Possible to make menu music random?

[kingmustard123]

Ideally, I'd like the main menu to play a random music track each time the menu is opened.

Is this possible?

[DB83]

no

[usually_quiet]

No. The commands that make up the simple programming language used to control DVD video disc playback are very limited in their function. They do not include a randomizing function.

[Nelson37]

I was told some time ago that there is, in fact, a RANDOM function for clip playback. It was said that this is only available in higher-end authoring programs.

I had a disk that appeared to use this function.

[DB83]

For clip playbck there is a random function whereby you program certain registers. DVD-Lab Pro can do this.

But that is randomize from within a menu not randomize the menu itself.

[usually_quiet]

I had never seen the RND opertor used with the SET command before, but yes you are right there is one. However I don't know what authoring software supports randomizing audio track playback within a menu . You might be able to add random audio track playback after authoring using PGCEdit if you have a programming background and are good at figuring things out on your own.

[El Heggunte]

Just as a starting point,

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/181276-Multi-Menu

As long as the menus differ only in their respective audio tracks, then that's what the OP is looking for

[Cornucopia]

IIRC, the featureset for menus only allows 1 audio track per menu, as opposed to standard titles that allow up to 9 per title. So, yes, you would have to do a multi-menu as El Heggunte was suggesting and randomize the menu choice in the registers.

Scott

[DB83]

Just as a starting point,

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/181276-Multi-Menu

As long as the menus differ only in their respective audio tracks, then that's what the OP is looking for

Not really. The OP wants different music for the same menu.

I suppose, technically, it could be done. You would have to have a dummy menu to jump to which then has post commands to randomly select another menu. Each menu would be identical except the music. Very complicated to achieve (since you also have to set other registers before you can invoke a menu) and hardly worth the effort to attempt it.

And you need the sofware such as dvd-lab pro to access the registers.

Using basic software, the answer to the OP is still no.

[_Al_]

... or just to author bunch of menus (same video, different music) and link it, write commands in PGCEdit

[Cornucopia]

Yeah, you don't need a Dummy Menu in that mix, just the appropriate PGC "pre" commands.

Scott

[usually_quiet]

IIRC, the featureset for menus only allows 1 audio track per menu, as opposed to standard titles that allow up to 9 per title. So, yes, you would have to do a multi-menu as El Heggunte was suggesting and randomize the menu choice in the registers.

Scott

Yes I forgot about that. The only way to do this is to use multiple menus.

[Skiller]

Actually, there is a way to do this without cloning the menu and changing the audio track for every version of it: make a BOV menu (BOV = Button Over Video).

Regular DVD menus are stored in VTS_xx_0.VOB, whereas BOVs are stored in VTS_xx_1.VOB because they are essentially a regular title with all of it's functions. You can add up to 8 different audio tracks and select one randomly in a pre-command.

The pre-command may look similar to this (in pseudo code):

MOV(GP1) RAN(65535) #generate random number (0-65535)
MOD(GP1) 8 #reduce to 8 possible outcomes (0-7)
SetSTN audio=1 if GP1=0 #select audio track 1
SetSTN audio=2 if GP1=1 #select audio track 2
SetSTN audio=3 if GP1=2 #select audio track 3

#and so on

Jump ...

The button highlights for that BOV menu are (of course) the subtitles. It all pretty much works the same, the user will never know it's a title that's playing rather than a pure menu. You need to make sure only the desired actions are allowed for this title, use PUOs (Prohibited User Operations) to disable pretty much everything except Selection/Navigation, Stop and maybe a few other.

[Cornucopia]

Skiller is correct, that is also an excellent option (use of titles as menus). Don't know how I missed that one - a little rusty I guess.

Either way, you'll need an authoring solution that accommodates user-generated pre-commands.

Scott

[DB83]

Remember that the OP want this to take effect in the Main Menu which is not a title.

So I still think some dummy Main Menu is required whose sole function will be to jump to this title menu. Gotta think of the end-user here who could easily be pushing the 'Top Menu' button on his rc. You would not reach the title menu without some bridge.

[Cornucopia]

I think that is an Empirical Question. Regardless, in any of those scenarios, an authoring solution must include user-generated pre-commands. The OP hasn't replied since, so there's no way of knowing what toolset is available to him/her.

