Scene selection on Blu-ray

by Ben Drawbaugh posted Mar 17th 2008 at 12:11PM

Sure, the main reason we want an HD movie disc is for the ultimate experience in audio and video quality, but another great benefit is supposed to be an improvement in the interactivity and user experience, and this is the part that is lacking in at least one way -- yeah, we agree, there are plenty of things to complain about. One thing we've noticed on just about ever Blu-ray movie is that for whatever reason the author doesn't take advantage of all the screen real estate when it comes to helping you find the scene you're looking for. Instead of filling the entire screen with thumbnails from each scene, there are only a handful, and just like DVD, you have to thumb around the remote a lot to figure out which scene you're looking for -- while at the same time they waste the rest of the space on the screen. So if any BD authors are out there reading this, do us a favor and take advantage of the that big screen HDTV we've spent our hard earned money on.

Filed under: Misc, Blu-ray

Tags: complaints, Scene Selection, SceneSelection

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

wmealer @ Mar 17th 2008 12:30PM

There's just one problem with that, Ben... good design principles dictate that the authors not clutter up the interface with too much to view at the same time. While it may be convenient to have 50 scenes on the screen at one time, it's not so easy on the eyes.

Neutral

Ben @ Mar 17th 2008 12:31PM

That makes sense, but there are exceptions to every rule and I think this is one of them. Look at the way most movie UIs work, on Media Center, Apple TV etc. Everyone loves to see all the box art. I'm basically suggesting the same thing for scene selection.

Highly Ranked

Galley @ Mar 17th 2008 12:48PM

Perhaps you should check out the scene selection menu on the Independence Day BD. Each scene includes several sub-scenes (each with a detailed description). There are something like 230 sub-scenes on the disc. The keyword search is another nice feature.

Neutral

mntwister @ Mar 17th 2008 1:29PM

Ben, have you seen the Independence Day blu-ray? Yes, the chapters go across, but underneath each chapter are 6-10 sub-chapters so you can go into each chapter and find a specific thing there, together there are over 150 selections. When the first get a movie, I usually scan to my favorite scenes to get an idea of the transfer quality, and this disc was awesome for doing that because of the sub-chapters. I think it's a great idea.

Ben, you have written many stories on the lack of 2.0 and such, but sometimes there are some good things happening like subchapters, which we never had on dvd, that could also be newsworthy.

To colclude, visit the site daily for news, great job, I like the fact that day or night, you keep updating, great job with that and the weekly audio feed that you do.

Neutral

Ben @ Mar 17th 2008 1:30PM

That's cool. Unfortunately I don't watch every disc, although I do watch alot.

Get a good shot of it and I'll post it.

Highest Ranked

andy @ Mar 17th 2008 1:32PM

one of my favorite things about HDDVD was the in movie menu popup system and the progress bar at the bottom.

Are you telling me that when I get a BR player, I'm going back to DVD menus? I hate those things. Seriously, I don't know. What's the situation?

Neutral

DrXym @ Mar 17th 2008 1:18PM

The answer is it depends on the disk. A disk can have popup menus in-movie, but some disks might just be static menus. It really depends on the authors.

Neutral

JJ @ Mar 17th 2008 1:20PM

Well, whenever you do go blu-ray, there still is the in movie menu pop-up system. Just it will depend on either your blu-ray player or the BD movie itself for the progress bar at the bottom. Most of the newer players should have a progress bar though, so you shouldn't have any problems.

Anyways, back on topic, I'm more of a HD nut than a movie buff, so I really don't care for the whole scene selection thing. I just rent my BD movies off Blockbuster, watch the thing from beginning until the end, then the extras, then finally return it. As long as I'm utilizing my HDTV and surround system, I'm good to go.

Neutral

Ben @ Mar 17th 2008 1:35PM

The in movie scene selection is about the same as HD DVD on most discs and works well.

My problem is that many times I don't get to finish a movie in the same sitting, so the next day I have to figure out where I left. The smart thing to do would be to just not the chapter, but even then selecting the scene would be easier with more scenes on the screen at once.

