Programmed pause during HDMV playback

[Wunderteam]

Is it possible to programmatically pause the playback of a given m2ts file at the end or at the beginning of each chapter (playlist mark), i.e. something equivalent to the VOBU still mode or the infinite cell still time of DVD presentation? Naively, I tried playing around with "duration" field of the playlist mark entry in the mpls file, but no joy.

I am trying to modified the playback of a single m2ts file with mixed media (video clips and still pictures) into a slideshow where the user advances manually to the next object. Is this at all possible, or does each object (clip or still) have to have its own m2ts, mpls and clpi files?

If the original file has to be broken up, then can anyone recommend a Blu-ray authoring tool that can:

pause at the end of each video clip or still picture,
allow the user to replay a clip or return to the previous still,
allow the user to manually advance, and
provide smooth transitions between objects.

I ended up having to write my own software in order to enable this functionality for DVD's, but Blu-ray HDMV seems oddly much less flexible in this situation.

[Ghitulescu]

With my limited knowledge of BD I would do the following:

assumming you have a single,chaptered M2TS file:

PlayPL 1
logic to interact with the user at the end of chapter 1 (hidden/visible menu, PSRs etc)
PlayPL 2
logic to interact with the user at the end of chapter 2
PlayPL 3
etc

The playlists 1-2-3-etc correspond to the blocks of the movie between the chapter marks (id est the IN time and OUT time of each chapter).
The menu if visible may have the still image of the video frame between the chapter marks. The buttons may be visible or not, depending on your choice. Even in case of invisible menu you can still have the buttons made visible (say like arrows over the video).
This solution will fragment the video (freeze) even if the logic has a condition to bypass the user interaction, for there will always be a pause between PlayPL calls.

How exactly is your software doing this?

[mp3dom]

Scenarist supports the still time with both finite and infinite time and also allows to splice/trim a single video in multiple parts (at keyframe points) with builtin CC6 Wizard.
If you have different video clips and still picture clips, the task is a bit easier because you can create each different playlist and jumps, with still picture playlists set up with infinite still time and interactive graphics to jump to the next playlist (or do anything else).

[Ghitulescu]

Excellent :)
Wunderteam, sell your BMW X5 and buy yourself a copy of Scenarist BD.

[mp3dom]

He didn't ask for a cheap solution :)
Anyway Scenarist doesn't cost an X5. The Scenarist UHD and BD packages put together will cost 20K$