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  1. I'd like to compress my Music Video DVDs and BluRays. This implies that I want to maintain the menu to have later track access. MKV appears to be the right container. But can anybody tell me which software is able to include the menu into the MKV container? Are there software or hardware (even better) players capable to reproduce this menu properly? This feature is normally not desired when movies are compressed. If MKV doesn't provide this feature maybe there are other containers which might be a better choice for my intention.
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  2. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    No software supports that. I'm not sure if mkv has added menu support yet either, see http://matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html

    Best is to shrink the dvd or bd to a single iso file or video_ts/bdmv folder.
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  3. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    The current state of menu support from a quick re-look:

    1. MKV - final spec unfinished. Not available, just a future goal.
    2. MOV - proprietary ($$) and antiquated interactive menus available, NONE of which have major hardware or software support
    3. MP4 - should be possible, but NOTHING has been created to make use of its features
    4. DivX - Authored menus available in DivX Ultra-certified profiles (which only work in DivX Ultra-certified players)
    5. FLV - works when encapsulated in an SWF that also includes an authored interactive menu with proper links to the media, but only PCs/Macs with Shockwave player can use
    6. Regular AVI, ASF/WMV, MPEG-PS/TS, Real, MXF/AAF/GXF/OMF, regular FLV, etc. - No support

    Another reason not to migrate to strictly file/streaming-based lifestyles.

    Scott
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  4. Hi Baldrick and Scott, thank you very much for that prompt reply. The ISO archiving is indeed what I'm doing at the moment. But I actually don't shrink the files in order not to loose quality. And this fills hard disks, especially the BDs. Maybe I'll try an attempt with DivX Ultra. But my hardware player already doesn't support any kind of DivX anymore. So I hope for improvements of future MKV or MP4 revisions.
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  5. Does anybody have an idea which program I can use to check out DivX-Ultra? Since version 5 TMPEG Authoring Works doesn't support DivX anymore.
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  6. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    It's not worth checking out...it's a dead format....but you could always try the old divx author.
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    You might be surprised at how high a quality you can get compressing Blu-ray. You should try out BD Rebuilder for this, and make complete backups including the menus you want to preserve.

    I generally go to single layer disc size...approximately 22-23gb, though I personally have little need for menus.
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    Originally Posted by Thomas Kuckertz View Post
    Does anybody have an idea which program I can use to check out DivX-Ultra? Since version 5 TMPEG Authoring Works doesn't support DivX anymore.
    Also, IIRC, Divx Ultra won't retain the original menus, it just allows you to make & have menus.
    I wouldn't even bother messing with it.
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  9. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Correct Noahtuck, they are brand new menus that you have to make yourself (with the DivX Author authoring app). I concur.
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  10. Originally Posted by Thomas Kuckertz View Post
    I'd like to compress my Music Video DVDs and BluRays. This implies that I want to maintain the menu to have later track access.
    Are you sure? I've never really had a need for DVD/Bluray menus, although I'm possibly biased, given I find them very annoying.

    There's ways to get around not having infuriatingly slow and annoying menus. Using individual files is often easy enough. Instead of having a menu and a single file you'd use individual files (MKV, MP4, AVI etc) with appropriate names.

    MKV supports chapters. Not quite the same as a menu but you can name chapters however you like and any decent software media player (ie MPC-HC) will make it easy to navigate directly to a particular chapter. MKV chapters mightn't be well supported by standalone players though. I'm not really sure.

    I'll admit organising music video might be more challenging than "standard" video, where you have a movie on a disc, or a few episodes of a series etc. Splitting music videos into individual songs might be less practical. For those I use the single MKV with chapters method.
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  11. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    @hello_hello, yeah, most menus I've seen are slow (in that they're still pictures)

    I think you might be biased in that area; many people, myself included, do not (find them annoying).

    AFA using chaptering instead: that works quite well for some types of media choices, less so for other types.

    Scott
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  12. In fact it wasn't my intention to create new menus on my own. I will try out the MKV or MP4 file with named chapters. As the target is the quick access to any song on that video this appears to be the best compromise, maybe even better than the menu solution I was asking for.
    Thank you very much all your helpful answers.
    Tom
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  13. You can extract chapters from DVDs and Blurays. I don't think DVD chapters have names as such, just their location in the video, but it's easy enough to name them yourself. DVD chapters are often simply extracted as text files. This is one format supported by MKV:

    CHAPTER01=00:00:00.000
    CHAPTER01NAME=
    CHAPTER02=00:02:37.000
    CHAPTER02NAME=
    CHAPTER03=00:04:39.000
    CHAPTER03NAME=
    CHAPTER04=00:07:46.000
    CHAPTER04NAME=

    Nice and easy. For extracting DVD Chapters I use the chapter extractor under MeGUI's Tools menu. For Bluray chapters, there's the HD Streams extractor. There's no doubt many programs that can do it.

    Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
    @hello_hello, yeah, most menus I've seen are slow (in that they're still pictures)
    I think you might be biased in that area; many people, myself included, do not (find them annoying).
    Are you referring to another kind of still picture with which I'm not familiar? A type which isn't still?
    Not that I watch video from discs much any more, but I'm having trouble recalling a time I didn't need to wait for a DVD menu to become ready because it consisted of some form of animated cleverness. It's amusing the first seven or eight times, but after that....
    The way the background music/sound often repeats over and over if you leave the menu on the screen..... that doesn't annoy you even a little bit?
    Seriously though...... user prohibited operations..... maybe not strictly part of the menu, but that's gotta piss you off.
    Last edited by hello_hello; 4th Sep 2014 at 17:12.
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  14. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    I know this thread is a little older, but thought I'd update with some new info:

    While doing a recent search, I found this - MP4MenuGUI.
    And players are seeming to be adding support for both menus & chapters when using MP4 or MKV files (even though it still looks as if they haven't finalized the MKV menu spec), so the prospect for more full featured playback is getting rosier for those 2 formats. (The rest haven't changed, and probably won't)

    Scott
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  15. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    Nothing newer than mp4menugui? Development stopped 7 years ago. Making menus manually with mp4box doesn't sound found. .
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  16. mkv menu is theoretically possible. The mkv specs maybe not completly, but it should work.

    The whole problem of playing such mkv-menus is the Splitter and the player.

    We need a Control Track for the menu that can handle the player. And the Splitter must be able to understand the menu-structure in the correspond xml.
    I have read carrfully the menu specs and give DVDMenuXtractor a try.

    It seems it is not so easy to build the xml-menu-structure, but it should works.

    Maybe anyone can take the LAV-Source code and implement a feature to read the xml-menu-structure.

    hubble


    PS:
    A menu replacement for mkv, you can create with my chapterEditor.
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