Add Black to video(s) in DVD Architect project

avp

avp

Well-known member
Hello.

I am building a menu-based DVD Architect project with client-supplied videos. I would like to add 5 - 10 seconds of black to the head (and tail) of each video. The videos from my client have no lead-in at all.

Is there a way to add xx seconds of black in DVD Architect or do I have to rerender each file out with black included.

Thanks.
 
Your options:
-Edit the black into the videos and re-encode. This is the best way for smooth transitions and foolproof playback.
-Add black to the videos in the authoring program. Not sure if DVD Architect can do this, but it's a little sketchy as there's potential for muxing and playback issues.
-Jump to a short two to four second black video and then have that jump to your video without any black up front. Make these videos shorter than the 5-10 secs to account for the time it takes the DVD player to make the jump.
 
You can't add black in DVD Architect. You'll need to re-render. I always add two seconds of black before and after the video.

Keep in mind that if this is an NTSC DVD and you've adjusted to broadcast safe colors, you'll need to set the IRE of the black at 7.5, so you'll need the RGB to be 16, 16, 16.

Jumping to a few separate seconds of black won't really work, because the problem is the abruptness of when the video starts, I gather. That will still be so after jumping from the extra black.
 
Thanks for the responses.

I had (in my mind) explored the possibility of "jumping" to black within the DVD then to the video. As I suspected, this would not be a good solution. So I will defer back to my client to re-encode the videos.

Best wishes for a great day

PS: Yes, David, I too always add (3) seconds of black at the head of all videos.
 
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David Jimerson said:
Jumping to a few separate seconds of black won't really work, because the problem is the abruptness of when the video starts, I gather. That will still be so after jumping from the extra black.
Click to expand...

The "abruptness" would be no different to the viewer than if you edited a hard cut of black into the video since the DVD player would hold the last frame which is black. If the goal is to just put a black buffer between the menu image and the start of the video, the jumping to a short black video would work just fine. Of course, the method of editing in the black and encoding is better since there wouldn't be any extra elements in the authoring process and you'd have exact control over the duration of black.
I don't use DVD Architect so have no idea if it's doing something funky in the programming like a lot of abstraction layer authoring programs do, but a simple Jump Title command should be pretty direct and fairly seamless. On playback, the DVD player's head may move to seek from one title to the next, but even if for some reason the authoring program puts the two titles on opposite sides of the layer break it doesn't affect the visual that the viewer sees, just the exact duration of the black on screen since some players are smoother/faster than others.
If the video was delivered to you encoded to MPEG2, then the separate black video is your best option. If you have the original video uncompressed, then you should go with the edit and encode method. When you put that black in to the video match the IRE of the original video. If you put in a 7.5 IRE black into a O IRE video it will look really grey if you then compress it to the old NTSC Broadcast standard of 7.5 IRE. Which on another tangent you shouldn't do since DVD supports the full 0-255 and most HDTVs being fed a digital signal are expecting it (who's still watching anything on a 4:3 tube TV?). Keep it all 0 IRE 0-255 if you can. DVD isn't broadcast so you don't need to stick to the 16-235 7.5 IRE.
 
Well, I've worked with DVD Architect quite a bit, and the result is this -- if you don't have a leader in your video, it will often encode the DVD so that a fraction of a second is cut off the front of it, or at least that's how the DVD will play. That will still be so if it's coming in as an end action from another piece of video, including black. A leader, obviously, buffers against that. That's the concern I was addressing.

As for the IRE, I did say you should do it if you've already conformed the video to broadcast-safe NTSC colors, which will mean the blacks will be boosted to 7.5 IRE. You need the black leader to match that, obviously.

There are reasons to conform black to 7.5 IRE on DVD as a general matter, also. If you're cropping your widescreen video to something wider than 16:9, your black bars will be part of the image. This isn't so much of a problem if you're playing it to a widescreen TV, but if you're playing it to a standard 4:3 TV, the letterboxing the DVD player will add to show the video on TV will be 7.5 IRE. If your black bars are 0 IRE, you will have a black stripe at the top and bottom of your image, with the letterboxing around it being slightly grey. That's kind of unsightly.

Likewise, if the video blacks are 0 IRE, and you're watching your widescreen video on a standard TV, even if you didn't crop and have no black stripes, any fade to black will be darker than the letterboxing the DVD player adds, producing one big black stripe in the middle of the screen. This isn't as big of a deal, of course, but it can look kinda amateurish.

You don't HAVE to do it, but there are reasons why you might want to.
 
David Jimerson said:
Well, I've worked with DVD Architect quite a bit, and the result is this -- if you don't have a leader in your video, it will often encode the DVD so that a fraction of a second is cut off the front of it, or at least that's how the DVD will play.
Click to expand...
Yikes! That's not a good thing at all. I know that some players will mute a half second of audio when switching between titles with differing audio formats, but cutting a half second of the video is not acceptable. I've made some DVDs where that transition from the menu to the video would have been ruined by that.

David Jimerson said:
There are reasons to conform black to 7.5 IRE on DVD as a general matter, also. If you're cropping your widescreen video to something wider than 16:9, your black bars will be part of the image. This isn't so much of a problem if you're playing it to a widescreen TV, but if you're playing it to a standard 4:3 TV, the letterboxing the DVD player will add to show the video on TV will be 7.5 IRE. If your black bars are 0 IRE, you will have a black stripe at the top and bottom of your image, with the letterboxing around it being slightly grey. That's kind of unsightly.

Likewise, if the video blacks are 0 IRE, and you're watching your widescreen video on a standard TV, even if you didn't crop and have no black stripes, any fade to black will be darker than the letterboxing the DVD player adds, producing one big black stripe in the middle of the screen. This isn't as big of a deal, of course, but it can look kinda amateurish.

You don't HAVE to do it, but there are reasons why you might want to.
Click to expand...

I'd be less worried about the letterbox bars than not having the full range of black in my movie. I think five years ago that would have been more of a concern, but these days I don't believe there are very many people watching DVDs on 4:3 tube tvs. Everyone's got an HD set or they're watching it on a computer. Not only that, but Japan never went 7.5 IRE and I'm not sure if PAL ever did either. I've always hated the whole 7.5 broadcast thing and I'm glad I don't have to deal with it anymore.
 
Well, it's not half a second, but it's a frame or two. It's not that big of a deal because you should have a leader anyway (just like you should have action/text safe), but it is a quirk.

7.5 IRE definitely is less of a concern these days, and one day it won't be at all.
 
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