Jacket Picture Mayhem

Question

Jacket Picture Mayhem

I need help with a Jacket Picture problem. Here is a breakdown of what I have done, and then the problem:

I authored 4 DVDs and burned them, NOT assigning a jacket picture to any of them.
Once said DVDs were burned they were inserted into a PC (by the client) for viewing.
On the PC (PowerDVD app) once you hit the stop button you can then see the thumbnail (jacket picture). There is a default image if one is not assigned.
The problem I have is that 2 of the DVDs I authored HAVE an image assigned to it.. pictures I have NEVER seen before and I do not have at all.
I went back into DVDSP (4.0.2) and then assigned a jacket picture to the all 4 DVDs. Once back at the PC, the newly assigned jacket picture does not appear for any of the DVDs, and the 2 with the erroneous images still show those images.

I need help with.. how to get the DVDs to show the proper jacket picture. As I see it now, even if I started the authoring project fresh, the added jacket picture will not show up.

Thanks in advance

G5 Dual 2.0 Mac OS X (10.4.5) DVDSP 4.0.2

G5 Dual 2.0, Mac OS X (10.4.5), 2GB RAM, DVDSP 4.0.2

Posted on Mar 3, 2006 8:28 AM

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Answer 1

WTS

Level 4

1,145 points

Mar 4, 2006 10:37 AM in response to Charles Chambliss

Charles,

Once you've burned your dvd's for video, you can't add or change the content on them. So if I understand your post correctly, you tried to assign a jacket picture to your dvd(s) you've already created and burned?

Are these 4 different projects? Did you enable the option for jacket pictures with the original disc creation or with your updated project? You can easily check the four discs to see if a jacket picture was on your discs, or if PowerDVD was playing it's own default images, leading you to believe it's your 'discs fault'. Just look at the disc in win explorer on the PC or finder on your Mac and see if there is a folder called "Jacket Picture" in addition to the audio_ts and video_ts folder. If there isn't, then the image didn't come from your disc.

The easiet thing to do if you must have a Jacket Picture is assign one in the original project and re-build and output your disc. You can test the disc on your Mac to see if the Jacket Picture displays when the video is stopped yourself. If you have dumped the project, a round about way of getting the jacket picture on a new disc would be to make a short project with the jacket pic you want (a simple short track only project) and build the project. You (assuming you have Toast) could then copy the audio_ts and video_ts folders from one of your burned discs to your hard drive, include those folders in a data disc and drag the Jacket picture folder onto the disc as well and burn a disc.

Jim

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Answer 2

Stedman

Level 3

945 points

Mar 5, 2006 9:03 AM in response to Charles Chambliss

Jacket pictures aren't black magic, so ...

On the finished DVD, with a Jacket Picture assigned, you will have three directories, viz:-

AUDIO_TS
JACKET_P
VIDEO_TS

If you have created a jacket picture for your project, then there will be three files (same picture - different resolutions) in the extra 'JACKET_P' folder. Have a look at the finished DVD-R on your own personal computer.

Anything else you are experiencing is just due to software and caching problems on any IBM PC using M$oft programs that you are using.

Hope this helps!

P.S. Please also get your client to do a bit a cache flushing on his/her PC.

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Answer 3

Mar 6, 2006 9:24 AM in response to Charles Chambliss

WTS -

Sorry, guess I was a little muddy in my post. I am speaking of adding jacket picture info during the DVDSP authoring, not after a disk has been burned.

I have gone back and assigned a jacket picture to the projects using DVDSP and see the jacket_p folder after it is built. I even see the jacket picture on my mac when i play the dvd back and stop it. But.. when I put it in the PC, I still see the original thumbnail image that should NOT be there.

Stedman -

I agree, it shouldn't be black magic.. but it seems as if that's what it might take to get this working properly. :/

I understand what should be on the disc once burned and see the data there. I also thought of the "caching" issue being the culprit on the PC.. except that the client sees it on his PC in NY, I see it on multiple PCs in my office. That tells me it is on the source (DVD).

