navigation broken after menu encoding

[ggtop]

I encountered a problem with menu encoding. Movie is "American Gangster" (German, Single DVD Edition).
The DVD has 1 LU with German and English menus as VTSM1, VTST1 Title 1 and 2 are Theatrical / Extended version of the movie.
After selecting menu language and entering the main menu there is a button play which leads to another menu page where to choose the desired version to playback.
In that program the buttons are only accessible for about 3 seconds after entering. Then the player seems to hang
The program itself has a length of about a minute and after that time playback continues in main menu (like the original).

What could have happened to the navigation?

Behaviour is the same on sw player and on standalone.
Ripping done with RipIt4Me
Source is not preprocessed, because I had the same result with a vobblanked / pgcedited source before ;-)

When I compare the original with rebuilders result in pgcedit I cannot see any differences except sector addresses which should be ok due to reencodig to a smaller size.

Then I blew away the dust from NuMenu4U / Scenarist and did the menu encoding externally and the result was ok.

Any ideas?

[blutach]

Welcome to Doom9.

If the nav/menu/cell commands and PGC structure are the same as the original (and DVDRB doesn't touch them), then it should play the same.

If the player is hanging, it is most likely due to bad media, bad burn or a player that needs a clean. Does the software player hang on playing the output files? Or does it hang on playing the burned disc?

Test your output by doing a trace in PgcEdit.

Regards

[ggtop]

1 post in 5 years is really a bad statistic ;-)

The media is ok. It's (almost) the same effect on playing the files or on the standalone.
Media Player Classic: A few seconds after entering the mentioned still menu the button highlighting disappears and no navigation is possible until the program reaches its end (~1 min). Then it returns to main menu. If you are quick enough the buttons would work.
On my standalone menu doesn't freezes, but jumps (without doing anything) to the first title in VTST (Theatrical version is this case.

The trace in PGCEdit works well on both (Original and rebuilded one).

[blutach]

Then it's a player issue (those software players have strange behaviour sometimes with respect to button highlights).

You can check the menu highlights in DVDSubEdit. Check that the original and final are the same in terms of forced start, highlight start and end times, and highlights (subpic packs) etc. But, 100% for sure, DVDRB touches none of this.

What media is it, btw?

Regards

[ggtop]

I cannot confirm what you are saying.
good enough to describe the issue:

1. The original works well
2. I made a backup to DVD-9 which also works (preprocessed)
3. I made a backup to DVD-5 without menu encoding in DVD-RB which works (preprocessed)
4. I made a backup to DVD-5 with menu encoding enabled in DVD-RB which does not work (preprocessed and not preprocessed)
5. Finally I made a backup to DVD-5 using NuMenu4U / Scenarist before using DVD-RB with menu encoding disabled which also works.

If DVD-RB doesn't touch anything that would harm navigation of the menu please give me a reason why it does not work...

The media is a SONY burned with IMGBurn verification enabled.

I will check the files with DVD Subedit tonight maybe it helps clarify this...

[blutach]

If DVD-RB doesn't touch anything that would harm navigation of the menu please give me a reason why it does not work...
I can't. I can only tell you that DVDRB doesn't touch anything that would disturb the highlights or make the PGC hang. Remember, "all" DVDRB does is re-encode the video to a lower bitrate and remux the audio and subpics (importantly, nothing is done to these packs in terms of commands, timing and start/stop instructions) while adjusting the various pointers and other presentation information in the VOB. Of course, user interaction to blank segments will affect this.

And if the output files look OK in a software player - even just one of them - then it is a media/burning issue.

Have you scanned one of the problematic disks?

Apart from the fact that I wouldn't wipe my bum with a SONY product, the best media is Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim.

Regards

[manolito]

Could well be an issue with DVD-RBs menu encoding feature. I do remember a couple of older posts where problems about menu encoding were reported.
See here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=930979#post930979
and here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1010085#post1010085

Cheers
manolito

[gizzin]

I've had this problem happen too, dont remember what movie, it was a long time ago, I just chose not to use the menu encoding feature (most of the time the space saved wouldn't matter). blutach to assume its a media problem would be irrelevant in my opinion.

[blutach]

Well, let's see what the OP comes back with from DVDSubEdit. Together with PgcEdit, that should give him all the info he needs to ascertain whether his menu should play.

Regards

[ggtop]

Unfortunately I had no time at the weekend.
I made some analysis right now:
I compared the menus with PGCEdit and SubEdit and couldn't find any differences.
Then I compared with the vobs with VOBEdit (after looking for the addresses in ifoedit) and found that they are (significantly) different (Menu PGC 7 VOB-ID:8):
original: starting with a navpack followed by a video pack (GOP/I Frame) with gop timestamp set to 00:00:00.00
After some dozens of video packs there are lots (didn't count them but I assume there are as many as videopacks) of navpacks.

The vob of the dvd rebuilded menu has also a navpacks first followed by an video pack (GOP/I Frame) with gop timestamp set to 00:42:59.24 (?). After all videopacks there are only 2 (!) navpacks.

Maybe this could be a reason why playback gets out of sync and button highlighting is no longer possible...

BTW I tested the output as burned discs on 2 standalones and as files on my computer.

@ manolito: It seems to be the same problem in those threads

[blutach]

The original authoring is a way of getting a still to display for a certain time. Just display the I frame and increase the PTM in each navpack.

Without seeing the VOBs, I can't comment of the final output, but it does look and sound quite a bit different. And if there's only 2 navpacks, but no extra video packs, then it won't display for very long, which is what you have observed.

You may care to send a sample of them to jdobbs. You can extract the relevant single cell from the original and final with PgcDemux.

In the meantime, there are some more experiments you can do. Make a little DVD with muxman from a BMP. After selecting the video, highlight the BMP and enter a time at the top, say 20 seconds, and press set (the output will be exactly as your source - an I frame plus lots of navpacks). Feed this to DVDRB with forced re-encoding on. Check the output and see if it is handled correctly.

Regards

[ggtop]

Just sent a PM to jdobbs ask him to take a look at this thread.
Maybe he finds something

[jdobbs]

If you can send that cell to dvd-rb@dvd-rb.com I will take a look at it when I get a chance. I have not had a lot of time lately -- heavy deadlines with the real job.