Neutral

Scott Sill @ Mar 17th 2008 1:12PM

The reason you don't see a large Scene Selection is becuase it would point out two major flaws in the Blu-ray spec.
1. If the disc is HDMV (not java) then the interactive graphics are limited to only 256 colors for everything. This means if you enlarged your thumbnails the size of HD your graphics would like web pages from 1995
2. This is a 16Mb cache even for java discs for the interactive graphics. Large thumbnails for a movie with 30 chapter points would eat that cache very quickly. That means it may not be possible you can believe that! Sony dumbed down Blu-ray so that movie discs wouldn't actually compete with game discs.

Neutral

DrXym @ Mar 17th 2008 1:58PM

Who says the movie scenes have to be done with interactive graphics? BD-J can overlay over the top of any video clip. It should be quite straightforward to include a scene selection track and use BD-J to loop / skip within that track to show 20 second clip of each scene.

Neutral

Sam Winter @ Mar 17th 2008 7:09PM

Thats just plain wrong. This can easily be accomplished with the Blu-ray spec if authors wanted to.

Neutral

Pinochle @ Mar 17th 2008 2:37PM

The other day I was watching Die Hard With A Vengeance and had to cut the movie short. When I came back to continue the movie, I went through the scene selection to jump to the scene I stopped on. It took FOREVER to to go through the scenes. It'd be nice if there was a faster way. Something like a page view or even a numerical entry scene selection.

Neutral

Xyzzy @ Mar 17th 2008 1:50PM

Can't you bookmark where you were? You can do that on HD DVD - press the "B" button to bookmark, then when you put the disk back in, you can jump to the bookmark.

I've done that on some movies to use as reference (like the Batman Begins train scene, for example).

Neutral

badweasel @ Mar 17th 2008 1:37PM

I think that interface design is a huge problem on next gen discs. Check out this BDJ video...

http://java.sun.com/developer/media/deepdivebluray.jsp

Here the geniuses at SUN are talking about BD-J being soo much better than regular DVD interactivity. Check it out at about the 4 minute mark.

In comparing BluRay to regular DVD they say, "you select a movie and it goes 'clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk...' and then plays the movie." I never thought of DVD's as being slow to react. And so far what BD titles are loading faster than their SD counterparts? Some BD titles take several minutes to load the main menu.

Then he goes on to say that while you're playing a regular DVD you CAN'T go back into the movie. What planet are these people from? I know that they are speaking of menus over video, but they make regular DVDs out to be some "clunky" interface that is so awful

Also.. WHO REALLY wants their movie experience screwed up with a menu going over top of it? I don't. I would much rather pause the movie and do my menu selections and go back in.. not that it's ever an issue anyway. If you pause to hit the restroom or grab a drink you just press the pause button and do what you gotta do.

Their next example is if you want to change the subtitles or turn them off. They are suggesting that rather hit a "subtitle" button on a remote control and have it instantly change - that you should have to bring up a menu THAT IS CONTROLLED BY THE STUDIO. Again.. where is that BETTER than the clunky old way of just pressing a button?

They also should have done some fact checking... "you can have an entire season of a television series on one disc." True only if it's an SD TV show - which also defeats the purpose of those new 1080P displays.

All I'm saying is that we need to learn from the dvd interface designs of the past. HD DVD and BD both have been pushing designs based on form and based on the fact that they want to show off the new features of the formats. NOT based on the functionality of what works well and what doesn't.

I am a DVD author and was transitioning into HD DVD and now am forced to instead transition into BD. (war is over move on) BEN, in my designs I am looking to use the technology to make things better for the consumer (not just better for the studio). So I'm listening.

Neutral

Ben @ Mar 17th 2008 1:40PM

The on screen menu is about options. You can still go back to the main menu if you want, you an also still use the audio or subtitle button on the remote.

Options are always good, as different people find different options easy.

Neutral

badweasel @ Mar 17th 2008 2:16PM

That's not what the guy from Sun is suggesting in the video I linked to. He says that just pressing a button is "Clunky."

