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View Full Version : LinkNoLink considered harmful?


PaulJBis
13th February 2006, 20:37
Hi all:

A friend of mine who works with Scenarist was making the typical menu to select subtitles tracks: there are buttons for English and French subtitles, you press one of them and the menu selects automatically the "Play" button, which resumes the feature (using the RSM command). In order to make the language buttons work, he tried to use LinkNoLink to select a subtitle track and go back to the same menu, so each button would have something like:

{SetSTN subpicture=1;ON; LinkNoLink, button=4}

Where "button=4" would be the "Play" button.

Anyway, this worked well in Scenarist simulation and also in PowerDVD, but he discovered to his horror that it didn't work in stand-alone players (it did all kinds of weird stuff). After searching here, I found a thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=84067) that recommended not using LinkNoLink, but "Jump to current cell" instead, so he changed the commands in each button to:

{SetSTN subpicture=1;ON; LinkCN subtitles-t-scn-cell, button=4}

Where "subtitles-t-scn-cell" is the name of the menu cell. And sure enough, now it works everywhere... but what we don't understand is: why? What's wrong with "LinkNoLink"? Is it common knowledge that this command causes problems?

DaRat
14th February 2006, 11:47
I never made it to work either, my H+ did nothing on nolinks.. Shame, because I really miss it for some serious interactivity.

srfscenar
16th February 2006, 09:15
Well, if it works in Scenarist it is with the dvd Specs.
I think its the dvd player(s) you tried it to.
What i think is that you guys should try to find a dvd player which is strictly compatible with the dvd specs and try it there. Lets say a VERY expensive dvd player. I am 99% sure that it will work there.
Let me know if u tried it and if it worked.

PaulJBis
16th February 2006, 19:21
We tried it with 2 players, a cheap Belson one and another which I didn't see (my friend tried it), but that I assume was also one of those "Made in China" cheap ones.

You might be right that it's within the DVD spec, but in practice... if the 90% of the DVD players that people actually use don't work with LinkNoLink, then it's useless, isn't it? Paper standards are all fine and well, but I can't go around making people spend money in a more expensive player just so that they can watch my DVD.