finding the main menu for first play

[Maginashun]

on some rare occasions i come across a situation where i cant seem to find the motion intro to the main menu and its annoying. usually you can just assign the first play to jump to titleset 1 root menu in ifoedit without thinking and it works but sometimes i run across those times when it lies within a title or pgc. for instances like those i look for the last thing to play before the menu and view its post command and usually the answer will be right there. now there comes the times when i sit there and cant find the answer so i end up trying each title and each pgc till i find it and even then sometimes i dont get the results im looking for. at that point i usually give in and deal witht the fact that i have a long pause of multiple blanked out titles before it gets to the menu. just to make thing clear... im trying to find a foolproof way of having the first play start with the motion (video) intro to the menu. i can easily have the first play start with the menu by setting it to jump to titleset 1 root menu but that does not necessarily guarantee that it will start with the cool intros to the menu that some of them have. it may just skip the intro entirely and jump right to the button portion of the menu. does anyone know of any good tutorials out there for this. on my last post i was directed to 2cools tutorial and that worked out good. thanks

[MackemX]

the best way is to find out what cells you have blanked out and you can add the post to pre commands to stop playback of the cell if possible. You can only do this if the complete PGC is blanked. This will execute just the commands without playing the time consuming blanked cells. The order is precommands first, play the cell, execute a cell command (if there is one) and finally the post commands. This is why it takes a while to jump all these blank cells in PGC's if there are a few you have removed

if you want to jump straight to it then find out which blanked cell (within a title domain not a menu) plays last before the intro and have the first play jump to that. It will then continue to the menu after that. You would probably have to use a jump command to the VMG's as that's where most jump to as it's the root of the navigation. If not then you could add a PGC in the VIDEO_TS that jumps directly to that intro but it all depends on the DVD structure

you can use either PGCEdit or DVDRemake to do this with ease compared to Ifoedit. I know DVDRemake does this automatically and I think maybe PGCEdit does to or at least has the option to copy post commands to pre commands

it's sometimes wise to let the full blanked playback happen (or at least add post to pre commands) when you blank as jumping direct to the menu may have issues on certain players. This is due to certain GPRM values not being set properly. If you have a forgiving player (which it sounds like you have) then it will ignore the illegal navigation and just play the DVD

I hope you understand as it's rather complicated to understand at first but simple once you know how

[Maginashun]

mackemx

i think i follow that. thanks.

i think i actually did the pre to post for other situation but for some reason havent done it for this. the weird thing though is when i check the posts for some of the trailers that play right before the intro it shows that its post command says jump to titleset 1 root menu and i place that exact command for the first play and it jumps past the intro right to the menu and that is what confuses me sometimes. i guess theres alot to say for learning the more in depth commands that utilize "if then" "get" "=" and stuff like that which is way beyond me right now. i guess thats why i like copy and past so much

also what did you mean by saying that dvdremake will do that automatically. the main thing i usually use dvdremake for is to get a fast overview of the dvd and when the vobs or cells arent seperated and all have a number 1 which stops me from seperating it in ifoedit

[MackemX]

if you remove content from the DVD, DVDRemake will check to see if the playback of the cell can be bypassed. I wasn't keen on this at first as I noticed a few problems that could arise but they have since been fixed. I don't know if something I have in mind may still trip it up as I'm yet to come across a DVD that has it and haven't got the time to author one

regarding commands etc, most intro's have commands that check to see if they have been played so they only play once. You can play the DVD and get the values when it's in the menu and then set the commands in the First Play so it's thinks it's been played

it is confusing sometimes and even harder to explain. Once you get the basic idea then it's just like simple algebra with comparisions etc that tell the DVD player what to do on the result blah blah blah

[Maginashun]

i switched the post to pre and it cut down on the blank time before the intro a little

when the problem arises and it annoys me enough i will take the time to find a solution or remember that the answer is within this forum

i appreciate the time you to took to explain things. thanks again

[jeanl]

Maginashun
What you're trying to do is not easy.
Like MackemX says, on some DVDs (I would disagree with the fact that it's player-dependent, it should be just DVD-dependent) registers have to be set a particular way for playback to happen normally. If you jump to the movie or to the menu and the registers are not set the right way, you get weird behavior (for example, pressing "play" might start the playback of previews, or pressing the chapter menu button does not take you to the chapter menu any more! or in some case, the DVD freezes!). The problem is that each DVD is different and so there's no single way to set registers that will guarantee normal playback.

As I wrote in this thread:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=565601#post565601

we'll have to wait for PgcEdit's Trace function to finally get a reliable solution to the problem.

Jeanl

[Maginashun]

it sounds like you are saying that on some occasions that when you add the first command to play the menu or movie first it could screw everything up. im my experience this has never happened. maybe i have just been luck. the only time that the play or scene select or any other button gets messed up is when i start playing with those buttons. in the past sometime i had problems with too much blank time or had a short clip i couldnt get rid of cause the vobs/cells were not split i would start messing with the play button to jump to the movie. well this is the only time that things were going wrong and it wasnt that bad. the only thing that happened was that when i hit play it would start the movie correctly but whenever i went back to the menu in the middle of the movie, for some reason, then try to go back it would start the movie over again from the beginning. so its been luck or i have been doing it right. im not sure since i have learned alot on my own

you mentioned the trace function... just to make things clear is that going to be an option you just choose to make the first play jump to the menu or play the movie first. will that be its only function. thanks

[jeanl]

it sounds like you are saying that on some occasions that when you add the first command to play the menu or movie first it could screw everything up. im my experience this has never happened. maybe i have just been luck. the only time that the play or scene select or any other button gets messed up is when i start playing with those buttons. in the past sometime i had problems with too much blank time or had a short clip i couldnt get rid of cause the vobs/cells were not split i would start messing with the play button to jump to the movie. well this is the only time that things were going wrong and it wasnt that bad. the only thing that happened was that when i hit play it would start the movie correctly but whenever i went back to the menu in the middle of the movie, for some reason, then try to go back it would start the movie over again from the beginning. so its been luck or i have been doing it right. im not sure since i have learned alot on my own

Well, I think it was probably a bit of luck, although it's quite possible to do it on a DVD per DVD basis (adapting what you do to the DVD structure). There was another message from someone on this forum who had found a way to do it for Disney movies, which seemed to work most of the time. But the solution worked only for movies that had been mastered a specific way, using a specific register.

you mentioned the trace function... just to make things clear is that going to be an option you just choose to make the first play jump to the menu or play the movie first. will that be its only function. thanks

This is a function that will allow you to single-step or put breakpoint in the DVD structure, playing it as a DVD player would do. For example, you'll be able to set a breakpoint at the movie PGC, and run until you get there, etc... If all you want to do is put a jump instruction in the first-play, then PgcEdit already lets you do that very very easily. In fact, PgcEdit is exactly meant for such usage (inserting commands)...
Jeanl