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View Full Version : DVD or Media menus?


kairos
14th January 2003, 06:35
If I understand there were three projects working on menus for video, PowerDivX or Core Media not sure what they are called now, MCF or Matroska or both or something, and XCD or the other one like XCD not sure if it's around anymore. First off to many changes splits and such. Second what is the status, cuse it sounds like no one is working on it anymore.

With the coming afordability of dvd burners I'm starting to organize my tv episodes in order to place twelve on a dvd hopefully using a menuing system. Preferably I'd like to use a menu through Zoomplayer, being the best player around IMHO. This talk of the new power DviX player or core media player using dividivx is good and All but I see no player almost a year after this statement was made. Seems like it will never come out.

And like the MCF developers the response is always soon. I would just like to get an understanding of what is being done on this and how it is to be implemented. Will it be player specific, or more of a Direct show filter. Will it be in the container specs of mcf or more dvdish like an ifo file.

I know this can be quite a hard thing to implement but please any response or thoughts on development would give me some satisfaction.

p.s. I don't use micro dvd player due to the masive amount of hacks required inorder to play multiple files and the player flat out sucks in my opinion.

Also don't think I'm being rude, This post is meant to show there is still demand for such a menu system incase the developers fell they lost support.

ChristianHJW
14th January 2003, 09:33
Dont know about MCF and others, but matroska team is searching desperately for a developer caring about this. Milkman.Dan, who was going to make the java based authoring tool for MCF and matroska ( with a similar structure as Scenarist uses for DVD menue creation ) cant work on that anymore.

In the current matroska specs we have the basic element for such menues defined, but there is no precise specs yet what their scope was and how it should be done.

As for players, while we work closely with BlackSun, the developer for the Core Media Player ( TCMP ) the goal is to be able to have support for this on all DirectShow based players, maybe by using the DVD menue interface thats coming with DirectX 8 and newer. I am not aware what players out there will support and use this interface, and if its worth messing with it, so again any input on this was precious.

In any case, thanks to the extensible nature of matroska ( designed for editing ) you will be able to create valid matroska files and also have the possibility to add menues later ...

Atamido
15th January 2003, 01:43
Originally posted by kairos
And like the MCF developers the response is always soon. Expect to be able to create Matroska (http://matroska.org) files with a version of VirtualDubMod within 1-2 months.

I would like to mirror ChristianHJW's comments in this. While we have discussed in great length how to do the menuing system, nothing has been decided on. We have considered many different ideas, everything from Flash (http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/) to MNG (http://www.libmng.com/). We would really prefer some type of universal menuing system that would be easy to put into Matroska (http://matroska.org), OGG (http://www.ogg.org) and other formats and possibly be streamed. If it could be placed in OGG and other formats, that would be optimal.

The main issue right now is that there is not a standard interface to use. We were hoping for the existance of UCI (http://uci.sourceforge.net) to help provide this interface across all platforms, but the developer for that has disappeared. (If someone wanted to take what already exists and run with it, go for it.) Now, we are looking to help from gstreamer (http://www.gstreamer.net/) to provide cross-platform functionality of a standard interface. We will see if they can/will provide this tremendous service for the community. Again, comments and help from the community would be greatly appreciated.