PgcEdit v9.3 released! (March 22, 2010)

[r0lZ]

[EDIT] See this post for v9.4.

PgcEdit v9.3 (March 22, 2010)
A. = Added feature
E. = Enhancement
F. = Fixed bug

1. Main window and commands list:
   • A. The Dead commands that cannot be executed due to unconditional jumps or gotos are now highlighted in purple in the commands pane (if the Highlight Gotos and Errors option is enabled.)
   • E. A GOTO was not renumbered when its target was deleted. Now, it is renumbered so that it points to the first command following the group of deleted commands.
   • F. Backward GOTO targets were often wrong after a copy/paste operation, and when GOTO commands were appended to a scratchbook section.
   • E. Right-clicking on the Copy button in the main window does a Copy As Text.
2. Search box and its result window:
   • E. Added a new Tab in the Search results window, to see only the commands. Useful for example to check which value a GPRM can have. You can double-click on a line of the Summary tab of the Search window to search for that particular command, and return to the previous search with the new Previous button. It is also possible to save the summary and to copy it to the clipboard. Thanks to M_Knox!
   • E. The "Most Recently Used" contextual menu of the Search box included dupes when a leading or trailing space was included or when there were upper / lower case differences. Now, the "almost dupes" are automatically removed.
3. PGC Editor:
   • E. Improved the tooltip of the NextPGCN pink link in menus.
   • F. PUOs Editor: It was not possible to input a value for the PUOs editor when it was launched from the PGC editor.
   • A. PGC Editor -> Subpicture Colour Lookup Table -> Import: Added the VobSub index files (*.idx) to the supported CLUT formats. (Note that the conversion from YCrCb to RGB is not always accurate.)
   • F. Pgc Editor -> Cell Type Flags editor: Now, the user cannot set the Angle and Interleaved Allocation flags in a menu.
   • A. PgcEditor -> Create New Cell: New option to copy all cells of a VOB in one operation.
   • F. When the first 16:9 cell was created in a menu domain, the letterboxed or pan&scan flag was not automatically set in the domain stream attributes. Now, the letterboxed flag is forced by default.
4. Menu Editor:
   • E. MAJOR IMPROVEMENT! It is now possible to edit all button positions for all groups at the same time:
     • The position values are now automatically computed for the groups that are not currently displayed.
     • The pseudo-group "All" is now a checkbox. When it is ticked, the user can edit all groups at the same time, including the positions of the buttons.
     • The group radiobuttons are now used only to select the group to display in the viewer (or the group to edit when the All checkbox is not ticked.)
     • The new All checkbutton is highlighted in RED when there are parameter differences in the groups of the CURRENT button. It is still pink when there are differences in the other buttons. The tooltip of the All checkbutton now contains the list of the group differences for all buttons.
     • The button position sliders are now highlighted in yellow when there is a notable position difference in the different groups, as it might be better to edit the button positions in each group separately.
     • New dialogue when the user quits the editor with OK and there are button parameter differences in the groups (except for the positions).
   • E. MAJOR IMPROVEMENT when creating a new cell with buttons, so that the highlight of the new button is now visible by default. The new cells can now easily be used as a basis for simple still menus, with the help of VobBlanker and DVDSubEdit:
     • When the FIRST button is created in a cell of a 16:9 domain and the user selects the option to create 2 (or 3) groups, and there is no subpic decoding stream defined in the PGC, PgcEdit now creates a stream with 2 subpics: subpic 0 for the wide display mode, and subpic 1 for the letterbox AND pan&scan modes. It is therefore possible now to edit the button highlights of 2 groups independently with DVDSubEdit. (Note that 3 groups are still not, and will probably never be supported.)
     • When a new button is created, colour scheme 1 is now assigned by default to the button, instead of colour scheme 0 (usually transparent).
     • When a new dummy PGC is created, PgcEdit now uses its own CLUT instead of the Muxman default CLUT. As a consequence, when the first button is created and the original colour scheme is still undefined, the default colour schemes created will be different to those created by previous versions of PgcEdit. Colour scheme 1 (the default) is special, as none of the 4 colours are fully transparent, to ensure that the highlight of the buttons created by PgcEdit will be visible anyway.
