Please help me fix my PBC problem

[netBEUI]

I've read through all the guides and searched these forums but I can't find a solution anywhere. I'm hoping someone out there can help me out with this.

What I'm trying to achieve:
I'm trying to create a SVCD so that there are 3 "pages" displayed from which you can choose various items. Each page is an animated mpeg that runs infinitely. When you press 1, 2, 3 or 4 on the remote I want it to run the respective mpg. I've authored this in 3 programs; NeroVision Express 2, VCDEasy and VCDWizard. All three work properly when I run them on my PC; IE - I click Next and it goes to page 2, then I click 3 and it loads the 3rd mpeg represented by the 3rd thumbnail on page 2, etc..

The problem:
The problem occurs when I play the VCDEasy or VCDWizard SVCDs on my Apex 1225. These SVCDs both produce the same result; I can press Prev/Next but the numeric buttons are not recognized. The SVCD that was created with NeroVision Express 2 works fine on my Apex 1225, I can press Prev/Next to move between pages and when I press the number keys it correctly plays the selected mpeg. But I'd like to use VCDEasy or VCDWizard because these programs give me much more control than NeroVision Express 2.

What I've checked:
I checked the XML that both VCDEasy and VCDWizard produce and I see the <selection> section is created inside <pbc>. I also see <bsn>1</bsn> with 4 select ref= for each mpeg. So the XML appears to be ok.

I compared the contents of the NeroVision Express 2 SVCD with that of a VCDEasy/VCDWizard SVCD and I noticed that there are mpgs in the \SEGMENT folder of the NeroVision Express 2 SVCD. There are no files in the \SEGMENT folder of the VCDEasy/VCDWizard SVCDs. Could this have something to do with it?

My plea for help:
This is DRIVING ME NUTS. I am not computer illiterate, I'm the guy who people usually come to for help! But I seriously cannot figure this out. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Even if you don't have a fix, even a suggestion for something else I could try to troubleshoot this further.

[Ejoc]

You talked about pressing the next buttons, but what about buttons 1,2,3...etc? I've made menus w/ VCDEasy based on
this guide
and it worked...

[Cornucopia]

Ok, here's an idea.

Use VCDImager or VCDEasy or one of the other gui tools, and use the feature that extracts the PBC structure on a "VALID" disc--created by Nero or whatever--and converts it to an XML file. Then you can read the file to see how it is laid out and create your own, customized disc.

HTH,
Scott

[netBEUI]

Ejoc: I've tried that guide as well as an advanced guide on the VCDEasy website but my numeric buttons do not work when I play the SVCD in my Apex 1225. They work on my PC, and they work if I author the SVCD in NeroVision Express 2. But no such luck with discs authored with either VCDEasy or VCDWizard..

Cornucopia: Thanks for the excellent suggestion. I've managed to extract the XML from the "good" Nero .nrg so now I have something to compare with the VCDWizard generated XML. I'm going to screw around with the XML and try to figure out what options VCDWizard generated in it's XML for the mpegs I specified to play in between each menu. This was the main reason I dropped NeroVision Express 2, the fact that you cannot specify what should happen when the user clicks next, previous, etc. I took a quick look and the VCDWizard XML is very clearly layed out, while the Nero XML is much harder to read. Should be fun, but hopefully this will lead me to a solution...

[netBEUI]

I solved it! woooo!! it's almost 2am, I've been working on it since about 10pm but I finally freaking figured it out. It seems that the /segment folder has to be populated otherwise numeric input isn't recognized (at least not on my apex 1225). So to fix my problem I changed the following in the XML:

original file:

<sequence-items>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\menu1.mpg" id="seq1-movie"/>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\menu1tomenu2.mpg" id="seq2-movie"/>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\menu2.mpg" id="seq3-movie"/>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\menu2tomenu3.mpg" id="seq4-movie"/>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\menu3.mpg" id="seq5-movie"/>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\mpeg1.mpg" id="seq6-movie"/>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\mpeg2.mpg" id="seq7-movie"/>
..etc

fixed file:

<segment-items>
<segment-item src="F:\svcd\menu1.mpg" id="seq1-movie"/>
<segment-item src="F:\svcd\menu2.mpg" id="seq3-movie"/>
<segment-item src="F:\svcd\menu3.mpg" id="seq5-movie"/>
</segment-items>

<sequence-items>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\menu1tomenu2.mpg" id="seq2-movie"/>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\menu2tomenu3.mpg" id="seq4-movie"/>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\mpeg1.mpg" id="seq6-movie"/>
<sequence-item src="F:\svcd\mpeg2.mpg" id="seq7-movie"/>
..etc

So I basically just added the <segment-items> section and moved my "menu choice" mpegs into the section, saved the XML, brought it into vcdxbuild and created the bin/cue with that and voila.

If I import the XML into VCDWizard and immediately export it and examine it, I see that VCDWizard is REMOVING my <segment-items> section and moving the stuff that was in it into the <sequence-items> section. Anyway, I'm rambling.. just wanted to post this in case someone else out there runs into this problem...