MenuEdit - Tool to edit DVD Menus

[Dimad]

I do realize that there are many posts on this subject:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41726
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40584
to name a few.

But still I've decided to open a new one as I was not sure in which of the old posts to put this info.

Having all these nice tools, like: dvddecriptor, ifoedit, rempeg and imgtools one can make a one disk backup of DVD very easily. The only step in this process, which is a real hassle, is editing menus to disable buttons linking to pruned parts of the DVD. This procedure (at least for me) takes much more of my personal time (not computational time) then all other steps together.

I've decided that it should not be this way and wrote a MenuEdit. This little program is completely free to use by everyone. It eliminates a root of the problem - removes buttons from dvd menu screens. No button - no problem.

When selected buttons are deleted from selected menu, MenuEdit automatically relinks buttons left in this menu so that you can still access all buttons with navigation keys of your remote control.

At the moment you can only delete buttons, but if I will hear enough in support of editing buttons (like modifying command associated with the button, etc), I will implement these features as well.
Correction: buttons can be edited now.

At the moment MenuEdit does not show underlying menu screen, only buttons layout. So you need to know where on the screen your button is located, as well as vobID and cellID for the menu.
Correction: starting with 1.3.0 actual video is shown.



Program does in place editing of the vob files, so you may want to make a copy of the file before editing, just in case you will remove something you don't real intended to. I've tested it, but still consider it as a beta version.


Anyone who wish to report a problem need to provide at least this info:
1. Title of DVD; PAL/NTSC; Region code
2. Titleset # (i.e. xx and y in VTS_xx_y.VOB)
3. Menu VOB #; Cell #;
4. indexes of deleted buttons (new version of MenuEdit (see attachement) show button index on each button to help with this);
5. Extract vob# with menu where error occur and send it to me (actually send both before editing and after): MenuEdit@mail.com
Use VobRator:
1) open vob-file;
2) hit collaps;
3) select whole vob and uncheck "include in output";
4) select needed vob# and check "include in output";
5) expand this vob# and uncheck "include in output" for all subitems exept NAV
6) save to some file
7) zip it and send to me

Few recommendations which will help in finding errors:
i) Try to edit menu only once, otherwise list buttons deleted in each attempt separately(like: deleted buttons {0, 2, 5} then buttons {0, 1} !!note: second time it will be already new indexing!!).

ii) When you encounter an error editing vob-file, check if this error is specific to some particular menu or to whole editing session. In other words, do you have same error if you open vob-file, edit your menu (only this menu), close vob-file?



Edited 03/18/03
I've opened a site for the MenuEdit. http://www.dimadsoft.com/menuedit
All further releases will be posted there.


Enjoy it!

Dimad.
--------------------------------
Q Can machine think?
A Machine should not think. Machine must run.

[Administr8or]

sounds very interesting indeed, and with your future plans with it, i'd surely give it a try, and give feedback for it if ya like

[2COOL]

Dimad,

Here's my attempts and results with your MENUedit. I had two DVDs with main menus, with motion, displaying immediately on DVD insert. My main menu resided in titleset 1 (VTS_01_0.IFO - VobID 1).

1st try: Opened up first movie's VTS_01_0.IFO, selected VobID 1 and sucessfully deleted one button.
Results: Produces error when previewing in IFOedit. Cannot tell if button was really disabled without a working movie.

2nd try: Opened up first movie's VTS_01_0.IFO, selected VOBID 1 and deleted all buttons successfuly.
Results: Previewed VTS_01_0.IFO. Menu pops up with all selected buttons disabled.

3rd try: Restored original VTS_01_0.IFO and VTS_01_0.VOB. Use MENUedit to delete one button again.
Results: VobID 1 is not available for selection.

4th try: Deleted C:\Windows\MENUEDIT.EXE-3453B866.pf and proceed to select VobID 1 in MENUedit.
Results: No change. VobID 1 is not available again for selection.

5th try: Deleted C:\Windows\MENUEDIT.EXE-3453B866.pf again and opened up second movie's VTS_01_0.IFO to select VobID 1.
Results: VobID 1 does not appear.

MY COMMENTS: MENUedit did as advertised in my second try. I thought I did something wrong in my first try but it worked in my second attempt. But after that, my VobID 1 does not appear even using a new untouched movie. The only file I found that was connected to MENUedit was a file called MENUEDIT.EXE-3453B866.pf in my windows directory. I was actually looking for a .ini file where the settings were saved but no go. Again, I was impressed by it ability to select and disable buttons with ease. Just needs more tweaking and testing.

