What should a menue system for matroska be able to do ?

[ChristianHJW]

OK,

menues is clearly the winner of the last poll ( i didnt expect that to be honest, i would be much too lazy to create one for my rips :D ), now please let us know what you think is important about it.

EDIT : multiple choices allowed

[RadicalEd]

The ingenuity of BIFS really interests me, in that it's not so much a menu system by definition... but rather, comprehensive enough to make menus with. Perhaps matroska should adopt a variant of that? With a smaller featureset, maybe. It would probably be practical to implement a more menu-centric system with more specialized features in that area than BIFS, which is at the core mostly just a graphics scripting language. But for a role-model, it's is a good start.

[pogo stick]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
menues is clearly the winner of the last poll
Does it mean that matroska team will start creating menue system?

Can I suggest one more choice?
Menue system that would be usable with DShow Players.
Because people using different players and people using matroska are the same people. :)
[EDIT]
I just realized that there is a choice for that.
Number 1 and number 5 will be very close to each other, I think.
[EDIT]

I voted for 'Simply reuse the DVD menue systems'.
Because menues will be mostly used for DVD backups and if matroska menues and DVD menues will be close to each other it will be easier. And I can not imagine what are the lacks of DVD menue systems. But maybe I just have a weak imagination. :)

[Cyberman]

Reuse the DVD system, but do it in a way that allows for "Matroska-Menues" as well.

Matroska needs to attract users - fast.

[zulu]

i voted for dvd menus too. simply because i'm too lazy to author menus myself. :D

[Tuning]

I would like to see Matroska own unique menu system, just like container itself. ;)

[Tanshu]

I voted for copy the DVD and the MP4. I am at times too lazy, so the DVD thing could be good. But also, from what I have seen, MP4 is really very powerful, so it should be quite interesting. If there are licensing (sp?) problems, maybe a similar system with similar functionality maybe.

[Zarxrax]

I think ability to use DVD style menus should be first priority. But I wouldn't mind seeing the ability to make custom menus more easily.

I think the menu system should be designed in such a way though, that if the player doesnt support the menu, then it will simply start playing the main video content.

[kilg0r3]

Some kind of direct ripping and converting of dvd menus would surely be cool, and, of course the possiblity to place more than one of these structure onto one dvd. dual-layer is coming fast.

BTW, did make this poll only in this forum?

[niamh]

Am I the only one here who finds menus the single most irritating thing on a DVD? :D
Anyway, I realize menus are needed to make any sort of breakthrough,and are handy for extras, and generally showing off to your neighbour, but I voted for custom menus, and hope the Matroska team can come up with something sleeker and less painfully slow and annoying than DVD type menus ;)

Keep up the good work!!

[bond]

i dont get why placing a mpeg-4 systems stream (aka bifs) in matroska should infringe patents/license issues?
->
does it infringe these issues for the matroska team if you place a mpeg-4 video stream in matroska? no!

[hofmetzger]

I noticed that most of the statements are talking about matroska as a DVD-Backup-Solution.
If matroska is heading onto that, its would be useless in less than two years (we have cheap dvd-burners already)
I always thought matroska was a multi-purpose-container, and so the menu-system should regard that.

Another important point is the authoring: i read many time sth like "i too lazy, so i want dvdmenus". Is it that simple? Or hasnt somrbody to write a wrapper or sth first? What if my source isnt a dvd at all (see above)? So imho the route is clear: flexible but easy to use... (yes, i know :rolleyes: )

btw my vote:
[x] You should talk to the player developers about it first...
[x] K.I.S.S. Keep it sweet and simple at first...

[k0r0n4]

While I can see the ease of use of simply supporting a dirct-from-dvd menu system, it seems silly to use such "old" technology with a relatively "new" container. That's not to say that dvd menu's are just plain awful, but I'm sure they're far from perfect.

Since matroska is making it easier than ever to support multiple languages with multiple audio streams and soft subtitles, why not have menus be the same way, and save space at the same time? Basically the text would be layed out in a similar fasion to softsubs, but with (obviously) finer control over the location, font, color, etc. I don't know if this is a new idea or not, but it would save space by not requiring multiple menus for different languages and (hopefully) not putting too much strain on the processor when rendering.

Otherwise I would keep it pretty similar to DVD menus. One thing to watch out for would be image galleries though. Would you have to turn each image into a seprate page of the menu or would there be the convienience of just being able to mux in the common image formats (png, jpg, bmp, gif, etc.) and have a special predefined "gallery" setting for a menu, but still leave buttons customizable. The latter could save space and a lot of authoring time, but would be more difficult to impliment.

[filewalker]

In my opinion we need a new flexible system which is aimed for future goals, and the new menue system shouldn't be a short time solution (which is outdated in some time) to satisfy some impatient people.

Of course, a program to convert the DVD menue to Matroska menue and a program to create a menue from scratch are necessary then.

Cu filewalker