied to the current project because the objects that they reference do not exist in this project", where "x..." is some number. Don't worry, this just means you used less than 24 Tracks, and their Track (VTS and title PGC) references in this text file (we deleted the commands that reference these non existant Tracks in the text file, but not the actual Tracks, i.e. VTS's and PGCs listed in the text file), that won't get pasted in, because there's nowhere to paste them. No biggie. This just means these entities won't get pasted in, which is OK, because they don't exist (nothing like something a do about nothing, eh? :-). If this is the only error message, press "Continue" and the paste will succeed.   Alternately (if you don't like to see error messages :-), you can delete the the extra, or unused references to Video Title Sets (VTS), and the PGCs contained in them, from the end of this text file, since the title set commands are in title number sequence.   But it's perfectly fine to paste this whole file right on in, and let DVDAfterEdit tell those unused VTS's and commands they're not needed. After you've pasted the Text file in, choose Save from DVDAfterEdit's file menu, and you can immediately open up the VIDEO_TS folder in Apple DVD Player and take her for a spin.   Done. So that's it.   Not too bad, huh? Of course, if you have any questions or problems, we will help you out in the support discussions.