®

SONIC
Scenarist Designer for Photoshop
Release Notes for Windows Edition

January 24, 2009

Version Number: 2.6

Welcome to the Windows edition of Sonic Scenarist Designer PS 2.6!

Please read this document thoroughly. It contains the following important information:

• “Installation notes” on page 1

• “Installing Scenarist Designer PS” on page 2

• “New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.6” on page 3

• “New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.5” on page 4

• “New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.2” on page 4

• “New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.1” on page 4

• “New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.0” on page 5

• “Limitations and known issues” on page 6

Support link
For assistance with using Scenarist Designer PS, please contact Sonic Technical Support at:
http://support.sonic.com

Installation notes
System requirements
• Windows XP Service Pack 2 (or later)—32 Bit

• Adobe Photoshop CS2, CS3 or CS4

• 1 GB RAM

Installer changes in Scenarist Designer PS 2.6

• The installer now automatically installs the Designer script files for you. They are still installed into the
“Extras” directory, but they no longer need to be manually copied to Photoshop’s “Presets\Scripts” directory.

• A separate installer is provided for users running the 64-bit edition of Adobe Photoshop CS4 under Windows
XP Professional x64. This will install a 64-bit version of the Designer PS Plugin.

• The installer now allow you to select your Adobe Photoshop directory. You can change the detected
installation directory if, for example, you have multiple copies of Photoshop installed on your PC.

Scenarist Designer PS 2.6—January 24, 2009 1

• Scenarist Designer PS is only officially supported when running under Windows XP SP2 or SP3. You can
install it under Windows Vista. but it is not certified under this configuration. Users attempting to run
Scenarist Designer PS under Vista should note that Dongle Activation will only succeed if Photoshop is run
with Administrator credentials. (To do so press Shift, right-click the Photoshop icon, choose Run as, and then
enter the Administrator’s user ID and password.)

• Scenarist Designer PS can be installed into some International Language editions of Photoshop (Chinese,
French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish), though it is only officially supported on English
systems. A manual installation can be performed on other Language editions.

If you encounter any problems with installation, please contact Sonic Technical Support.

Installed applications
The following applications, utilities, and documentation are added as part of the Sonic Scenarist Designer PS
suite:

• Applications

– Scenarist Designer (Photoshop Plug-in)

• Documentation

– Scenarist Designer User Guide

• Extras

– Tutorial files

– Photoshop scripts

Installing Scenarist Designer PS

This section documents how to install the Scenarist Designer PS software, Sentinel dongle drivers, and Sonic
dongle. The included dongle must be attached to your computer when running Scenarist Designer PS. When
launching Scenarist Designer PS the first time, you are prompted to activate the software by entering an
activation code.

Note: Do not attach the Sonic dongle until after the Scenarist Designer PS software and Sentinel dongle drivers
have been installed.

To install the Scenarist Designer PS software, Sentinel dongle drivers, and dongle:
1 Insert the Sonic Installation disc and run the Setup program for the Scenarist Designer PS software. Follow the
on-screen instructions.

2 Run the Setup program for the Sentinel dongle drivers. Follow the on-screen instructions, and reboot if
necessary.

3 Attach the Sonic dongle to your computer’s USB port.

4 When you try to export from Photoshop for the first time, you will be prompted for your activation code.

5 When prompted with the Activation dialog box, enter the activation code for your Scenarist Designer PS
system. (This may be the same as your Scenarist Blu-Ray Edition code.) The activation code is case-sensitive and
must be entered exactly as it appears.

6 Click OK.

Scenarist Designer PS 2.6—January 24, 2009 2

New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.6
• Choose export format(s) at startup - the new startup dialog, lets you set up your export as the first step in the
export process. This is a massive timesaver for users just doing 24-bit BD-J exports, because it means they
don't have to wait for palette optimization and dithering to complete before they can do an export. Users
doing HDMV exports can also skip the preview window, so if you've got everything setup the way you want
and you just need to re-export, you can do so faster than ever before.