I have a friend who was very frustrated with HD DVD because he pressed the Subtitle button on the remote and it brought up a message up that said "to change subtitles use the subtitle menu." So on that disc it forced him to bring a menu up over his movie to change the option.

My point is that the HD DVD and BD technology people (technology evangelists) have pushed "format abilities" on the studios, which has lead to stupid features. The abilities don't necessarily relate well to good features. Good authors will turn the abilities into usable features over time. But in the short term we are stuck with things like U-Control. PLEASE UNIVERSAL.. DO AWAY WITH THIS WHEN YOU MOVE TO BD. It's the worst!

How do you think the BD feature set was decided upon? What group of people sat in a room and settled on what it would and would not do? My question is what qualifications did they have? Were they designers or nerds? I fear that the guy in that Sun video was the typical person in that room deciding our entertainment fate.

Neutral

A1 @ Mar 17th 2008 1:45PM

Don't know if anyone mentioned this but the PSP's scence browsing is brilliant. You get to choose how long the scenes are, eg 1 min, 2 min, 5min all by pressing one button.

The PS3 should definitely have that.

Neutral

Darth_Tubbie @ Mar 17th 2008 2:08PM

A1 beats me to it. Completely agree with him on that. That feature on the PSP should be implemented as standard on the BD.

Neutral

pquistgard @ Mar 17th 2008 2:33PM

No offense at all Ben, but this isn't really news. More like a forum post. lol

Neutral

Ben @ Mar 17th 2008 2:34PM

No problem, but this is a blog, not really a hard news site, so posts like this are expected.

Neutral

locke6854 @ Mar 17th 2008 1:59PM

From what I gathered, the menu is at the top or bottom of the screen so that while you're watching the movie you can flip through it. Whether its scene selection or special features, the intent is that the movie itself would take up that space.

It was fun to mess with using Sunshine... turning on/off the PIP while in the movie, using the small menu on the bottom (taking up the black bar)

Neutral

darius @ Mar 17th 2008 2:23PM

I think the best way would be to have the normal chapters + a special option. I m not sure how feasible it is but here it goes:
Have a scrub bar just below the chapters and you can use the left and right buttons to scroll to the point in the movie and when you hit enter, it jumps to that point. Just my 2 cents.

Neutral

shawnmos @ Mar 17th 2008 3:10PM

I brought my Blu-ray player home for spring break and we watched The Prestige and my dad was complaining about the exact same thing. The menus on that movie are horrible.

Neutral

HDpurist @ Mar 17th 2008 9:49PM

Well said Ben D (op). I completely agree. One of the BDs with the worst scene selections, yet has reference quality PQ is Kingdom of Heaven. Granted, it was one of the earliest BDs released, but this is no excuse!!

But now with HD-DVD out of the way, I can't wait to see BD-J (hopefully) fully utilized in new releases this year and beyond.

Neutral

andy @ Mar 17th 2008 11:06PM

You're an idiot. HDDVD was never in Blu-Ray's way as far as completing their own specification goes.

In fact, the push TO COMPLETE the spec was completely attributable to HDDVD. Blu-ray 1.1 and 2.0 probably wouldn't include half the features they will if it weren't for HDDVD.

You can quit with the flame posts now, the war is over and the incomplete format has won. Please send your accoloades to Sony, or just send copies of a few HDDVD's so that they can see examples of what features you're wanting in the final BR spec.

That said, I hope they fully implement a whole slew of new useful and non-useful features, but considering how half ass BRD has been to this point, I'd put the probably of getting every feature of HDDVD and more in the single digits.

Neutral

Fred @ Mar 18th 2008 4:36AM

So everyone that was so pleased that Blu won... what did we get??? Higher prices, and HD-DVD still having better extras than Blu.

This is why it was better for HD-DVD and Blu to compete for a while so the consumer could win.

Is it just me or is Blu like Premeium Gasoline, more money for something a little bit better.

Neutral

andy @ Mar 18th 2008 10:28AM

Actually, it's more like putting diesel in your porsche right now:

It's more expensive, and your car won't run quite right (if at all).

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