Additional Comment: Even with VobID 1 gone, the button layout that displays in MENUedit with my second movie does not correspond to any exact button layouts with the movie. I checked and confirmed all menus and there was no match.

[Fmazzanti]

@dimad,
yesterday i tried that wonderful program of yours with a movie I was backin' up (The Fly original version). Actually the DVD structure was not that complex, and I tried to remove some extras with IfoEdit, resulting in a project that worked fine unless you press one button corresponding to a feature that was not there anymore: in that case the player simply froze and that was the end of it.
Using MenuEdit I simply deleted any reference to the buttons corresponding to these features. They disappeared at once and now my DVD works more than *perfect*. Great tool!!
Besides, I like the way buttons are displayed: if you know the menus on the DVD, you recognize everything without problems...

@2cool,
looks like I've been much more lucky than you this time

[2COOL]

Dimad,

Can you reply to my post of test results?

[Dimad]

Hard to tell without having your vob with menu.

But I have few remarks:
1) MenuEdit disables access to the vob-file it is working with (actually reading is allowed). Other applications may not be able to use vob-file while you are editing it with MenuEdit. You need to know what buttons you plan to delete before you open vob-file for editing. I do realize that it is not very convenient, but that is what you have with this version of MenuEdit.

2)There is not much sense in deleting buttons from the menu without buttons, so MenuEdit does not offer menus without buttons for editing. But all vobs and cells are still there.

3) MenuEdit does not touch ifo-files. No need to back them up.

4) It may not be a good idea to delete system files.

5) MenuEdit leaves no trace in your system. No ini-files, no records in regestry.

6) DVD menu may have up to 3 button layouts for different screen sizes. MenuEdit treats them correctly (as far as I tested). Although you select buttons for deleting only once for menu buttons are deleted from all groups. It may be that program your are using to preview menu shows buttons from different group.

Good luck using MenuEdit.

Dimad.
--------------------------------
Q Can machine think?
A Machine should not think. Machine must run.

[DnGermany]

I love this tool. Previously I had to use a hex editor which took a little time, but not to much once you know where everything is. What i like best, is the automatic relinking of the other buttons. Just for info I used it on GoneIn60sec R1 menus from VTS 1 and 2, worked like a charm. Keep up the good work.

[2COOL]

Originally posted by Dimad
5) MenuEdit leaves no trace in your system. No ini-files, no records in regestry.

Dimad,

I have to disagree with you on this. Well not totally, MenuEdit doesn't but WinXP does something with it.

Initially, the only 2 files that I had associated with MenuEdit was menuedit.zip and MenuEdit.Exe. After using MenuEdit today, I did a file search on "menuedit". I found this again in my C:\Windows\Prefetch\MENUEDIT.EXE-3453B866.pf. Hmmm...I'm using WinXP right now and I really don't know all of its features so I did an internet search about "prefetch" and came up with this.

What Is Prefetch? Taken From Microsoft Website:

Windows XP monitors the files that are used when the computer starts and when you start applications. By monitoring these files, Windows XP can prefetch them. Prefetching data is the process whereby data that is expected to be requested is read ahead into the cache. Prefetching boot files and applications decreases the time needed to start Windows XP and start applications.

This information is logged and stored on your hard drive taking up space and requiring a process to be kept running monitoring which applications are being run. This has a performance impact on your PC. Disabling the Prefetch function or at least only enabling it for the Boot Files will allow you to free up some system resources and preserve some disk space.

Here's more of information on MENUEDIT.EXE-3453B866.pf from longshome.com

The prefetch information is stored in the Windows directory, in the Prefetch subdirectory, in binary format.

How does the system know which data should be prefetched? The Cache Manager component takes care of monitoring page faults, which tell it which data has to be retrieved from disk in the paging (or swapping) process. Cache Manager monitors the boot process and the first 10 seconds of the startup process for each application. This produces information called a trace, which is passed to a Task Scheduler component that processes the trace data and writes it to a file in the Prefetch directory. You can identify the application to which the trace pertains because the filename will start with the application name. The filename also contains a hash, in hexadecimal notation, of the path to the file, and has a .pf extension. (The trace file for the boot process is called NTOSBOOT-B00FAAD.PF.)