Scott

[Skiller]

Remember that the OP want this to take effect in the Main Menu which is not a title.

Like I've said, the end user will never know it's a title rather than a menu that he's watching and navigating through. It really doesn't matter if it's technically a title or a menu. Everything is possible as long as the authoring program allows access to this.

Gotta think of the end-user here who could easily be pushing the 'Top Menu' button on his rc.

That's easy to fix without the need of a dummy menu. Just assign the Top Menu (Title Menu) button to call up a script (globally for the whole DVD). That script could be the very one that generates a random number, selects an audio track and jumps to the title where the main menu is in.

[DB83]

I bow to your better knowledge

Would be nice to hear from the OP again. Mind you, many a user consider menus to be 'throw away' and would not give a flyin' fook if if musak was different each time it was invoked. In fact some, who might notice, would think that they are on the wrong menu and frantically press every button that they can lay their sweaty mits on to find the right one and especially if the music is different each time

[_Al_]

That's quite normal practice that dummy PGC with just commands is marked as root menu or title menu. But, you are right menu is (was) often neglected by home users, meaning properly marked as menu so remote controls react properly to top(title) menu or root menu button. I always say is better to stay with common structure to prevent user to think even for a fraction of a second what he should press, because users find this irritating. Except some sort of interactive DVD.

To move it more to practical part, you can just create menu or title with BOV in DVD authoring and create rest in PGCEdit.

But I could not find RAN function in DVD LabPro, is it there?
AND I just tested PGCEdit and could not find command with random generator also, I could be wrong though, so that would limited severely DVD authoring tool choice, like Scenarist only? But there is still a chance to copy those command lines directly with those 8 hex numbers created elsewhere.

[DB83]

In DLP you create a Random Playlist. Effectively then you would require seperate titles as menus rather than one title and commands.

[videobruger]

AND I just tested PGCEdit and could not find command with random generator also

It's here:

[_Al_]

ok, cool , it is RND then , for some reason I thought it is rounding up function or something ...
it can generate numbers directly, like RND(3) will generate three numbers 1, 2 and 3

DVDLABPRO creates this to jump randomly into three movies:

[Skiller]

I would suggest to always generate the random number in the range of 0-65535 and then use MOD (modulo) to bring whatever random number was generated down to X possbile values defined by MOD. (See my example in post #13).

Reason is, the random number generator in many stand alone players apparently isn't necessarily very random, especially if you request a small range like 0-3. Making use of the maximum register size helps this a lot.
Also note that RAN(3) generates random numbers 0-3, not 1-3.

[_Al_]

You might be right, I have no experience with this, but yes, I did not want to bring it up and complicate it, at least I'd have one GPRM to monitor last generated number, so it is not the same number,

or to do it more difficult way, we could keep track of whatever numbers were already generated and after all those 8 choices loop it again, not sure how to program arrays with VM command perhaps it would have to be just with simple GPRM's available

but this is a reason I would not do that, because it is time consuming to only confuse user in some sort anyway

[Cornucopia]

And it is fairly well known that the random # generators in DVD players is pretty limited anyway, because of how it does the seeding. On a PC, you could use date-time to help, but DVD/BD players don't have that. They use different strategies, some better, some worse. I've seen a few where items will repeat after ~9 iterations.

Scott

[Skiller]

or to do it more difficult way, we could keep track of whatever numbers were already generated and after all those 8 choices loop it again, not sure how to program arrays with VM command perhaps it would have to be just with simple GPRM's available

Yeah, that can be done by using "bit-shifting" technique. See an explaination/tutorial here for example.

I have used it many times, for example for a quiz where the user is asked 16 questions in a random order. Since you don't ever want a question to repeat, you need to keep track of which questions have been asked.

Here it's the same, you could keep track of which audio tracks have already been played to have them start repeating not before all audio tracks have been played at least once.
But I agree, for this scenario it is a bit overkill.

[_Al_]

that can be done by using "bit-shifting" technique. See an explaination/tutorial here for example.

oh, something for long winter nights , 10 years ago I'd certainly go through that tutorial