Parental Management Specifics

[HappyCamper]

Does anyone know where I can find any advanced information on parental management? I don't mean the basic stuff...I know how the different levels work and how discs handle parental management in the menus, etc. I'm looking more for the technical details, such as how the parental masks work in the VMG_PTL_MAIT and VTSM_LU IFO tables.

I have read this thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=83399, but it mostly deals with removing parental management.

[mpiper]

The DVD spec says parental controls can be set that allows the full, unedited video, or an edited, alternate version of certain chapters for lower access levels.(This allows young viewers to watch R rated films but at a PG13 or PG level. At this point in time, most retail DVDs do NOT allow parental controls to alter the flow of the film. They only allow playing, or block playing.

Is this the type of thing you are trying to set up? I have not found any authoring apps that allow you to set the parental control level on published DVDs. If you find a way to do this, I would also be VERY interested in this.

Good luck and hopefully the experts here at the forum know how to do it.

Mike

[HappyCamper]

Originally posted by mpiper The DVD spec says parental controls can be set that allows the full, unedited video, or an edited, alternate version of certain chapters for lower access levels.(This allows young viewers to watch R rated films but at a PG13 or PG level. At this point in time, most retail DVDs do NOT allow parental controls to alter the flow of the film. They only allow playing, or block playing.My guess is that the masks have something to do with playing alternate versions using seamless branching or something. But even discs that don't use parental management have data in these tables. I have never actually seen a disc that uses alternate versions, so I haven't had an example to inspect to try to figure it out.

Originally posted by mpiper Is this the type of thing you are trying to set up? I have not found any authoring apps that allow you to set the parental control level on published DVDs. If you find a way to do this, I would also be VERY interested in this.I don't have a specific project that I am currently working on, but I'm the kind of person who has to know everything about everything that I touch (a sometimes unfortunate trait of mine). I have authored some DVDs with parental management, but I set it up manually by querying the parental level SPRM in the VM and played if it was high enough and played an infinite still if not.

[Arky]

Originally posted by HappyCamper
My guess is that the masks have something to do with playing alternate versions using seamless branching or something. But even discs that don't use parental management have data in these tables. I have never actually seen a disc that uses alternate versions, so I haven't had an example to inspect to try to figure it out.


Yes, Parental Management can make use of 'Seamless-Branching' (or, more correctly, 'Seamless Multi-Story'). As you may already be aware, SM-S interleaves portions of a VOB so that alternative PGCs may reference different sections of the VOB, and yet each of the PGCs may be played in a seamlessly-'linear' fashion, despite sharing certain cells which are common to other alternate PGC(s). In short, then, the SM-S part of the authoring equation influences only the seamlessness of playback of each of the alternative versions of the film - hence, it is highly desirable, but not essential, to the authoring of a Parental Management Title. To reiterate: each 'story' version in a SM-S Title belongs to it's own PGC, so the Parental Management feature will operate via selection of a PGC based upon how it is flagged. Theoretically, therefore, you could dispense with the 'Partial Interleaving' of the VOB and create standard PGC stories (e.g. in DVD SP, Maestro, Scenarist etc.), flagging each PGC with the approprate Parental level. The P-M feature would still operate, but there would be small pauses in playback, where cells were skipped-across (ommitted) from the PGC being played, owing to the lack of interleaving to overcome this limitation of the DVD Spec's meagre video buffer (and non-existent audio buffer!).


Arky ;o)