fading audio on button click

Hi! This is my first mesage here!

I am using DVD Studio to create an interactive DVD
and all the meat and potatoes seem quite clear to me
(as a 3ds Max scripter-animator and Mac FCP Motion dude)

However, here is a question for the gurus

I have set up a first play with 480p video and a music
track; and one button linked to Track #1 to test the
functionality.

When I press the button; the wiring brings me to the
next track as expected; however; I can not figure out
how to fade the First Play audio down to zero as the
transiton to the next scene occurs.

I hear this functionality all the time on commercial DVD
and wonder as to one goes about this endevour.

I have gone through the printed manual and found no
reference to "how to fade audio on button press"

Thanks for the help in advance

Mark Pigott
lead animation
avolution multimedia
sarnia, ontario (right across the river from Port Huron, Michigan)
Canada

Trust me: you can't do that with continuous audio. What you saw (or heard) was either a clever trick that seemed like a continuous track was being faded or, with all due respect, you believe you saw it. I mean, this is typical in multimedia material on the web, CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs. But not on the DVD-Video standard. The Flash and Director environments have been updated many times and support non-continuous audio and many other things. Because they are software architectures, upgradable by nature. DVDs, on the other hand, are tied to the same hardware standard since they first appeared.

You can absolutely have audio fading out, but it won't be continuous, ie, there will be some kind of jump in time: simply because you can't possibly know when, during a menu, the user will activate an option. This can be disguised by the nature of the audio track (music that doens't have an obvious continuity partern).

Now, if you don't mind this kind of jump, you just have to place a track with the visuals you want and audio fading out in the middle between your menu and the target track.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

Dealing with transitions,
After the button is activated and you can initiate a video transition into the track. Is it possible to add auido to the video tranistion? Or do I have to create some sort of script that play between the button activation and the track? any help would be good.

Zackj
zackj@lakeave.org

Zackj:
To answer this we have to understand the difference between two elements:
1) What DVD Studio Pro calls a video transition, ie, an automated method to place a piece of video between a menu and a track (or another menu)
2) The possibility of manually building a transition scenario yourself.

Once said that,
1) Can't have audio
2) Absolutely.

So, to do the second thing, you just create a small video track. You place your transition video and audio inside that track. Then, you link the menu button to that track, and set the end jump of the transition track so it points to the "real" target track.
Hope this helps.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

That is what I have been doing, But it is never as smooth as having a video transition. I guess I will have to wait until things become a little more seamless.
thanks Adolfo
-Zackj

If you want it to be really smooth, with the shortest possible delay, there's an even simpler solution. Simply include the transition element at the beginning of the target track or target menu. In other words, in your NLE or motion graphics application, add the transition from the menu as the beginning of the content. That way the player's head won't have to move between different spots in the disc and it will be almost seamless.

If you wanrt it to be really seamless, in the Outline or VTS editing panes, make sure that the menu and target track/menu are as close as possible in the list. Believe it or not, the order DVD SP show things in Outline view is actually a representation of the order in which elements will be stored in the disc!

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com