Viable containers for preserving DVD menus?

[Zarxrax]

Are any containers available "good" for putting a menu in like the original DVD has? I have heard that matroska now has menu support, but I can not find information about this anywhere. I know mp4 supports menu's, but I can't really find any current information on whether that has really taken off, either. Are there any other options I might be overlooking?

[celtic_druid]

Matroska has dvdmenuxtractor for automated menu conversion. I still haven't gotten VLC to play the results without crashing though.

[bond]

its possible to create and play menus in .mp4
its possible to create and play menus in .divx
both methods are not easily doable

it seems you can create menus in matroska (never tried it so i dunno to what extent this is working) but there is no way to play them

actually i am really wondering how the specs for hd-dvd will look like, cause it includes menus (of course), new codecs, sd resolutions and is placeable on normal dvds too

maybe the new format also for 1cd bitrates? ;)

[Caroliano]

Using Matroska and dvdmenuxtractor is the easiest way. You can create spec compilant menues that you probabily can play in the future, but not now! No player have suport for it until this date. Maybe VLC in linux....I don't know.

[vsv]

Menu inside mp4 container is the best way. But we need a good player like MPC which can properly render menu like this in SW sample:
http://isabelle.math.ist.utl.pt/~l52768/sw_sample.zip

[Zarxrax]

Ok, thanks guys. Matroska's dvdmenuxtractor looks promising. Hopefully we will see some player support for that in the future.

[Kurtnoise]

Menu inside mp4 container is the best way.
why ?

[vsv]

Why?
Interactive, 2D and 3D animation...
Try samples: http://www.comelec.enst.fr/osmo4/#samples

[celtic_druid]

How many original DVD menus make use of interactive 2D and 3D animation?

It really isn't an advantage when it comes to reproducing a DVD menu, which was the question.

[bond]

Menu inside mp4 container is the best way. But we need a good player like MPC which can properly render menu like this in SW sample:
http://isabelle.math.ist.utl.pt/~l52768/sw_sample.zipenviviotv is a dshow filter that allows playback of mpeg-4 systems in any dshow player. it also includes a component for realplayer and quicktime

[CvH]

Matroska has dvdmenuxtractor for automated menu conversion. I still haven't gotten VLC to play the results without crashing though.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=103617 :(
the menus work but no player can handle it :devil:

menus in mkv would be great but it didn´t seems to come true :( (cause the lack of a player, maybe tcmp)

[robU*4]

VLC 0.8.4a (somehow) works with menu on Windows, Linux, OS X and others. Interactive menu is kinda tricky, but accessing tracks, chapters and even menu sections work fine.

[bond]

VLC 0.8.4a (somehow) works with menu on Windows, Linux, OS X and others. Interactive menu is kinda tricky, but accessing tracks, chapters and even menu sections work fine.any sample showing whats supported already in vlc?

[robU*4]

try http://www.matroska.org/~robux4/dvd/placebo/Placebo.mkv
I'm not sure it's up to date with the last specs. Given the dates it should be.

[bond]

wow the first matroska menu sample is see, seems to work more or less :)

would be great if the cursor would change its look when being over a clockable part so its easier to find it
also is it possible to go back to the menu when playing a video?

also i cant get the file to work at all with haali. why that?

[robU*4]

All the menu parts are accessible through the chapters. It doesn't reset the DVD pseudo registers like a real DVD player would do though.

Haali doesn't support the DVD chapter codec and don't plan to.

[multicone]

Haali doesn't support the DVD chapter codec and don't plan to. ... but it should play ? It doesn't play here, neither in MPC nor WMP 6.4 !

[DigitalDeviant]

VLC 0.8.4a (somehow) works with menu on Windows, Linux, OS X and others. Interactive menu is kinda tricky, but accessing tracks, chapters and even menu sections work fine.

The directshow players aren't going to work untill someone codes a splitter that can handle it.

[robU*4]

Yes, the demo should play with Haali's splitter.

[bond]

Yes, the demo should play with Haali's splitter.it doesnt

[CvH]

it doesnt
for me 2

neither play the video or anything else

after 20sec it crashes the splitter.ax (newest version , bute same at older ones)

[daStorm]

try http://www.matroska.org/~robux4/dvd/placebo/Placebo.mkv
I'm not sure it's up to date with the last specs. Given the dates it should be.
This is indeed nice content for a technical demonstration.
it plays fine on vlc 0.8.4 - any highlighting of active menu buttons would be nice, but I'm not sure whether highlights are not in the file or simply not displayed. Aw well, who cares? ;)

[lovelove]

Any progress towards implementation of the mkv menu specs ("What we'll try to have is a system that can do almost everything done on a DVD, or more, or better, or drop the unused features if necessary.", http://www.matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html) during the last 5+ years?

[daStorm]

Incredibly short 5 years if you ask me

[kurkosdr]

Here is another question:

Are there ANY tools that can put menus inside .divx files? Preferably open source, but proprietary or freeware tools will do too. Yes, i know, .divx files are hacked avi files, and avi files smell bad and are inferior to mkv and mp4, but divx (DMF) menus are the only ones with a certification process in place (it's called "Divx 6 Ultra" i think). So in a sense, it's the only "viable" menu format. The problem is that i don't know of any tool that can make DMF menus.

As regards MKV menus, i don't think the matroska guys really want them to happen, as one leading developer expressed his dislike for dvd style menus. IMO the whole thing was an effort to not make the mkv container appear inferior to mp4 (which has menus), without really intending to make them happen. Anyway, if mkv menus are not part of the Divx HD certification process, don't expect those bottom-racing manufacturers to add support for them out of their own.

As regards mp4 menus, again, are there ANY tools that can make them? And are they part of the mpeg 4 certification process for standalones?

----

Also, has anyone tried MKV menus with WinDVD? VLC is a bad player when it comes to menus, as it still has problems with DVD-video menus (which came out 13 years ago for god's sake), like not showing the buttons right and not showing the backround sometimes.

[lovelove]

ok, so what is the bottom line? when you want to keep DVD menus, you can't reencode the video?
absolutely no way around this?

[kurkosdr]

ok, so what is the bottom line? when you want to keep DVD menus, you can't reencode the video?
absolutely no way around this?

I haven't found any tool that can convert DVD menus to Divx menus (i have only tools to author Divx menus from scratch), so your only option is to convert them to MKV menus and reencode to mpeg4 avc. From what I read, VLC has recently proved MKV menu support, but I haven't tried it personally.

If you know of any tool that can convert DVD menus to Divx or MP4 menys, please post.