Button problems after bypassing titles

[Eki]

Hi!

After bypassing some unwanted titles I noticed that play button is not highlighted anymore when menu is viewed "first" time. Play button becomes visible if I navigate to some other button and then back to play button. All submenus behave the same way.

All titles were bypassed by using same method. I changed all postcommands to precommands and changed all break commands to "goto line xx". I also corrected all commands previously in post command section that contained goto line according to new line number.

I don't understand why this causes badly behaving buttons. DVD is The Medallion R2 and has that Sony authoring system logo displayed after movie.

Thanks in advance

Eki

[r0lZ]

What player are you using to view your DVD?
If it's IfoEdit, try another one. He had some bugs when displaying buttons upon entry in a menu.

[Eki]

I used WinDVD 5 & 6. I have not tried in standalone yet. Do .IFO files have button related information? All VOB files are untouched so the problem must be in IFO files.

[r0lZ]

There are commands in IFOs that are dealing with what button is selected when entering a menu:

Set_HL_BTNN sets the highlighted button number.

All Link commands (including RSM) are able to modify the highlighted button number, too.

The button param for thoses commands is the highlighted button number * 1024!
Button 0 means: don't change the highlighted button number.


Try to set a Set_HL_BTNN in the PGC that is calling your menu:
[56 00 00 00 04 00 00 00] 1 (SetHL_BTN) Set Highlighted Button =(mov) 1024 (button 1)

[writersblock29]

@r0lZ

It sounds like your suggestion just may be the answer to my problem, as well. Using DVDRemake Pro, I've made a bonus-only disk for Kill Bill Vol. 2; insert the disk, and it goes right to the "Special Features" menu. Problem is, there's no highlighted buttons on that menu, making navigation impossible with a set top player (it plays fine using Nero Showtime, if one were to use their mouse to click on a link... but the button itself never highlights). Could you supply me with a method of trying it out... whether it can be done in Remake, or perhaps IFOedit?

Thanks in advance!

[r0lZ]

@writersblock29
It's difficult to know what to do without knowing what is happening in your IFOs.

Here is a simple and straightforward method (using PgcEdit).
Disadvantage of this method: the first button will be always selected when you enter the menu, regardless of the last button you selected.

First, be sure the "Options/Automatically renumber GOTOs" is ON.

[list=1] Select your Special Features menu PGC in the left pane.
Just to be sure, right-click on it and select "Show Menu Buttons". You must see the buttons layout of your menu. The "force select button" should be 0. Note the button number you want to highlight (should normally be 1). Click OK.
In the right pane, click on the first line (with "**** pre commands:"), and click on the "Add after" button. The pre-command 1 will be created with a NOP instruction.
Double click on this NOP line, and select the SetHL_BTN instruction in the "Alphabetically" menu.
Change the button number to be the number of the button you want to highlight. Click OK.
Save the DVD and test it.
[/list=1]
If this doesn't work, you will need to do a much more complicated method. But I can't help you without seeing the commands. If you are interested in learning a bit more, go to "Info/DVD commands", then copy the whole text and paste it in this thread. I will then try to explain how to do it the complex way.

[edit] Have you disabled some buttons in the menu with DVDRemake?

[writersblock29]

@r0lZ

Thank you for your truely informative advice! I will give PgcEdit a try, and see how that works. After all, it's not like I have anything to lose by trying! In answer to your question:

(Have you disabled some buttons in the menu with DVDRemake?)

Yes. I disabled the "Return to Main Menu" button, since I no longer have a main menu to return to. I've also changed the commands leading to features, since the previous commands led me to menu transitions (which I removed), THEN led me to logo screens (which I removed), THEN led me to the features. Furthermore, I've set the bonus menu as my root menu, and changed all first play commands to reflect that. I also directed the title menu commands to my (newly-made root) bonus menu.

While it's enough to make your head spin... The result is that the project loads fine in a software player -- and will allow you to choose the features so long as you click on them; the keyboard yields nothing. Burned to a RW, the disk loads fine on a set top... but no buttons are highlighted. I tried pushing the "enter" key on my remote, thinking that it was a problem with the color scheme (making the button invisible, but there, nonetheless)... no dice. Just a menu screen which lasts into infinity.

True, since I own this disk, I can always dig it out of archive whenever I wish to watch the extras (which'll be, what? Two, three times a year?) but this is my first project of this magnitude using Remake... just want to see what this program can do. I've been tempted to simply dig out IFOedit -- which I'm accoustomed to -- and start over from scratch. But I will try your PgcEdit advice, and see if it works; at least I can then re-open the project within Remake, and see what command it changed so that I can learn more about Remake's command languages!

Thanks again!

[writersblock29]

@r0lZ

Well... it didn't work. It was worth the try, though! Here's a copy of the information PgcEdit gave me.