The next time the system boots or the application is started, the Cache Manager looks in the Prefetch directory. If there’s a file there for the boot process or application, the data and code referenced in the trace file will be put into memory, if they’re not already there. This prefetching decreases the amount of time that was lost under previous operating systems in seeking the data and reading it into memory from different, disparate locations on the disk.

So you see, it does leave a "trace" on my WinXP system. I've rebooted twice today and it's still there.

[dvman]

Great tool... works like a charme for me.

[gizmau]

menuedit does only work in some special/simple cases:

1
2
3
4
5

when i delete 5, it isnt selectable any more and 1-4 still work as desired.

when i delete 4, 1-3 still work, 4 isnt selectable as intended, but 5 is connected to the content of 4. this way it is impossible to return to the previous menu if 5 is connected to this function.

[2COOL]

Originally posted by gizmau
menuedit does only work in some special/simple cases:

1
2
3
4
5

when i delete 5, it isnt selectable any more and 1-4 still work as desired.

when i delete 4, 1-3 still work, 4 isnt selectable as intended, but 5 is connected to the content of 4. this way it is impossible to return to the previous menu if 5 is connected to this function.

Are you using WinXP? This is exactly what my problem is. It's great the first time around but the second time is .

[KYUSS]

wicked proggy
thanks m8

[Fmazzanti]

I'm also using WinXP and MenuEdit. Yesterday I deleted button 3 from a main menu containing 4 buttons:
1: language selection
2: Scene selection
3: goto extras menu
4: play movie
After deleting button 3, I could still use vuttons 1, 2 and 4 without any functionality loss (and that paticulalrly means that button 4 is still displaying the main movie)...
So no issues here whatsoever, even running XP.

[gizmau]

Originally posted by 2COOL
Are you using WinXP? This is exactly what my problem is. It's great the first time around but the second time is .

yes, exactly...

[YODAS]

The same thing happened to me although it did happen the third time and not the second. On my other machine though that runs win2k everything works fine without problems.Strange...

[2COOL]

Alright!

I'm glad I'm not the only one scratching my head. Hmmm, I wonder what OS Dimad is using on his computer?

If anyone who posts that has the same problem, please state what OS you are using please.

[Fmazzanti]

Pretty weird... I've used it on my last 3 backups and didn't have a single problem. Now I'm backing up a fourthe one and start to experience the same as you guys. I also use WinXP. Too bad, it's a nice tool. Hope he'll fix that soon...

[Dimad]

I don't know will you believe me or not, but there is no way I can figure out what is the problem by yours comments. Send me actual files (or better fragments with vobID, cellID under the question) before editing and after. Or, if files are big (more then 1MB), tell me what movie you are working with and what menu you are editing (what buttons you are deleting and actions you do to delete them), I'll try to find this movie.

Send it to MenuEdit@mail.com

As I understand there was no problems reported under WinNT/2000.
All experienced problems occur under XP.

Here is the sad truth: I don't have an access to XP computer at the moment. So if this is a specifically XP problem I may not be able to fix it in near future.

[Fmazzanti]

I still don't see how can this problem be related to an operating system issue. It looks more like functionality is shifted from buttons to otehr buttons in some strange way I do not understand. But of course, I know nothing about these things...

[VidHack]

First of all -- THANK YOU -- For this tool, the end of HEX editing - WOWSER! I also run a Win2k box, and NO problems yet. Lets talk about your app for a second. First, would you consider open sourceing it? What language is it written in? If you wont release the code, could you use a transparent background, or a XOR type of background bitmap instead of that green one, you see, we could overlay your app on top of the DVD2AVI preview window to supperimpose the bitmaps to actually line up the buttons to the actual frame of video in the menu. DVD2AVI will give us the VOB ID/ Cell ID in the Statistcs window. Are you familiar with Directshow filters? Your app is in its beginnings and I commend you on the approach, with just a bit of tweaking this App is a godsend! I am sure 2Cool will agree. Please continue developing it with some type of see thru overlay in mind, you could even incorperate a simple AVS script that will get the VOB ID frame and convert it to a bitmap for the actual background image. Please consider this. Thank you again.

PS.- After compiling your app, please run a DEPENDENCY checking app to ensure support on all plateforms. (What compilier did you use?)

VidHack