     • When the first button of a cell is created and the current colour scheme has not yet been defined and is still full transparent, a default colour scheme with reasonable values is created automatically.
     • DON'T FORGET TO VERIFY THE NEW BUTTONS WITH A GOOD PLAYER!
   • A. New functions in the Edit menu "Clear all adjacent button links", "Automatically link buttons (numerically)" and "Automatically link buttons (by position)" to let PgcEdit clear or set the adjacent button links automatically. The Automatically Link functions fail in some cases, notably when there are auto-activating buttons, therefore a verification function "Verify Buttons Accessibility" has been added to check if all non-hidden buttons can be accessed with the remote from all non-auto activating buttons. This function is automatically called at the end of the Automatically Link Buttons processes and when the user OK the editor.
   • N. New "Paste and Increment" functions in the Edit menu to paste a command and automatically increment some of its parameters. A simplified version "Paste and Increment JumpVTS_PTT" is designed to fill the commands of the chapter menu buttons. See the help in the Edit menu of the editor.
   • F. When importing or copying a whole menu, the number of numerically selectable buttons was sometimes wrong.
   • F. The number of buttons was not updated in the list of cells of the menu viewer when the editor was closed.
5. Menu Viewer and Editor:
   • E. It is now possible to select the adjacent buttons of the auto-activating buttons with Control+Cursors. (A real player does not allow this with its remote.)
   • E. It is now possible to select the previous or next button with the keyboard shortcuts Control+P and Control+N. Tooltips added.
6. File menu:
   • F. Open DVD: Fixed some bugs when fake PGCs and LUs are automatically removed.
   • F. File -> Recent DVDs: some DVDs were shown twice in the list.
   • E. Find BOVs: Improved the method to find all BOVs when the option to Scan Only One VOBU Every N VOBUs is high and the cell is relatively small.
   • F. Find BOVs: After having scanned a short cell, the scan of the remaining cells was very slow.
   • F. New DVD: the commands added immediately after New DVD to the FP-PGC were lost, and the Jump To Title 1 command was not highlighted.
   • A. New function File -> Menu Buttons & BOVs -> Export and convert PAL <-> NTSC to convert the position of the buttons from PAL to NTSC or vice versa during the export operation. The file can be imported in a converted DVD.
7. Edit menu:
   • A. New Edit function "Dupe and Increment" to duplicate several commands at once and automatically adjust their parameters. Useful to create long lists of similar commands. See the help in the Edit menu.
     Clicking on the Duplicate button (in the bottom of the main window) with the right mouse button calls the new Dupe and Increment function.
8. Trace mode:
   • E. The State -> Mark Played PGCs as '<Played>' option has been replaced by Mark Called/Played PGCs in Comments. Now, a PGC is marked as Called and highlighted in light yellow when it has been accessed, and as Played and highlighted in light green when a video cell has been played. It is therefore easier to locate PGCs with never played video content.
   • F. All Player Audio Capabilities flags were inverted in the Virtual Player Configuration and in SPRM(15).
     PLEASE VERIFY YOUR VIRTUAL PLAYER CONFIGURATION!
   • F. A NextPGCN link not pointing to itself in a menu is now considered as invalid by the trace.
   • F. Trace menu -> State -> Clear All Played/Called Comments and Highlights replaced the other comments with "-". Thanks wencaS!
   • F. The Control+Down key (shortcut to start the trace) was active even when the trace mode was off.
   • F. It is now impossible to jump to the post or cell commands of a cell without buttons but with an infinite still time. The user must now press a button on the remote to continue to trace.
   • F. The trace was blocked when a Title PGC with BOVs and with the Button Select Or Activate PUO set was encountered.
   • F. Fixed the hexadecimal string appearing in the Watch window.
   • F. When the menu viewer was closed by an external function and not manually by the user, an error happened when the trace mode was closed.
9. DVD menu:
   • E. Remove Useless Stuff has been greatly improved, and includes several new functions. The order of the operations has also been modified.
     • E. Clear Useless Set GPRM Commands now also converts the JumpSS_VMGM_PGC commands in the VMGM to simple LinkPGCN commands.
     • A. Added PGC and DVD -> Delete All Dead Commands to remove the commands that cannot be executed due to unconditional jumps or gotos.
       Use Info -> Find Dead Commands to examine the dead commands in the DVD.
     • A. New function "Delete All Dead Menubuttons" to remove the buttons that cannot or cannot easily enough be activated by the user due to PUO or too short playback time.
