Is there software that allows you to use the angle button on your dvd remote? I was thinking that instead of making my own cuts, I could overlay a small icon in the corner of the screen that would tell my clients they could switch the angle of view at any time. The vows at a wedding for example. Any feedback is appreciated.


John

Well you can "use" the angle button by including multiple angle's
on your DVD. Multiple angles is nothing more than having more
than one video track which you can switch between.

However, the biggest "problem" is that almost no DVD authoring
program supports it (probably to keep the high-end authoring
in the high-end market).

Sony's DVD Architect (2) doesn't support it, neither does Adobe's
Encore. Not even Sonic's DVD Producer seems to support it,
only their high end product Scenarist.

The only program I know of that is within reach that supports
this is DVD Studio Pro on the Mac. I could not find it as a feature
in DVD Lab on PC either.

Thanks for the reply rob. I hope when encore upgrades, they will include this feature.




John

I use Scenarist and I'm pretty sure it supports it, Rob. Of course, after all the drugs from the 60's, I sometimes see things that aren't there...

:)

Hey Rob :) As I said Scenarist indeed supports this, together
with Mac's DVD Studio Pro they are the only two products that I
know with support for the feature.

I've made two very important words in my previous posts bold.
I know Scenarist supports it, but last I heard it is still way way
too expensive for any pro-sumer use.

Oops, now that I re-read your post more carefully, I realized that I misread it the first time. Sorry.

:)

Pinnacle Impression Pro supports multiple angles.

The new DVD-lab pro supports it, I believe. I wonder, though, if you'd have to cut the bitrate on all the video tracks to fit them into the max bitrate required. THat wouldn't be good.

Pinnacle Impression DVD-PRO (http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage_n.asp?Product_ID=464&Langue_ID=7) does indeed support multiple
angles, at a maximum of two though (the DVD spec allows for
a maximum of 9 angles (http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.2)). It is not expensive at $199.99 USD.
I just wish they had gone for 4 max angles or something (both
Scenarist and DVD Studio Pro support the maximum of 9), but it
is nice to have it in a relative cheap program!

As you can see on the following page DVD-lab pro DOES NOT
support multiple angles, YET. It is a future development they
want to do:

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/dvdlabpro.html
(look at the bottom right corner under Future Plans)

You do not have to cut the bitrate on the video to have multiple
angles (unless space on the disc runs out):Additional material for camera angles and seamless branching is interleaved together in small chunks. The player jumps from chunk to chunk, skipping over unused angles or branches, to stitch together the seamless video. Since angles are stored separately, they have no direct effect on the bitrate but they do affect the playing time. Adding 1 camera angle for a program roughly doubles the amount of space needed (and cuts the playing time in half).Source: DVD FAQ 3.7 (http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.7)

So if you have 30 minutes at the max 9.8 mbps (CBR) you will
have a video stream of 1764 MB. So you will be able to have 2
angles with such a stream on a 4.5 GB recordable DVD. The new
dual-layer DVD's will greatly help in this, ofcourse. But if you
drop to an average of 5 mbps you could already include at least
4 angles for example.