Digital Workshop

I started my first project with Opus Pro XE 04 and have run into a problem with video display quality after publication. This is the first in a series of instructional titles to be distributed to a targeted market. In this title, I need to make about a dozen pages with a single .mpg file on each page that starts on command.

The pub type is set to Opus Pro/DirectX if available. In the 'Assembly' section, on page 'Step 1', there is a text button to "Launch Video Clip" in a video frame with a borber. The video is a standard 352x240 pixel MPEG-1 file encoded at 1600kbs running in a:

400x 273 pixel video object frame
Scale to Fit
Keep Aspect
Chroma Key
1 pixel border w/ 5% rounded corners(video seems to run the same with or without the border/corners)

For reference: Displaying video files slightly larger than the original pixel size helps keep the video data rates down while displaying the image a bit bigger in the program than the standard MPEG-1 352x240. This is common practice using Director and works well although I'm hoping not to need to resort to using that app.

The video looks pretty good for a 13.5% blowup when previewed but shows considerable quality loss when played after publishing. I have disabled compression for this .mpg file in the resource manager but it does not appear to be getting recompressed during publication either way. Just in case, I tried turning off compression altogether but the video still looks the same way after publication so that is probably not an issue.

I have uploaded a .zip file (7.13MB uncompressed) at the link below that contains the .imp file and resource folder. Please take a look if you have time. I need to proceed with the authoring process but do not want to continue until this issue is resolved.

http://www.fishingkayaks.net/download/BTCD_test.zip

Thanks,
Keith Martin
Intramedia Film, Video & Digital Construction

Keith --

Stick with the default size for video files, otherwise they will not look as good. If you could simply resize a video and it would still look as good -- that would be in a dream world.

I have had clients who insist on full screen (800x600 in that case) MPEG-1 files. They understand the quality will be poor, but it's apparently OK for them. There's not a simple button to push in OPUS which changes your video into high quality, resized images. Look at using MPEG-2 (DVD 720x540) for the quality you want. It's then mandatory for the viewer to be able to play DVDs, but many new computers can do this.

Fred,

Our company produces video programing as our bread and butter so I'm pretty familiar with video encoding, sizing, data rates, etc.. We also have broadcast quality aquisition and post production equipment so Using standard 352x240 MPEG-1 video at 1600kbs and oversizing it 10% or 15% still looks pretty good and fits an 800x600 display much better. The problem I'm talking about is not that the video file looks bad. It looks fine in both WinMedia player or Opus preview. It's how degraded it gets after publishing that's creating the problem. After the publication process, Opus is playing back very artifacted video compared to the original file that was used. I'm not sure why that is but I want to try and fix it if possible. I hope this is not 'just the way it is' or it's back to the hassle of Director; not an option I relish!



We often produce DVD's and are set up to easily create MPEG-2 files. Unfortunately, this is to be a generally distributed disc. Many people do not have a 3rd party MPEG-2 decoder installed on their computer and WinMedia does not supply one. This is an absolute requirement to using MPEG-2 and decoders cost $. I considered doing the whole project on DVD-video but simple linear video without interactivity is not the best tool for this type of "how to" title.

If you have a high speed internet connection, please take a couple of minutes to download the 7.13MB project and take a look for yourself. I'm really hoping someone from DW will address this issue ASAP tomorrow.

Thanks in advance,
Keith Martin
Intramedia Film, Video & Digital Construction

Looking into the publication i can see what you mean. - it's going to take some time to look into the problem, due to the complications of video, and we might not be able to fix it.

for you to fix it instantly..

If you make the video on top then although you loose the ability to show a border with rounded corners (you will loose the rounded corner, but if your carefull you could make frame the video with a square border. fiddly.) it should work the same in the player too. on top in opus is play just like media player (in fact it uses media player)

hope this helps for now and i'll add the problem to the list for investigation.

ha! found the problem!
Turn off the rounded borders on your all your pages - if you look carefully they are not working in the preview anyway - ths is why the preview is different to the published version.

The rounded borders cause directX to become disabled as they make te publication transparent (at the very corners). So instead of using your video card to do a nice high quality stretch of the video, a software one is used which much lower quality to keep the speed up. Please not that the quality of the video is heavily dependent on the graphics card capabilities anyway. The quality may look lower when viewed on a different video card which does not have the same capabilities.

Any page with some kind of transparency set, causes DirectX to be disabled for the publication. - but only in the page properties. - you are always best off when using video having a page in your surround colour, and then placing an image over the top with a rounded border and having everything on top of that.

This problem should be resolved for sr3, so that direct X will work with transparent pages.

hope this helps for now.

Excellent job Allen. If it works, this will save me a lot of time.

I can easily make the page's background image with the border on it and turn off the page border in Opus. I'll test this in a few minutes and post back here with the results.

Thanks,
Keith

BTW: It's currently 7:00am in California so this will probably take until tomorrow GMT.

Allen,

Perfect!!!

I just finished tested it and that's exactly what was causing the problem; rounded corners on the pages. It will now be a simple task to remove the borders from the pages and just create the same rounded borders in Photoshop for the page background images.

Thanks for your prompt help with this issue. As a long time Director user, I'm starting to like Opus Pro 04 XE more everytime I open it. Thanks to dedicated DW staff like you, and this forum, the support is great too.

Keith

These days support is not just one thing, it's the ONLY thing. It needs to be said regularly how great DW support is and that is why many of us like it. Price is good too but the best price wil not outweigh the supper great support!!

instead of using photoshop to round the borders, why not make your page background the same colour as the surround colour and then place an image with a rounded border as the lowest object on the page (i.e. at the bottom of the tree view). make the image the same size as the page and you will get the same effect you had before - this will not affect the video as there is no transparency on the page itself.


Alan.

Since I was already using layered photo images as 800x600 page backgounds, I meant I'll use Photoshop to add rounded borders to the existing backgound image which works fine. I'll also try making the image the bottom layer you suggest. What would be the advantage, if any, of making the image the bottom layer instead of a page background image?

Thanks for all your help,
Keith

PS. Could you please take a look a my question about the CD name security feature not working in XE I posted on the Basics forum. I really want to get this working as it's one of several copy protection layers (including 3rd party solutions) I plan to use to discourage casual piracy.

not much really,
apart from you can apply properties to the image object such as a rounded border without affecting the actual page. (your problem was a rounded border on a page object) - you could use your original page image applied to an image object and then give that a rounded border as the lowest object on the page. - it would look exactly the same as before, but the videos would work as expected (provided your page has no border and it's background colour matches the surround colour)

if your image already has rounded borders physically drawn from photoshop, and you change your mind (colour, width, the size doesn't exactly match the page), you have to go back to photoshop to change them. - if it was in opus it's just a couple of clicks.

it depends how efficient you want to be, and what works best for you.