     • A. Added PGC and DVD -> Delete All NOPs to remove all useless NOPs (and move the goto targets to NOPs to the next non-NOP line.)
10. Domain menu:
    • F. Delete Last PGC In Domain, when used on a PGC of a not-one_sequential Title often produced an error.
11. PGC menu:
    • E. Kill PGC Playback, on PGCs with menu buttons or BOVs: PgcEdit tries now to pre-select the best button (in the best cell) to propose a reasonable default button to the user.
    • E. When using Kill PGC Playback on a menu without VOB files, PgcEdit doesn't ask each time if the VOB file should be removed. Now, it checks if there are still references to the VOB in the IFO, and displays the dialogue only when that's the case.
    • E. Jump To PGC Upon DVD Insert: A new dialogue is shown when the target PGC is a menu so that the user can now select the longest Title for the resume point instead of the default resume Title. See point 12 of the online guide here.
12. Menu menu:
    • F. After having replaced a menu domain with New Menu, it was impossible to create a new cell in the new menu.
    • F. Change LU Language Code: It was impossible to define an "undefined" code.
    • F. Menu -> New Menu bug: the menu was not usable after having cancelled the function. It was necessary to reload the DVD to access the menu.
13. Title menu:
    • F. Fixed partially a problem with Import Title's Intro Clip, occurring when the title is visited (but not played) before the main menu.
14. Info menu:
    • E. When applied to a Title, Root, Audio, Subpic, Angle or Chapter menu PGC, Go To Calling Command now also shows the Title PGCs from which the user can call the entry menu PGC with the corresponding button of the remote.
    • E. Go To Calling Command has now an additional pink button to warn the user when there are jumps to nowhere in the DVD. The user can click the button to launch the Find Jumps To Nowhere GUI immediately.
    • E. Go To Calling Commands (and similar functions): When the user clicks on a reference in the list, the focus is now automatically set to the command.
    • F. Go To Calling Command crashed if the user clicked Refresh after having deleted the target PGC. Now, the GUI is simply closed.
    • F. Go To Calling Command bug: the "Return To Target" button did not work properly after having used the "Refresh" button. Thanks to M_Knox!
15. Bookmarks menu:
    • N. New Bookmarks menu. You can now assign a bookmark to any PGC, and quickly jump to that PGC. Thanks to M_KNOX for the idea and demo plugin.
      Note: the bookmarks are automatically saved and loaded with the DVD, and you can also export and import them.
16. Tools menu:
    • E. There is now a new Contextual Help plugin, maintained by M_Knox. It uses the F1 key, so the F1 key has been removed from the Tools menu. There is a dialogue when you start PgcEdit v9.3 for the first time, to explain that you may need to reorganize the Tools menu.
17. Scratchbook menu:
    • F. After having loaded a Scratchbook file in the scratchbook, the sub-menu of Append To Scratchbook (with the scratchbook sections) was not updated.
18. Options menu:
    • A. Added the Options -> Input/Output -> Set Default Provider ID submenu, to force a specific Provider ID by default.
    • F. Fixed a bug when the Highlight Gotos and Errors option was OFF.
19. General:
    • F. Compiled with a new version of FreeWrap 6.42.4, with several fixes by M_Knox. This version should fix the problems with foreign characters in the file and path names, and a bug under some Linux flavours.
      Unfortunately, that means also that PGCEDIT DOESN'T RUN UNDER WIN 95/98/ME ANY MORE!
    • F. Fixed most problems with foreign characters in the file or path names.
    • E. The message boxes now have a scrollbar when the text is too long to fit.
    • F. Fixed a bunch of typos and non-European spellings. Thanks to all betas!
    • E. The tiny cells created by PgcEdit have now a blank subpic pack. As a consequence, the size of the VOB cell is now 20KB instead of 10KB.
    • F. Yes/No/Cancel dialogues: the height of some dialogues was wrong, and a bug occurred when the option "use_internal_dialog" was manually set to "false" in PgcEdit.cfg. The icons have also been improved by M_Knox.
    • E. Added "No to all" and/or "Yes to all" in some dialogues that can be shown many times in some circumstances.
    • E. The torn off menus are now always on top of their parent windows, and they do not have a button in the Windows task bar any more.
    • E. Improved the method to detect if the cells of a menu PGC can be played.
    • E. Some cosmetic improvements (About menu, new bold or underlined text and clickable URLs in dialogues, ...) Thanks to M_Knox!
    • F. Workaround for a system bug when renaming the backups folders.

