[MPlayer-users] navigating dvd menus

[alex at roalter.it]

> Am 31.01.2010, 21:47 Uhr, schrieb Reimar Döffinger
> <Reimar.Doeffinger at gmx.de>:
>
>> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 07:36:44AM -0800, Yan Seiner wrote:
>>> I'm trying to find a way to identify the title that gets played when
>>> the user selects the "main feature" or "play feature" using a CLI
>>> script.
>>
>> Well, assuming you have a user (or alternatively a trained monkey) at
>> hand,
>> mplayer dvdnav:// will print which track it starts to play when you
>> select
>> the main feature.
>> However for all I know there is no information on the DVD that would
>> allow
>> you to get that information without at least knowing where the "main
>> feature"
>> selection is located in the DVD menu.
>
> While this method worked for me a few times, there are DVDs that would not
> play, I remember german rental version of "The Dark Knight" (batman)
>
> The movie can be started via dvdnav:// , but it plays some scenes in a
> mixed-up order.
>
> Greets,
> Kiste

I'm not sure about the Dark Knight (German Retail Version), but playing
with dvdnav did do the trick and play it in the correct order, but with
newer DVDs from Paramount (Star Trek XI and Transformers 2 come to mind)
there are 99 Titles on the disc, and most of them start with the Feature,
but then jump around, e.g. after Chapter 2 follows chapter 13 etc. Here
only using dvdnav:// and watching the console output gives a clue about
which track should be used. (alternatively, one could also use -identify
and look for the track with the correct length in seconds - if known).

One problem still persists: if played without -nocache, the chapter breaks
which would require jumps to different places do not work correctly (jumps
some seconds or up to half a minute into the chapter), and with -nocache I
get still a clicking noise at the transition, and an a52 decoding error on
the console. Here I'm still looking for a solution to this problem, and if
this has to do something with seamless branching and how it is working
with dvdnav:// instead of dvd://