• Set dithering and palette options at startup - this new feature means you don't have to wait for the preview
window to load before making dithering or palette changes. In the startup dialog you can tell Designer to do
per-page, or global palette optimization, or even load in a previously saved palette. The dithering algorithm
and dithering percentage can also be set in the startup dialog, so you can set things up the way you want
from the beginning.

• New Photoshop scripts - Designer PS 2.6 ships with three all new scripts to help you generate Designer PSDs
faster than ever before. These scripts help you flatten all layers, and build IG and PG structures automatically.

• Support for Adobe Photoshop CS4 including a 64-bit plugin (Windows only) - Designer PS 2.6 is fully
supported in Photoshop CS4, and it now ships with a 64-bit plugin that works with Photoshop CS4 64-bit
Edition (for Windows XP-64 and Vista-64 only).

• Layer Options - a simple name for a very powerful feature. Layer options let you specify Button and BOG
attributes and even author simple navigation commands within Photoshop. Simply select a Button or BOG
and run the "Set Layer Options" Script to get started.

• "Ignore" Groups and Working Layers - do you maintain two documents: a working design document, and a
flattened composite for Designer export? Well now Designer documents are more flexible about what they
contain. Got a bunch of layers you don't want to export? Simply drop them into a Group prefixed with "I:"
and Designer will simply ignore it and the contents. Similarly if you leave a layer in a Button Group ("B:") and
don't give it a Designer prefix, it will also be ignored.

• Trim to Layer Set - a new feature for Asset Export that lets you place many items into a group, then have them
all exported at a size equivalent to the bounding rectangle of the group. This makes aligning the images
during authoring much easier.

• The Buffer Checker usage reported for HDMV is now consistent with the encoded sizes produced by
Scenarist Blu-ray Edition v4.5 and 5.0.

• When Designer is running in CS3 or CS4 it now recognizes layer opacity settings. CS2 users need to flatten
the layer for Designer to recognize the transparent pixels.

• Buttons with a transparent Normal state are now supported in IG documents. Please see the User Guide for
more information.

• The default percentage for Error Diffusion dithering has been changed from 100% to 80%. Testing has shown
that this gives a better quality result across a broad range of images, especially when Global Palettes are used.

• HDi Export has been removed in this release.

New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.5.1

• Removed an error that could occur during HDMV slicing. The error message was displayed when a BOG has
a very small intersection with a BG layer - a condition which can lead to unexpected slicing results. However
it is preferrable to allow the export to continue, rather than halt it.

Scenarist Designer PS 2.6—January 24, 2009 3

New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.5
• Buffer Checker - Check your design in Designer before export to make sure that it will fit within the memory
buffer of your target player.

• Support for exporting mosaic images - BD-J and Asset exports can now create an image mosaic, the preferred
format for Hollywood BD-J authors.

• All new BD-J export - Designer now outputs a simplified XML format for BD-J exports.

• Even smaller PNGs - Designer now does additional optimization on export ensuring that your PNGs are as
small as possible, comparable with third-party optimizers like pngcrush.

• Support for multiple background layers in BD-J export - support for multiple BG layers within a page allows
users to include multiple non-button graphics in their designs.

• Updated Photoshop Helper Scripts - Included in Scenarist Designer PS's Extras folder, these updated scripts
make it even easier to rename your layers to be Designer compliant.

• Alternate Workflow - use Photoshop Helper scripts to convert flattened composite images into Designer PSDs
via manual slicing. See Readme.pdf in the Extras folder for full details.

New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.2

• Support for exporting layers (as opposed to just slices) for HDi and BD-J.

• Support for overlapping buttons.

• Ability to export 8-bit graphics for HDi and BD-J.

• An updated Export UI with additional export options.

• Ability to export flattened composites from a Scenarist Designer PS PSD.

• New right-click menu options, which allow you to export any PSD layer or layer set as an 8-bit or 24-bit image.

