Langauge domains and their influence on subtitle tracks

[Crazyjoe]

Hi Guys!

At the moment I've come to the point, where the DVD Specs drive me crazy...again ;).

The Problem is: I made a trailer collection on miniDVD and wanted to include in the selection menus both the original english title of the film and the german title in the highlightinformation. Therefore I created two subpictures, one with the english titles and one with the german ones. At that point I had to realize, that the DVD Spec only supports one subpicture track per menu and no change of the present track per navigation commands. :(

So I created two language domains, an english and a german one, both in the VTS and in the videomanager. So, the menus in the english domain had the subpictures with the english titles and so on...

So I had to live with the restriction, that the subpicture tracks on the menus depend on the default menu language selected in the players preferences. :(

Now I gave eeach trailer both english and german subtitles. I marked them in the track editor as german and english (not "Not Specified").

And there I had the next problem: if the default language in the player was english, the player displayed the availability of TWO english subtitles tracks, but no german one. The same it was with german as the default language.

So, is there a possibility, to have both subtitle tracks available, independend of the default language of the player?

There's also another thing I wonderd about. At least for RC 2 DVD from MGM there is at the beginning of the playback of the disc the possibility, to choose between the available audio languages, and because of that choice you have the corresponding subtitles displayed in the movie, and also the corresponding menu language.

How do they create that effect, because the active language domain only depends on the players preferences, and that system parameter can not be changed by the dvd author!

I would appreciate any help! :( :(

[Crazyjoe]

Doesn't have anyone the slightest idea, what's goin' wrong? I still haven't found a solution for the problem... :(

[Cayne]

At least for this MGM thing I would say it can be realized with a command sequence which selects audio, sub and menu.

[Crazyjoe]

I don't think, that it is that simple. You know, everything is influenced by that initial selection. As an example: if there is more than one menu for the special features selection and you select on feature, when you stop the playback by pressing menu on the remote (which always brings up the at the moment active root menu) it always loads the menu screen, on which you had previously choosen the feature. But only ONE PGC can have the root menu flag and is loaded when pressing "menu" on the remote!

I've tried to take a look at the different .IFO files with ifo edit, but it's nearly impossible to reconstruct the layout of the dvd with this method. But what I managed to get out is, that the initial language selection brings up nearly 60 to 70 navigation commands! For ONE PGC! So, the whole thing seems to be really complex! :( :(

Sometimes I wish, that a professional scenarist user, who works for a big hollywood studio would read this forum. Such a guy would be able to give us really useful hints, for creating complex dvd structures! :(

[auenf]

GPRM based stream selection/etc.

and if you create your menu as 'button over video' rather than a menu, then you can set GPRM based Angle for the menu backdrop and GPRM based subtitle for the subpicture (if you need different subpic).

just a thought, not exactly sure if it would entirely work.

also, in maestro atleast, there is an option to display this menu only on conditions (eg language or a GPRM).

Enf...

[Crazyjoe]

Thanks for the hint auenf! With multi-angle I could at least manage the problem with only 1 sub allowed in a language domain pgc. :)

But there's still the problem, that the random audio track selection (I think I wrote this in another posting...) still only works in scenarist simulation, but not in WinDVD, PowerDVD and settop Players... :confused: