Visual commentary - what is this?

[Perenista]

I have this DVD:

http://dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=422

And as you can tell from these images:

https://imgur.com/a/ec9i4VA

It has an extra feature called VISUAL COMMENTARY. I used AnyDVD-HD to create an ISO, with the option "Rip to Image".

Then I used MAKEMKV to convert everything into Matroska.

Also used PowerDVD to access the DVD from this decrypted ISO, mounted.

The problem is that no matter where I go (Matroska or PowerDVD) I can only see the following:

- The "visual commentary" is an audio commentary featuring these two people. Besides that it is a subtitle (which I checked using SUBTITLE EDIT) with over 2 hours saying the same thing:

>>>>>>>>
In order to properly view the video commentary you must set your DVD player to 4x3 display mode. Consult your DVD player manual for specific instructions.
>>>>>>>>

So what is this extra feature? Because I can only see this audio commentary and this subtitle saying the above.

I am now assuming this extra feature can't be viewed using any known player (like PowerDVD) or converted into Matroska by any software. So the only way of seeing is using a regular DVD player?



Meaning there's no way to access this using a PC?

This is the first time I am seeing this problem. I thought everything, no matter what, was accessible using a PC and specific software, so we could (if we wanted) ditch a regular TV and DVD/BD/4K player.

This visual commentary suggests otherwise.

[Emulgator]

I would guess on a well-meant AR check triggered by your player's preference settings, hiding the content from you.
You may want to inspect/play/block that particular PGC using PGCEdit.

The only DVD version of MIB I have is MIB 2 on 2x DVD-9, so different.

For MIB 1 I can only speak about BD and UHD-BDs of that movie.
The MIB 1 BD has that Sonnenfeld/LeeJones "commenting silhouettes" feature,
consisting of the main feature as video background, the commentary audio track and an animated 3 colour
(black body, mid-grey for mid-antialiasing and bright grey for contour) subpicture overlay
simulating the 2 men's silhouettes while screening, sometimes pointing at coarse drawings.

No idea how this might have looked on DVD, given the lower bits per SPU.
Coming from BD: For the MIB 1 UHD-BD this feature is gone,
arrived has a sub-spectacular, almost dead-graded-look, sometimes more realistic, but well...

[Ghitulescu]

Your image series stopped exactly where this "visual commentary" would have started.

Unless someone has the exact DVD, your chances to get a real answer are very slim, for nobody knows what hids behind some words.

[Perenista]

Originally Posted by Ghitulescu

Your image series stopped exactly where this "visual commentary" would have started.

Unless someone has the exact DVD, your chances to get a real answer are very slim, for nobody knows what hids behind some words.

I found a review saying how this thing works:

http://www.remotecentral.com/dvd/meninblack.htm

***********
Columbia Tristar released no less than three versions of Men In Black: a "Collectors Edition" in both Dolby Digital and DTS versions, plus a "Limited Edition" two-disc set in Dolby Digital only. I reviewed the "LE", which includes the same movie transfer as the "CE" but along with a few extras. The first major feature is a visual commentary track with director Barry Sonnenfeld and star Tommy Lee Jones. This is similar to the visual track on Ghostbusters, where you see small outlined silhouettes at the bottom of the screen who move and gesture throughout the film.

I’ve noticed a marked improvement in silhouette quality over Ghostbusters, and they now have the capability to doodle on your screen, pointing out items of interest and writing silly notes (the box tactfully describes this as "diagrams").

Unfortunately you must still manually step your player down from anamorphic to 4:3 mode to use this feature, something that I feel should really be changed. The commentary is quite interesting, although Mr. Jones sounds as though he had a bit of a cold. Special to the Limited Edition is an additional technical audio commentary track with Barry Sonnenfeld, Rick Baker, and the Industrial Light & Magic team.
***********

The problem with this disc is that when you use PowerDVD (and this is the ORIGINAL DVD, not some AnyDVD or MAKEMKV rip or converted ISO to my hard drive) and hits OK to start watching the visual commentary thing, then it's only selecting the audio commentary and displaying for the next 2 hours that warning we need to change the AR to 4:3.

But there's no way we can do that using any known player, and even if I do here with Media Player Classic (which actually has a setting to change the aspect ratio) this doesn't change one bit from the Matroska file.

It looks like to me the visual commentary can't be converted to Matroska and it's totally restricted to the VOB itself, so in other words this is one of those extra features, like pictures, text pages, menus, certain storyboards, etc. that can never be converted to a video.

The issue here is that we can't see them, at least I can't using my PC. It could mean the disc itself was not authored beyond that, so it's a problem with my local distributor which failed to include these "silhouettes", and only that subtitle and commentary tracks, or it could be this will only work in a regular DVD player.

Originally Posted by Emulgator

I would guess on a well-meant AR check triggered by your player's preference settings, hiding the content from you.
You may want to inspect/play/block that particular PGC using PGCEdit.

There's no setting in PowerDVD or any other player that informs anything you can think of we are using 16:9 or 4:3. At least I never heard of this.

As for the rest about PGC or PGCEdit, please clarify what you mean by that. Are you implying the subtitle that says the 4:3 thing also has the visual commentary inside it? Or that I should use another tool to extract it? The program Subtitle Edit read that subtitle and it's indeed only text and for 2 hours giving me that warning about the need to change to 4:3.

My goal is to ditch the DVD and only use the rip (MKV). So if this visual commentary is restricted to the disc that would be bad, because I want to watch everything in my PC, using MPC-BE.

[Emulgator]

After inspection:
The MIB 1 LE DVD Visual Commentary is indeed muxed into VOBs as subpics.
DVDSubEdit finds 98180 SPUs in total, the highest number I have seen so far.

Subpic Stream 7 (en) has 2 track mappings:

Track 0x27 (en) WS has 2392 SPUs showing the nag screen "In order to properly view you must set DVD player to 4x3..."
and this is just to keep the silhouettes from being stretched horizontally.

Track 0x28 (en) LB has 88002 SPUs showing what you want: the silhouettes.
You may remap subpic track 8 to Stream 7 wide and letterbox using PGCEdit.
Took like 15 seconds: Open PGCEdit -> load DVD (well,from SSD) -> Open VTS -> Properties SP Track 7 -> set Wide slider from 7 to 8 -> OK -> Save changes to .ifo. -> Close PGCEdit.
MPC-HC and MPC-BE show moving silhouettes now. MPC-BE with closed captions.

Nicely animated, I guess taken from real shot, reduced and only sometimes on 2's.
88002 SPUs on 1's would be good for 3760s, the movie runs 5872s.
Nice example what can be achieved with DVD subpic specs if understood and and implemented completely.
Have seen nicely animated colour wipes across text, but this is stunning too.
Well, silhouettes appear horizontally stretched now but I leave it up to you to export, transform and remux these.

[mp3dom]

Originally Posted by Perenista

But there's no way we can do that using any known player, and even if I do here with Media Player Classic (which actually has a setting to change the aspect ratio) this doesn't change one bit from the Matroska file.


There's no setting in PowerDVD or any other player that informs anything you can think of we are using 16:9 or 4:3. At least I never heard of this.

Only software dvd player I know so far who actually let you set how to see a dvd disc (being 4:3 or 16:9) and load the proper subpictures is Sonic CinePlayer 3. Great piece of software player... unfortunately it's old and worked only up to WinXP due to the different rendering engines between XP and 7/10. It was totally reliable and 100% in specs. Too bad they stopped development.

[Perenista]

I found this time a Blu-ray with a similar issue, probably the same.

It's from this 2021 edition:

http://dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=31805

- Text Commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda (Director’s Cut only)

https://i.postimg.cc/sgkxNQ4z/RES1.jpg

Again it can't be converted to MKV. Would you say the solution it's the same?

[Emulgator]

As before: Guesswork is possible, but stays guesswork.
You may BDedit your way through, but you might prefer to give a link.

[Perenista]

I am having a hard time with this extra again. And this time for Risky Business (1983) in 1080p.

This one has a
Video commentary with director Paul Brickman, producer Jon Avnet, and actor Tom Cruise

And so far I was only able to open with DVDFab Player, not PowerDVD (old computer, so not optimal for this, when I replace my current hardware I'll probably be able to use the latter).

Even if I use this player I am only getting an icon top left of the screen.

Using MAKEMKV I don't get anything of this extra feature.

What am I supposed to do with BDEdit?

[rik1138]

Blu-ray.com says that the Video Commentary is a 'Bonus View', meaning it's picture-in-picture. There is probably a 480p video stream muxed in with the feature, that's the Video Commentary. On a Blu-ray player, it would appear as a small video overlaying the feature either throughout the movie, or just at key points.

What does the icon look like? A square frame maybe? You can use a graphic layer to make a nice border around the picture-in-picture video, that might be what you are seeing.

You will probably need newer (or different) software to view it on a computer. PowerDVD should do it, not sure what else...
I'm not sure if there's any remuxing/MKV maker that can probably handle making a 'burn-in' of a picture-in-picture track... Especially if it uses 'super black' or other color key-framing to make parts of the image transparent (like Ned's Trivia on Groundhog Day I think), or to make it disappear completely for periods of time.

When I had to rip things like that to upload as Extras in iTunes Extras, the only way we could get them was just to video-capture the playback of the entire movie from the blu-ray...

As for the MIB DVD issue, for each subtitle stream on a DVD you can have a 16x9 subtitle, and a 4x3 subtitle. Usually it's the same stream just flagged as both, but you can make one completely different from the other. Apparently the 'video commentary' subtitle stream they created for that disc was only made in 4x3, and the 16x9 subtitle is just the one that says you have to watch in 4x3 mode to see it. Kind of a lame way to make a disc, but it probably saved money somewhere, (or someone didn't know they needed to make two versions of it, and the last-minute 'fix' was just to tell you that you have to watch it in 4x3...)