Disable Shuffle with Scenarist. Bug with menus?

[Pentajet]

I am authoring a quite complex DVD and I am experiencing a problem with the playback on some DVD players. When I press the shuffle button the DVD randomly plays chapters and extras from the DVD and once I press shuffle again it returns back to normal but it's impossible to recall any of the menus from the remote control.

Is there a way to disable shuffle using Scenarist? (or other editors after the DVD is authores). Anybody knows why the menus stop working and if there is a fix for this?

Thanks for any and all help.

[Ghitulescu]

AFAIK PUOs... but they won't work if the player disregard them.

[Pentajet]

Among the list of available UOPs that scenarist has, disabling Shuffle mode isn't available (otherwise it would be easy). Even PGCEdit doesn't list Shuffle in its list of UOPs. I think actually shuffle can't be disabled at all using UOPs unless I am missing something (which is likely!)

[rik1138]

Not something I've ever used, but is it possible that this 'shuffle' mode is something the player is doing on it's own? I know there's a shuffle play option in authoring, but it's not something activated by a remote button. It sounds kind of like a 'random play' feature you'd see on a CD player or MP3 player. What's the model of the player?

Unless you know you need these UOPs, try disabling 0, 1, 2 and 5. Those should disable random jumping around based on titles, time and chapters. If the player recognizes that, it should effectively disable the shuffle play. But the player might still do something and mess up the menus.

As for the menus not working, can you not load the menus at all, or is just the buttons that don't work? What about hitting the Title button? (What does Title do on your disc? You might program that to just go to the main menu, it might solve the menu not working problem.)

On most DVD players, if you activate certain functions on the menus (like pause, FF, sometimes chapter skip) the buttons will be disabled until the video loops (assuming a video menu), or a new highlight event it encountered. But if you can't even load the menu background, something else is getting confused by the random shuffle jumping.

But it sounds like the player is doing something that might be out of spec, and that's what is messing up the menus...

[Pentajet]

Yes, I think it's problem with the player. All titles are authored as "sequential". I made sure that none are tagged as random or shuffle. The player is a Nortek DivX player.

The title menu takes the user to the episode selection screen (it's different from the main menu and the chapter selection screen of which there's one for each episode). The menus can be loaded but the buttons will not work and the player does the same thing with other DVDs (not just those authored by myself). So I am inclined to think it's an issue with the player and to leave everything as it is to avoid imparing the time search functions on other players.

Thanks, though for the input and help. It is much appreciatted.

[Ghitulescu]

A respectable DVD authoring house tests its DVDs over a broad spectrum of DVD players. There are contradictions and gaps in the DVD specifications.

A DVD player that plays Divx is a strong indication that it has "relaxed" specs (most obvious being the ability to play non-standard MPEG-2 files and/or to ignore some restrictions). I would never use such a player to test my DVDRs. Get a serious one (try a Toshiba, they were very strict in the past), if possible without Divx & Co, as a test player.


PS: I acquired recently a professional DVD player, manufactured internally by Philips, and I noticed that one particular commercial DVD didn't work as it should - the player simply ignored a CALL, Link or a JUMP command to a submenu (I don't recall the exact sequence, I don't have the DVD here). The other DVD players worked like a charm (2 each of Pioneer and JVC, plus play & simulation on PC).