Manual seeking problem (Sample DVD incl.)

[kumi]

I am having a problem with the seek-bar in Media Player Classic and WMP under Windows XP. It turns out that certain PGC cell configurations will reliably cause the players to either freeze or skip over certain cells.

Imagine a title PGC that looks like this:
BOVs Chap. Prog. Cell Type Seam- Ang VOBU Cell Cell Playback End Entry First Last Last VOB Cell
(PTT) Flags less Still Still Cmd. Time Time VOBU ILVU VOBU VOBU ID ID
Joint Time # sector End Start End

? 1 1 1 2 no - no 0 0 00:00:08.00 00:00:08.00 9394 0 10786 10989 1 4
? 2 2 2 2 no - no 0 0 00:00:12.00 00:00:20.00 0 0 3158 3321 1 1

If I play this title, I can manually seek to any position in the video with the seek-bar.

However, things change when I add 1 (or more) cells before the transition between VCID 1/4 and 1/1:
BOVs Chap. Prog. Cell Type Seam- Ang VOBU Cell Cell Playback End Entry First Last Last VOB Cell
(PTT) Flags less Still Still Cmd. Time Time VOBU ILVU VOBU VOBU ID ID
Joint Time # sector End Start End

? 1 1 1 2 no - no 0 0 00:00:12.00 00:00:12.00 6115 0 9226 9393 1 3
? 2 2 2 8 yes - no 0 0 00:00:08.00 00:00:20.00 9394 0 10786 10989 1 4
? 3 3 3 2 no - no 0 0 00:00:12.00 00:00:32.00 0 0 3158 3321 1 1

This time, if I attempt to manually seek to any position in cell 3, the player will either crash or skip completely over cell 3.

Here is a small (22MB) DVD I created that illustrates this issue. Title 1 exhibits no problems, while Title 2 will crash the player if you attempt to seek into chapter 3:
http://www.badongo.com/file/8928942
(mirror1 (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SMOTMBCA)) (mirror2 (http://www.zshare.net/download/108180969fb3bf32/)) (mirror3 (http://rapidshare.com/files/108857479/stub.iso.html))

What is wrong? :)

[blutach]

Did you update the timemap Kumi? And does it not seek correctly on a standalone?

Are there any PUOps (VOB or IFO)?

Regards

[kumi]

I did update the timemaps, trying both PgcEdit, Vobblanker, and FixVTS. There are no PUOps (besides GoUp and AngleChange in the VOBs). My standalone isn't working at the moment :(

[blutach]

It seeks OK in Power DVD.

Regards

[r0lZ]

And in MPC indeed the seekbar doesn't work well. However, it doesn't crash on my system. It is difficult to drag the slider past the end of the 2nd cell, but possible.
IMO, it's a MPC bug. Not to worry.

[kumi]

WMP also doesn't seek properly, so perhaps it's a bug in the Microsoft DVD Navigator filter?

[r0lZ]

Yes, probably.

It is possible to change some filters used by MPC, but I don't remember if the navigator can be changed. If you can and if you have another navigator available, you could try it...

[kumi]

I don't think there is, but that's OK. I just wanted to make sure I hadn't messed up the DVD compilation, somehow.

It seemed strange that the component so many people use to watch DVDs is broken this way. Oh well :|

[r0lZ]

This bug (http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3178226&SiteID=1) might be related.

[blutach]

It's also perfect in VLC.

Wouldn't expect WMP to be any good, but surprised at MPC.

Regards

[kumi]

It's not the player's fault, it's the DVD Navigator filter used during playback. Any Directshow player that relies on Microsoft's DVD Navigator (qdvd.dll) will exhibit the same problem.

[r0lZ]

Well, I've just tried with VLC, and I have to disagree with blutach. Although you can seek forward past cell 2 without problem, when you seek backward from cell 3 to cell 2, strange things happen. Cell 3 seems much more longer than it is, and the display jumps randomly from one cell to another. Maybe there is really something wrong with this test DVD.

[kumi]

Interesting, so VLC also has problems.

By that way, my test DVD was just a convenience so you could see what I was talking about. As far as I can tell, you can reproduce this problem with any DVD... here's how:

1) Open any DVD in PgcEdit.
2) Choose a title PGC and enter the PGC Editor.
3) Choose a cell that has at least 2 cells before it.
4) Change that cell's VCID to a value that has an entry VOBU sector smaller than the previous one.
5) Save DVD and test.

[r0lZ]

Thanks for the precision.

BTW, I've installed the demo version of PowerDVD. It doesn't freeze and has no problem with the seekbar... but it plays the cells in the wrong order! Seems no software players are really DVD-Video compliant!