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Menus Not Working in Stand alone Blu Ray Players

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Robbie
2013-02-24
2014-07-17
  • Robbie

    Robbie - 2013-02-24

    Hi, DVDStyler looks like an excellent tool for what I need but I've hit a problem with menus in my blu ray players. I've seen a couple of posts with similar problems but haven't been able to find a solution yet. Essentially, DVDs created with DVDStyler 2.4.1 work 100% fine when disks are used in a PC but navigation is completely inoperative on both standalone of my Standalone Blu Ray Players. ANy advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

    Today's workflow -

    I downloaded and installed DVDStyler 2.4.1 form Sourceforge today (Sunday 24 Feb), and created a dvd with three separate 10 minute m2p files created in Edius and encoded with the Procoder for Edius encoder.

    Default settings for a PAL, 4:3 and AC3 Sound project were retained with the exception that I changed the video bit rate from auto to 8Mbps.

    I chose one of the basic templates with Play All and Select Titles buttons on Menu 1 and four button frames, Left and Right Arrows and Home icons on Menu 2. I deleted Buttons 4 (Frame), 5 (Left Arrow) and 6 (Right Arrow), checked that the Navigation Action Settings were ok, and linked jpg images to each of the three clip buttons. There are no audio tracks on the menus and the pause setting is -1.

    The project was then compiled to an ISO file and burned from Nero Essentials

    Playing the burned disk on the pc, the dvd opens to Menu 1 with Play All highlighted. Navigation in and between each of the menus works as expected and the movies play fine from their respective buttons. No obvious issues.

    Playing the disk in a Yamaha BD-S673 blu ray player or a Toshiba BDX1200 blu ray player the disk loads to Menu1 with Play All highlighted. it is not possible to play the movies from the Play All button nor is it possible to navigate to either the Select Titles Button or to Menu 2.

    Cheers, Robbie

     
  • Ralf Zwanziger

    Ralf Zwanziger - 2013-02-24

    Hi Robbie,
    I have the same problem. The main menu is displayed, which shows two entries "Alle abspielen" or "Titel auswählen" (which, in English, should be "Play all tracks" and "Choose track"). The selector marks the first entry and cannot be moved to the second one; pressing ENTER to play all tracks has no effect.
    On the computer, it works fine with VLC Media Player and with the built-in media player from windows 7. Standalone player does not work, of course "normal" DVDs work fine. I have a Pioneer BD 150.

    Is this a problem with the player?

    Regards,
    Ralf

     
  • Robbie

    Robbie - 2013-02-24

    Hi Ralf
    Yep - exactly the same.

    I just downloaded a trial for one of the commercial programs and replicated the same dvd with the same menu structure and it works perfectly in both the Toshiba and Yamaha players. So it has to be something to do with the DVDStyler compilation or the way I'm using it.

    I don't mind paying for the commercial package if I have to but I'd much prefer to work with the elegant simplicity of DVDStyler.

    Cheers, RObbie

     
  • JMJ

    JMJ - 2013-02-24

    I have no idea if this will make a difference but you may try opening the *.ifo files with PgcEdit accept the changes it propose.

    Cheers

     
  • Robbie

    Robbie - 2013-02-26

    JmJ - Thanks for the suggestion.

    PCGedit reported one issue for which I accepted the change but it hasn't fixed the problem with the menus in the standalone blu ray players.

    In case its of any interest to anyone, the PGCedit issue and correction was:

    "There is no subpic stream defined for the Menu domain in the VMGM_MAT table of VMGM.
    However, as there are non-dummy PGCs in the domain, one subpic must be defined in VMGM_MAT.

    Fix the number of subpic streams in VMGM_MAT to 1?"

    I'll experiment some more this coming weekend.

    cheers, RObbie

     
  • NtAlex

    NtAlex - 2013-02-27

    Hi Robbie,

    try to set "menu frame count" to 100 in settings/core.
    If it doesn't help, try to set attached audio file in menu properties.

    Cheers,
    Alex

     
  • Robbie

    Robbie - 2013-02-27

    Hi Alex
    Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. I have a lot of commitments this week but will invest some time this weekend and report back.
    cheers, Robbie

     

    Last edit: Robbie 2013-02-27
  • Robbie

    Robbie - 2013-03-02

    OK, I've run a few tests from the same assets.

    Firstly, adding the audio file made no difference whether it was the only variable or in combination with other setting changes.

    Changing the Frame Count of Menu dis however have an effect. The default setting when I loaded 2.4.1 was 12 and I had what appeared to be an inactive menu on standalone players. Increasing the settling to 100 resulted in the menu being active (ie able to navigated in and between the menus) for a short period - 4 seconds. Increasing this setting had a corresponding increase in the time the menu remained active before "freezing". The active period is of course determined by the number of frames specified and the video format. So setting frame count to 9,000 resulted in 6 minutes of active menu for my PAL project - presumably an NTSC project would be active for 5 minutes.

    The trade of for increasing the number of frames and length of the active menu is of course a larger .ifo file but the difference isn't huge - at 1,000 frames (40 seconds) the .ifo for my project was 10mb, increasing to 90mb for 9,000 frames (6 minutes).

    Is there any way to seet the menus to loop so that they don't have a finite active period?

    cheers, Robbie
    .

     
  • NtAlex

    NtAlex - 2013-03-10

    yes, you need to set pause to 0 and select "loop"

     
  • steve

    steve - 2013-12-31

    I feel this can still be an issue (I encountered running 2.6.1) and just wanted to share my way around it (which is just a summary of what I've learned from you guys on here).

    My problem was with a Philips blu-Ray. Default menu frame count was 12, pause set to -1. Menu buttons didn't work at all. Lengthening the menu frame count to 100 allowed the menu to operate for ~3 seconds then freeze.

    If setting pause to zero, then selecting loop, menu would "freeze" but instead of staying frozen would reset...works but annoying when happening every 3 seconds.

    One option, that Robbie suggested, would be to increase the frame count to say the 1000s to have it loop every few minutes, but then the original problem of some players not liking more than 12 frames is still an issue.

    I kept the frame count at 12, but added 5 minutes of audio silence to each menu. Finished result was menu that resets every 5 minutes but still has the 12 frame rate that seems to be some sort of standard. I felt this was a viable option when considering cross platform compatibility...although I'm sure there is some DVD player out there waiting to prove me wrong.

    Hope this helps someone, and thanks for all the help guys!

     
  • NtAlex

    NtAlex - 2014-01-06

    If you add an audio file to menu, then DVDStyler ignores the frame count setting.
    But in this case DVDStyler uses mplex tool to multiplex audio with video.
    DVDStyler 2.7 beta 2 generates video and audio streams separately and multiplex them using mplex. This must fix the problem on some of standalone DVD players without adding silence audio to menu. Please test: http://dvdstyler.org/en/downloads

     
    • ecodrv

      ecodrv - 2014-07-17

      Could you tell me ?

      To generate video and audio streams separately and multiplex them using mplex, do we need to tick "Use mplex for menus" ?
      Does DVDStyler recommend that we tick "Use mplex for menus" in general (because default is ticking) ?

       

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