[r0lZ]

1. Linux specific:
   • F. Menu Editor, under Linux: Fixed the error (without consequence) happening when the user ticks or unticks the "All" checkbox.
   • F. Three bugs under Linux in the new function that displays the text in the standard Yes/No/Cancel dialogues and in the text viewer. Thanks M_Knox!
   • *. Unfortunately, due to an incompatibility in Wine with the new kernels, the preview doesn't work correctly any more under most Linux distributions. Let me know if you can find a workaround!

Updated plugins:

• PUO (Prohibited User Operations) plugin v2.0
  • Added "Edit VOB PUOs of current domain" and "Edit VOB PUOs of current PGC" with a GUI to selectively set or clear any VOB PUO of any cell of the current domain or PGC.
  • Removed Selectively Clear VOB PUOs, less powerful than the new functions.
  • The plugin menu has been reorganised.
• DVDShrink plugin v2.7
  • Minor change necessary for the new PgcEdit contextual help system.
• Womble plugin v1.2
  • Added Create Celltimes.txt from a Womble PAL Project file.

New plugins by M_Knox:

• Context Help plugin
  • Developed by M_Knox with the help of blutach and Wombler (for the help file), this plugin implements the new contextual help system in PgcEdit. Use the F1 key to get help for any function!
    IMO, this plugin is essential, especially for newbies. Thanks to everybody involved in that big project!
  • Note: If you're getting "Page not found" errors when using PgcEdit_Manual.chm, please ensure that you have the latest version of it, which can be obtained here, or delete the PgcEdit manual from your PgcEdit installation folder to force the plugin to use the online help.
    The Context Help plugin discussion thread and download link are here.
• Drag and Drop support plugin
  • Developed by M_Knox, this plugin implements the Drag and Drop support for PgcEdit. Just drop the icon of any DVD-Video file in the PgcEdit main window to open the DVD. You can also import a VTST by dropping its IFO file to the PGC list pane.
    The Drag and Drop support plugin discussion thread and download link are here.
• QuickTarget plugin
  • Yet another useful plugin developed by M_Knox. With this plugin, you can easily change the target of almost all Jump, Call, LinkPGCN or Goto command by simply Alt-clicking its target! You can even change the Prev/Next/GoUp PGCN links from the PGC Editor the same way, and convert any NOP to a jump! There is also a function to split combined Set+Link commands into two commands.
    The QuickTarget plugin discussion thread and download link are here.
• Options Dialog plugin
  • This plugin, written by M_Knox, adds a new "Show Options Dialog" entry in the Options menu. It allows you to change all PgcEdit options from an handy window with tabs, instead of having to use the options menu.
    The Options Dialog plugin discussion thread and download link are here.
• Command Parser plugin
  • This new plugin by M_Knox is still in development phase. It will be released as soon as possible.
    With that plugin, you will be able to type the command instead of having to use the menus and widgets of the Command Editor to insert or modify a command. You will be able to use the standard PgcEdit syntax, as well as a slightly simplified syntax.

[blutach]

Fantastic r0lZ. And huge thanks also to M_Knox for his innovative plugins.

Regards

[r0lZ]

... and to you and Wombler for your patient work on the manual, and to all beta testers for their wonderful job!

I would like to thank also all donors. Thanks to them, I am still motivated to continue to develop PgcEdit, although some additional donations are still welcome!

[goonix]

You are the greatest, r0lZ!
Many thanks to you and all the beta testers.

goonix

[Wombler]

Originally Posted by r0lZ

... and to you and Wombler for your patient work on the manual, and to all beta testers for their wonderful job!

I would like to thank also all donors. Thanks to them, I am still motivated to continue to develop PgcEdit, although some additional donations are still welcome!

Thanks r0lZ!

I had the easy bit though.

Great to see all this finally arrive as I know users will find the enhancements extremely useful.

The 'Remove Useless Stuff' function is a particularly powerful favourite of mine that I use on every disc.


Wombler

[neil wilkes]

Originally Posted by r0lZ

... and to you and Wombler for your patient work on the manual, and to all beta testers for their wonderful job!

I would like to thank also all donors. Thanks to them, I am still motivated to continue to develop PgcEdit, although some additional donations are still welcome!

You're more than welcome - I find PGCEdit absolutely invaluable in daily use and it solves a number of issues in both Scenarist SD & DVD-Lab Pro 2.
I just wish there was a DVD-Audio equivalent tool.

[kikatu]

Thanks: r0lZ, M_Knox, testers, and anybody else involved with PcgEdit evolvement.

[Hubbabub]

Thank you all for a super program

[dashali]

Very Very Thx for this great gift....

[r0lZ]

Thanks for the kind words, everybody!

I like also Remove Useless Stuff. Funny to see how simple some DVDs can become after having applied that function, and how unnecessarily complex some authoring programs are.

