Playlists in DVDA3 not working as I hoped...

Yenne wrote on 5/7/2005, 10:23 AM
I'm curious whether anyone else out there has found some magic I've missed.

I've put together a video compilation disc, with a playlist to play them all sequentially. On some DVD players (like my Toshiba TiVo) it'll execute the video's end action instead of chaining to the next video in the play list. On other players (like my computer's DVD software) it works fine.

Also on the Toshiba I cannot use the chapter-forward button to move to the next video. Perhaps this is the same problem.

I haven't tried doing it the old way, making multiple copies of the video where one is menu-based and the other has their end-actions chained together. I'd love for playlists to function and am just wondering if I'm missing something obvious.

cheers,
-britt

Comments

cbrillow wrote on 5/7/2005, 3:23 PM
Ouch.

I've made my first playlist test, and the results are as follows:

1) The playlist selections flow correctly from one to another in the DVDA-3 disc preview

2) The playlist also functions correctly in 2 DVD burners, using Power DVD software and in one CD/DVD combo drive using Power DVD.

3) In an Oritron standalone DVD player, the playlist functions correctly

4) In a GO Video VCR/DVD player, the program returns to the the main menu (which consists solely of the playlist) at the end of 1st playlist selection. At the end of the 2nd selection, it loops back to the beginning of the same clip.

My intent was to have nothing but playlists in the menu, rather than a conventional menu structure. If a major feature doesn't work the same way on all DVD players, then it's of no use to me and I must author for the lowest common denominator. Maybe playlists aren't part of the DVD spec -- I don't know and will try to find out. But this is a disappointment.
Yenne wrote on 5/7/2005, 5:41 PM
Just FYI -- I redid my project the old way without playlists, where I duplicate each video into a separate chain that is linked together with end actions. This solves the problem on the Toshiba, and still works on the PC.

I don't know enough about the DVD spec to argue authoritatively, but perhaps playlists in DVDA3 could support a backward-compatible mode that basically simulates this workaround.

-britt
cbrillow wrote on 5/9/2005, 3:51 AM
Well, there's an update to my situation, too. I added a 2nd playlist to my project and re-burned it. It did the smart-prepare thing, and the 2nd menu failed to show up in the subsequent burn. But now, the 1st playlist worked correctly on the player on which it failed the first time around.

Clearly, I need to do some more experimenting before drawing any sort of conclusions...

Edit: The original burn, on which the playlist did not function correctly in one of my DVD players, has started to work. I know -- you think I'm crazy. It did not work the first 3 times I tried it. Now it does.

To put it another way, all of the playlist tests I've tried have eventually proven to be successful on all the drives/players in which they've been tried.
ScottW wrote on 5/9/2005, 7:01 AM
So you know, playlists aren't a part of the spec per say. What the spec does is give you some limited programming ability, so playlists get constructed something like:

Playlist:
gprm5 += 1
if gprm5 == 1 play movie_1
if gprm5 == 2 play movie_2
..etc..

Then at the end of movie_1 or movie_2 you'll have something like:
if gprm5 != 0 goto playlist
<do other actions if not executing a playlist>

As there are multiple places/ways for DVDA to insert the commands associated with a playlist, it's certainly possible that they may have picked a method which isn't universally compatable with all DVD players.

--Scott