DvdAuthorGui Menu Jump & Highlight problems

[grannyGeek]

I've been on hiatus from video work for a long long long time, but now trying to get my "see"-legs back.

I haven't worked much with menus, so my problems are probably self-inflicted.

I'm authoring disk for a friend--- a compilation of featurettes/gag reels/etc created from clips from DVDShrink in re-author mode. Each vob/clip is loaded in the project as a separate title.

Root Menu Pause and Jump work correctly in software Media Player Classic & PowerDVD, but not on a standalone Panasonic player.

I created the still menu m2v file from jpeg, and when loading the menu, added a 30-second AC3 2-channel audio track 30 seconds long.
In the project, I set the menu to Pause for 30 seconds, then Jump To Title 1 Chapter 1.
On standalone, the audio plays one time for the 30 seconds, and then the menu remains silently on pause until a button is selected. It doesn't jump to Title 1 automatically as it should.

Tweaked Resume command not working consistantly.
In software, the standard Resume command will freeze the menu if it is selected during first play. (don't know about standalone, not tested)
In the XML, I set a gprm flag at the First Play command to let the menu know that nothing has played yet (so nowhere exists to "resume" playback), and instead to jump to Title 1 Chapter 1. The first time Title 1 is played, it changes the flag so that all future selections of the Resume command will actually resume interrupted playback.

This works beautifully in software, but on standalone, sometimes Resume jumps back to Chapter 1 of the most recently played title instead of jumping back to the interrupted playback spot.

Highlight problems on Subtitle menu
I also created a 2nd Subtitle menu with 3 buttons to select None, English, Japanese, and then jump back to (Root) Menu 1. I followed Liquid17's "Xml Tips" guide to set a <pre> command to to highlight the button for the currently selected subtitle track (on first menu display it should default to button 1, then next time it is displayed the highlight should display for whichever button you last selected.)

Again, this works fine in software, but not on my standalone.
When I use the remote to display the subtitle menu, there is NEVER a highlight selected, and when I click to try to display highlights, usually (not always) button 3 (Japanese) is highlighted, regardless of which track was selected last time.

My panasonic player is not picky about burned disks , and plays even CMC MAG disks without any problem.

If these commands work in software, there MUST be a way to get them to work on hardware, mustn't there?

I could give my friend a menu-less disk, and tell him to learn to love his remote control, but this is becoming a challenge that I want to solve.

Any help for me?

[FallenAngel10]

Well since nobody is answering - I'll give you a few tips and a suggestion

All software players are emulations of hardware -- many are badly designed
PowerDvd is junk -- A menu that works there may or may not work on standalones

I hate to recommend MS software but WMV 11 seems to be the closest Emulator nowadays

Without the actual pgc menu commands/vobs its hard to see where you went wrong

Heres the suggestion (Though you lose button placement) - Try Titlewriter Make menu it seems to give you what you basically want (without the pain) and is/can be one click (Its been designed for DvdShrink Reauthored Compiliations)
If you really want to get fancy -- study TW menu output (and/or edit pgc's) -- that should tell you where you went lala since the menus are "Comprehensive in function"

[grannyGeek]

FallenAngel10, thank you so much for responding.

If it would be of interest to anyone, I could upload the ifo files and xml from my DAG project.

I will give TitleWriter another try, I tried it a couple weeks ago with no success, probably those source files were not compliant. I was trying to add an existing menu, and kept getting simple error message "menu not added".
I'll try it again with new files, and see how I get on.

I'll be honest, I found it a bit difficult to use, because I had to keep fighting with the GUI.
(I have bad eyes, a 17" monitor, 1024x768 res, and Large DPI setting --- that combination raises merry hell with the way Windows scales gui components. I think Bill Gates stays up nights thinking up ways to torture us.)


I'm sorry you think badly of PowerDvd. I'm using old version 4, and the main reason I have it is that WMP 9 won't play dvd without one of the "inner circle" payware software players being installed -- since I happened to have the disk included with some dvd-burner bundle, what the heck, it was available and I didn't have to pay more money for another app. I very seldom use WMP, but Maybe I will try to upgrade to WMP 11 --- is it that much better than version 9?

Thanks again for your help, I'll try Titlewriter with this project and see what happens.

[FallenAngel10]

Use Titlewriter >>Open>> DvdShrunk output folder>>Make Menu>> Create Menu and Add It

TW uses the DvdAuthor subsuite for menu generation (I delete the xml's on completion)

When I was working on TW -- Many users reported foibles with PowerDvd (all versions)
Most of the problems dealt with its handling of SPRMs and Intra title/domain jumps.
Its not that WMP 11 is so much better -- it just "emulates" closer to the way hardware actually handles discs/ifo's.

Other fairly decent players (menu navigation wise) are KMPlayer, Media Player Classic (All free I believe)
PgcEdit >>trace mode can be quite useful (especially if you "tinker" with the ifo's)

I'll take a look at your ifo's if you want
Zip up the video_ts.vob, vts_??_0.vobs, and all .ifos (these are the menu files)

Email to
f.allen.angel@sbcglobal.net

It sounds like You are "knowledgeable" about Pgc's/dvd's - At this point I'm guessing that maybe you are setting gprms that other pgc's are using as constants

Never tested TW at those Window settings -- I'll glance at it

[FallenAngel10]

Grannygeek

Thought I'd look at TW at that DPI setting -- Useless wasn't it
Its a Pain Ms CDialog Class didn't cover that -- I knew I was going to get into trouble cramming that much onto a single form
Uploaded Titlewriterbeta to site -- contains a left scroll bar in makemenu (if necessary) to see the bottom of the form
Tested up to 200% -- The window can be dragged left/right by the top titlebar -- a bit cumbersome but usable
Oddly enough the Main TW form was covered at that DPI (CForm Class)

At higher DPI settings I noticed that many MS programs seemed to have the same problem --Idiots

[grannyGeek]

Well, no, I have to say I'm not knowledgeable at all about pgc's ---- that's why I am in water over my head now. I have only the skimpiest grasp of the terms and processes.

I find the syntax in PgcEdit to be hard to follow right now, I'm not yet familiar with all those acronyms that sometimes match initial letter of component description, and sometimes don't.

Yes, I'm trying to set & re-set variable flags for changing circumstances in playback. (but I am only extrapolating from my tiny knowledge of Visual Basic variables --- it probably ain't the same.)


I'll send you my files to take a peek.

I'm downloading your new beta, and will try it out this weekend --- thanks so much for the revision!

Later -
granny