An update on the project though... I transfered all the media related to it to another mac and started teh DVDSP project from scratch and I now have a DVD that does NOT have the erroneous jacket picture image showing up. However, the jacket picture that I have assigned (is on the disk) is not showing up either on the PC when the video is stopped. Maybe a little black magic is required after all?

Thanks for your input and help guys.

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Answer 4

WTS

Level 4

1,145 points

Mar 6, 2006 1:46 PM in response to Charles Chambliss

Charles,

Just open the jacket picture folder and take a look at the contents to see if the images are indeed the ones you designated DVDSP to put in there. If they are, then the issue isn't your disc, it's the player. DVD players that are 'jacket picture aware' (and not all are) simply look for the contents of that folder. The pictures have to be encoded in precise dimensions to work, but DVDSP should do that for you. If the images in the folder are not what you set them up to be, then DVDSP would be at fault for putting the wrong image in (which I doubt is the case).

Jim

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Answer 5

Stedman

Level 3

945 points

Mar 7, 2006 5:00 AM in response to Charles Chambliss

Charles & WTS - yes I did (also) mean to have a look at all three pictures in the JACKET_P folder, and make sure they are the right ones.

What were the three pictures that were there?

Also, note that many (?most) players ignore jacket pictures, so you may be spending a lot of time on a feature that is of limited benefit.

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Answer 6

Mar 7, 2006 12:16 PM in response to Charles Chambliss

The main issue is that on the original 4 DVDs I burned/authored with DVDSP there was NO jacket picture added to the project, thus no jacket_p folder... yet a thumbnail image was still showing up on multiple PCs when the discs containing the erroneous thumbnails were put in. And I even re-burned the project and it happened again, so it wasn't a cache issue.

What I did to get it working properly was to re-build the project on a completely different machine and it is working fine now, except that the jacket pictures I have added to the DVDs now will not show on the PC (not the end of the world).

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Answer 7

WTS

Level 4

1,145 points

Mar 7, 2006 1:34 PM in response to Charles Chambliss

Charles,

Not trying to be argumentative, so please don't take my post that way. If you didn't have a jacket picture folder on your disc, then you don't have a jacket picture for the player to display. Whatever image did display didn't come from your disc. The dvd forum set up specific rules for content creation for dvd video discs. Although jacket pictures are a part of the defined specs, as stedman noted, there are many players that don't actually play them. You need a jacket picture folder with very specifically encoded mpeg files (for three different jacket picture sizes) inside that the player will use. If you don't have that folder, you don't have an image for the player to use. The displayed picture did not have anything to do with your disc. The issue is the PC software player, and for some reason is accessing an image that probably resides in the software players program folder on the boot drive as a default. Don't know why the jacket picture you did use doesn't show up, but again it's not the disc' fault (since it sounds like from your prior post that when viewed on the Mac player it does).

Jim

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Answer 8

Mar 12, 2006 6:14 AM in response to WTS

Jim,

I don't think you're being argumentative at all. I appreciate you guys' expertise in this area, as all I know about it comes from working with the app and no professional training. With that said, I do know enough to understand and even know what you guys are telling me. I get the fact that if the jacket_p folder isn't there that the player will not see any thumbnail images to show. I get all of that. BUT, the fact remains that:

1. The original project was burned NOT having a jacket_p folder, and the erroneous thumbnail image was there on the PC when this disk was inserted (my PC).
2. I re-built the project from scratch on the same Mac it was originally built on, but under a different user, still no jacket_p folder, same results as above. (still my PC)
3. I brought all my project files to another Mac altogether and re-built the project there and burned another disk. This time I DID add a jacket picture to the disk before I burned it, and verified that it was there. This time when I went back to the same PC used for the above disks, the erroneous thumbnail image DID NOT hsow up... but the one I added didn't either.

So.. the results are that I got it to at least get rid of the bad thumbnail, which is what mattered most. I have no idea why the one I added isn't showing up. And.. I understand 100% what you are saying and that it shouldn't have been happening, but the fact is that it was.

Either way, I do appreciate your help in resolving and trying to understand this frustrating occurance.

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