• Tutorial Materials and Photoshop Helper Scripts, which are included in Scenarist Designer PS’s Extras folder.
See “C:\Program Files\Sonic\Scenarist Designer PS\Extras\Readme.pdf” for full details.

• Enforcing of unique and correct (per the schema) ID attributes for exported HDi Markup. If necessary,
Scenarist Designer PS renames buttons.

• Changes to asset export: In Scenarist Designer PS 2.6, the asset export just exports graphics. You no longer
need to choose whether to output for HDMV, HDi or BD-J. You simply choose whether to output 8-bit or 24-
bit graphics.

• Renaming of the default dithering option, “FS”, to “Error Dithering (FS)”, a more meaningful and accurate
description.

• Resizable Layers Tree pane.

• Remembers export preferences between exports.

New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.1

• Support for Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Final)

• Added “Do not trim” option for Asset Exports. It is now possible to use Scenarist Designer PS as part of a
color reduction workflow.

Scenarist Designer PS 2.6—January 24, 2009 4

• Fixed problem with Eye Dropper tool:

– When the Background layer is not displayed, the Eye Dropper shows the correct palette entry for all
pixels.

– When the Background layer is displayed, the Eye Dropper tool shows the correct RGBA value for the
composited pixel. This value may not be in the palette.

During layer processing, layer names are now checked for illegal characters (* \ / < > : ? " |).

New features in Scenarist Designer PS 2.0

• Global palettes can now be generated based on all the pages in an IG or Display sets in PG

• HDi Markup export

• BD-J export (for import into Scenarist BD-J)

Scenarist Designer PS 2.6—January 24, 2009 5

Limitations and known issues
• Large Photoshop files:

– When working with large Photoshop files, you may have problems with memory limitations while
processing. If this happens, dedicate more memory and disc cache to Photoshop in Photoshop’s
Preferences.

– Creating a Global Palette for extremely large Designer PSDs (>100MB) can in rare circumstances result in
a freeze. If this occurs, force Designer to quit, then assign more memory in Photoshop.

• Layer effects and transparency must be rendered (flattened) before exporting.

• Only one IG or PG can be defined per file.

• If you have layer sets with the same name (for example, two BOGs with the name “BOG”), Scenarist Designer
PS automatically renames the second layer set on export. The renaming algorithm changed in Scenarist
Designer PS 2.0, so if you have used non-unique names, do not use 2.0 or later to update projects created
with 1.x versions. It is strongly recommended that you give all layers and layer sets unique names.

• If you have an Asset PSD which has two or more Layer Sets (Groups) and no Layers in the top level of the
document, Designer will export the files, but the resulting .scenarist.designer file will not be able to be
imported into . The current workaround is to add a Layer to the top level of the PSD.

• Asset PSDs with only a single layer can sometimes result in an exported file with an incorrect name. This
appears to have been fixed in Photoshop CS3 10.0.1.

• During the optimization phase of a 24-bit color export, if any PNG-24 files are found to have 256 colors or
less, they will be converted into a PNG-8. This is intentional, but something to be aware of.

• Designer will throw an error if it finds that two BOGs overlap, even if the buttons within those BOGs don’t
overlap each other.

• The Image Mosaic algorithm can sometimes create mosaics that are less than optimal i.e. that contain a lot of
blank space. The current workaround is to manually edit the mosaic image in Photoshop.

• Designer’s automatic slicing algorithm can sometimes generate unexpected results. If this occurs you can try
to re-order the layer sets, nudge problematic layers a pixel or two, or try trimming any fringing/feathering
around the edge of the layer. If your problems still persist feel free to provide the file to Sonic Technical
Support.

• Scenarist Designer PS does not support the use of extended Unicode characters in Layer names.

• Ignore groups only work in IG and PG documents. They are treated like normal folders and exporter in Asset
PSDs.

• Because Designer optimizes each Page independently, you may see color shifts occur between Pages. The
solution is to use Global Palettes.

Scenarist Designer PS 2.6—January 24, 2009 6