DVD-TEXT General Name: ""
Provider ID: "DRM 2.3.4"
Number of VTS: 1


VMG (VIDEO_TS.IFO)
------------------

VMG / FP-PGC
********** pre commands:
[30 06 00 00 00 42 00 00] 1 (JumpSS) Jump to VMGM Title menu
********** post commands:
********** cell commands:


VMGM / LU 1 (--):

VMGM / LU 1 (--) / 1 Title
********** pre commands:
[30 06 00 00 01 83 00 00] 1 (JumpSS) Jump to VTSM 1, Root menu (TTN 0)
********** post commands:
********** cell commands:



VTS 1 (VTS_01_0.IFO)
--------------------

VTSM 1 / LU 1 (--):

VTSM 1 / LU 1 (--) / 1 (0:00) Root
********** pre commands:
[56 00 00 00 04 00 00 00] 1 (SetHL_BTN) Set Highlighted Button =(mov) 1024 (button 1)
********** post commands:
********** cell commands:
********** menu buttons commands:
VOB ID 1, Cell ID 1 (First NAV pack=0)
2 Groups, Start button=0, Select button=0, Action button=0
button 1: [30 03 00 00 00 01 00 00] (JumpVTS_TT) Jump to TTN 1 in this VTS
button 2: [30 03 00 00 00 02 00 00] (JumpVTS_TT) Jump to TTN 2 in this VTS
button 3: [30 03 00 00 00 03 00 00] (JumpVTS_TT) Jump to TTN 3 in this VTS
button 4: [20 01 00 00 00 00 04 01] LinkTopCell, button 1 (1024) *** Autoaction



VTST 1 / TTN 1 (26:04) Title 1
********** pre commands:
********** post commands:
[30 08 00 00 00 83 00 00] 2 (CallSS) Call the VTSM Root menu of the current TTN
********** cell commands:

VTST 1 / TTN 2 (11:32) Title 2
********** pre commands:
********** post commands:
[30 08 00 00 00 83 00 00] 2 (CallSS) Call the VTSM Root menu of the current TTN
********** cell commands:

VTST 1 / TTN 3 (3:37) Title 3
********** pre commands:
********** post commands:
[30 08 00 00 00 83 00 00] 2 (CallSS) Call the VTSM Root menu of the current TTN
********** cell commands:


Pretty messy? Keep in mind, it's my first major experiment using Remake!

Thanks again for your help and attention: It's appreciated!

[r0lZ]

Looks good.

my (newly-made root) bonus menu.
Which app have you used to make your menu?
Does the original menu work correctly?
How have you imported it in the DVD?

I think now that it may be a problem with your original menu VOB, or with the way you imported it.

If your original menu is working fine, then try to import it with PgcEdit. (PgcEdit will not modify the imported VOB file at all.)

Or maybe you could try to play with the menu buttons color schemes with DVDRemake or MenuEdit.

[writersblock29]

@r0lZ

Thanks for taking a look at that!

As far as the play-by-play of how it got from the original to this copy...

A) The first thing I did was rip the original disk to my hard drive, using DVD Decrypter 3.2.3.0. File mode, with all files copied over. One thing that I always make sure of is that the user prohibitions are left the same as the source disk, since I've had problems with forced subtitles not working on certain disks if I allow decrypter to disable user prohibitions.

B) Ensured that original files worked properly by opening with Nero Showtime and scrolling through menus. Everything works properly as far as the source files go.

C) Imported into DVD Remake. The first time I did this, I simply "hid" all the blocks and menu items that I didn't want, and adjusted the first play and button commands accordingly. But after exporting a test project, the menu buttons wouldn't highlight. After combing through the project for awhile, I decided that my project was just too complicated by trying to preserve the original's DVD structure. DVD Remake doesn't really remove titlesets: It replaces them with a single black frame. But this means that you'll still have a VTS 1, VTS 2, VTS 3 (hypothetically)... even if the only material you're keeping resides on VTS 4. Of course, this all also means that you'll still have certain commands residing in blocks that you chose to hide.

So to elliminate that, I did the following:

1) Opened the project with DVD Shrink, and created a "movie-only" project using my largest special feature.

2) Imported the "movie-only" title into DVDRemake. Since Remake allows you to import blocks from unrelated DVDs into a given project, I simply created program chains and titles, importing the appropriate blocks. By doing so, I was able to put everything I wanted to keep in one set of VOB files.

Menu creation was similiar to importing titles, in that I meerly imported the bonus menu from my original into a user-created space under the VTS 1 menu directory. Since all button commands were the same as they were on the original disk, I reset them to select the appropriate title, while "hiding" the "back to main menu" button.

Well... the new DVD's structure is pretty spruced up, but the menu isn't acting any differently than it did before -- while the original menu continues to work just fine. :rolleyes:

However, now I'm thinking about feeding my original DVD to PgcEdit, and take a look at the original's commands for that menu... as well as use DVDRemake to see if my color schemes changed at all by importing that menu block like I did. *shrug* Who knows what I'll find out. I suppose I could use PgcEdit to import the original's menu and just kinda-sorta see what happens; heck, maybe there's a bug in Remake when it comes to importing menus (I'm betting more on an error on MY side of the monitor, though...).

Thanks again!

<Edit> Disk is working! Two major mistakes on my part:
1) Didn't truely DELETE "Return to Main Menu" button -- merely HID it. ReMake moves it to a corner of the frame... and for some reason, THIS is the button that became Button 1.
2) Wrong color layout. Had to open the original menu in Remake, and match everything up between the copy and the original. After doing this, and deleting the abovementioned button, the disk plays flawlessly.

My thanks to r0lZ for his time and help! Hopefully this'll help someone else in a similar fix.