[naiden_99]

Thank you r0lZ for this little gem. I've used it quite a while and it's getting better with each new version. Thanks also to all the people involved with PgcEdit.

Could someone please explain what exactly does 'Remove Useless Stuff' do. I don't remember seeing that function before.

[r0lZ]

Remove Useless Stuff calls in sequence a lot of functions. All of those functions are available from the DVD, Domain or PGC menus, but Remove Useless Stuff launches them all, in a particular order. The goal is to simplify the DVD as much as possible, without breaking the navigation. It is not new, but it has been expanded with several new functions in v9.3.

Examples:
- Most authoring programs are based on templates, and they create usually several PGCs in each menu domains that are used only in some very specific cases. When PgcEdit detects that some of these PGCs are not useful, it removes them automatically.
- Remove Useless Stuff tries also to remove the "dead commands", which are the commands that can never be executed and are therefore useless. By freeing them, some PGCs can become uncalled, and PgcEdit can remove them as well. (The dead commands stuff is new in 9.3.)

You can turn any of the cleanup function off before launching the Remove Useless Stuff. So, if you don't like a feature of Remove Useless Stuff, you can skip it. Personally, I use that function usually immediately after having ripped the DVD, to remove most useless stuff, but I like to keep the NOPs, as they are sometimes used as GOTO targets, and keeping them can be useful when I modify the navigation manually. When I have finished my edits, I launch it again, and that time, I remove also the useless NOPs.

Anyway, try it! As far as I know, this function is safe to use, and it can help to understand the structure of the DVD. It can even sometimes regain some disc space, by removing uncalled PGCs or VTS.

[naiden_99]

It is not new, but it has been expanded with several new functions in v9.3.

Maybe I should look more carefully in the menu commands, is just that I'm used to work by clicking on the button bar.

Anyway I will try it and see for myself what it does.
Thanks for your explanation and examples.

[Wombler]

Originally Posted by naiden_99

Maybe I should look more carefully in the menu commands, is just that I'm used to work by clicking on the button bar.

Anyway I will try it and see for myself what it does.
Thanks for your explanation and examples.

r0lZ is kind of understating things there.

'Remove Useless Stuff' is a very powerful tool for cleaning up and simplifying the DVD structure.

It's very easy to use though as all the complicated stuff is dealt with by PgcEdit.

Check out the manual for further information as it explains in more detail as to exactly what this function does.

The CHM file version is included in the PgcEdit download and if you extract this to your PgcEdit folder it'll always be available via the 'Documentation' link in the 'Help Menu'.

HTH.


Wombler

[vwpassion]

Thanks r0lz for the update, its very much appreciated.

Found a small bug: When you right click a pgc and go to "Domain stream attributes" and click on delete behind Audio/SubPic Stream the Application error "wrong # args: should be "winfo toplevel win..." pops up. When i click on OK the error msg disappears tho and the function itself works fine.

[notec]

Originally Posted by r0lZ

You can turn any of the cleanup function off before launching the Remove Useless Stuff. So, if you don't like a feature of Remove Useless Stuff, you can skip it. Personally, I use that function usually immediately after having ripped the DVD, to remove most useless stuff, but I like to keep the NOPs, as they are sometimes used as GOTO targets, and keeping them can be useful when I modify the navigation manually. When I have finished my edits, I launch it again, and that time, I remove also the useless NOPs.

Nice tip didn't know that about the NOPs and GOTOs.

Do you run "Remove Useless Stuff" (Ctrl+Shift+R) the second time with all the options ticked or just with the the remove NOPs box ticked? Does it hurt to run as after opening the DVD with them all ticked? (I'm assuming no but thought I'd ask).

thx...

[r0lZ]

Thanks for the report. I've already noticed and fixed that bug. I'll release an update soon, but I want to improve some things and wait for other (possible) bug reports before.

BTW, the bug is not really important. It is caused by the dialogue that pops up to inform you that the stream is not removed from the VOB files. Since that dialogue is (normally) displayed only once per session, you can retry, and the bug will not happen any more. Anyway, don't worry, the bug causes nothing wrong in your IFOs. Just verify that the stream is really gone by closing and reopening the DSA window.

[Gothmog]

Bug report... ?

You may or may not be aware of this, and it took me awhile to notice, but "control + shift + V" (paste after) does not work in 9.3 or 9.2 and maybe others. It worked in versions before 9.0 that I'm aware of. It works from the menu, but not in the keyboard shortcut. it just pastes.

XP, sp2

BTW... I love this program!

[blutach]

Works OK for me.

Regards