Subject: Re: [Cellar] Menu System in Matroska Files

From: Steve Lhomme <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2016 09:19:56 +0100

2015-12-17 11:41 GMT+01:00 Nithin Mathew Kurien <[email-masked]>:
> Dear all,
>
> The Matroska specification includes a menu system which is currently
> in a draft state (http://matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html).
> Currently there are no open-source players supporting this feature.

Yes, VLC can handle Matroska files with DVD menus extracted using
DVDMenuXtractor:
https://github.com/Matroska-Org/dvdmenuxtractor

This was a project meant to demonstrate that Matroska menus are
possible. It was never finished though as not all DVD commands were
translated into Matroska menus. It was also done ~10 years ago and
support in VLC might be broken by now.

The idea was to be able to keep all the information contained in a DVD
ISO, but in a different format.

> But there is at least one proprietary format, namely PGMX, a variant
> of MKV, that includes a working menu. These files are created by a
> proprietary TMPGENC PGMX creator and played by a freeware TMPGENC PGMX
> player. A PGMX file also supports including multiple related titles
> inside a single file. Opening this file on open-source players will
> play it as a normal MKV file without menus. There are some samples
> given in their website
> (http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/download/tpxp.html).
>
> I think the menu feature would be a good idea to implement in Matroska
> files and humbly request for the same. I think this feature would be
> useful for content authors who would like to distribute their works
> freely under a Creative Commons license, for example, who would
> otherwise have to adopt proprietary formats like DVD and Blu-ray. I
> understand that implementing a menu system from scratch might involve
> some complexity. In that case, would it be possible to adopt some
> features from the open-source libdvdnav and libbluray?
>
> Thanks and regards,
> Nithin
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cellar mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/cellar

-- 
Steve Lhomme
Matroska association Chairman

---

From: Nithin Mathew Kurien <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 21:23:08 +0530

Hi,

I downloaded DvdMenuXtractor (rev1295) from
http://tirnanog.fate.jp/mirror/DvdMenuXtractor/ and tested it on a
DVD. The program completed execution and output .BAT files along with
the demuxed tracks. I use the latest versions of MKVToolNix (v.8.8.0)
and VLC Player (v.2.2.1). When I ran the .BAT files which invoked
MKVToolNix, most of them aborted execution midway with error. A few of
them completed, but when I opened the resulting MKV files in VLC, it
showed the error "VLC can't recognize the input's format:
The format cannot be detected." It seems that DVDMenuXtractor is not
working correctly. Is there any way to fix this? Are there some
example MKV files with menus which I can test in VLC?

Thanks and regards,
Nithin