Maestro: ep select by number-keys, chapter select by skip on remote

[Chetwood]

Since I'm in a hurry to get my DVD finished for our weekly DVD session with friends and I'm also fed up with that darn, color-limited subpictures for menus, I'm planning to author the DVD without any menus. So, I have three eps with 15 chapters each on 1 DVD-R and I'd like it to work like this:

upon insertion the DVD starts playing the first chapter of the first ep, pressing any of the numbers 1-3 jumps to the first chapter of the corresponding eps, while a press on skip jumps to the next chapter in order. This worked for me on the SVCDs I created, how do I do this in Maestro? In the connections window I've switched from basic to advanced sources but I don't see any possibility to enter any the of number keys from the remote. BTW, I'm not going to set any user prohibitions.

And what is the difference between Title Menu and Menu Key? When I playback my authored DVD in PowerDVD I can only jump to the title menu but not to the root menu?!

Of course, I've considered doing the whole thing in Ifoedit, however, it's less time consuming in Maestro (in case it does work) since I can extract all streams automatically using the command line parameters in DVD Decrypter which is quite faster than having to join clips in Ifoedit and rewriting jumpers. Thanks.

[auenf]

Originally posted by Chetwood
upon insertion the DVD starts playing the first chapter of the first ep, pressing any of the numbers 1-3 jumps to the first chapter of the corresponding eps, while a press on skip jumps to the next chapter in order. This worked for me on the SVCDs I created, how do I do this in Maestro? In the connections window I've switched from basic to advanced sources but I don't see any possibility to enter any the of number keys from the remote. BTW, I'm not going to set any user prohibitions.

this is a player specific thing, the Pioneer at work does this, the samsung, sast, conia and mossimo dont

Enf...

[mpucoder]

Now, don't go asking me how to do this in any particular program, but - It is possible to have invisible buttons present throughout the entire movie, just as if it were a menu. These can be used to jump to a particular place in the movie. Of course skip will always get you to the next program, which is usually the next chapter.

Root and title menu are very confusing. The title menu is the one in VMG, there is only one per side of a DVD. The root menu is in VTSM, and there can be one for each title set.
How the buttons are labeled varies, which only adds to the confusion. And, of course, those of us familiar with Unix-like file systems tend to think of root as the very top, and a DVD can contain many titles. But that's not how movie people think, a disk is a title to them.

[Chetwood]

Now, don't go asking me how to do this in any particular program, but - It is possible to have invisible buttons present throughout the entire movie, just as if it were a menu. These can be used to jump to a particular place in the movie. Of course skip will always get you to the next program, which is usually the next chapter.


I know, but from what I've read on another board you gotta have subtitles enabled for this cause those button highlights are another subpicture. So if I switch subtittles off it won't work.

Besides: I've been told that this ep jump by number keys does not work over different title sets but only within! The number keys will only select the chapters of one ep/title you're currently watching. So the only thing I can do is use the title/menu key to jump to the next ep according to the current ep that's being watched.

[mpucoder]

As I said, I'm speaking strictly from the technical point of view, I haven't experimented with doing this. Yes, a subpicture stream is necessary, but it can be any subpicture stream, the player doesn't know if you have button outlines or subtitles for graphics. It can even be a transparent blank image. The highlight info is in the NAV pack, not the subpicture. But since you want the buttons to be invisible, they are just very small squares off to one corner, overlapping if you wish. They must also be marked as numerical buttons.

Navigation between titlesets is possible, it just takes a little more work. One way is for each button to have exactly the same command, CallSS to a dummy PGC in VMG. From there SPRM 8 will tell you which button was pressed, and the PGC can jump to the correct titleset and title.