Subject: [Cellar] Matroska Menu Specifications

From: Dave Rice <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2016 15:52:28 -0400

Hi all,
There is a draft document at https://matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html which has been incorporated into our Matroska working repository at https://github.com/Matroska-Org/matroska-specification/blob/gh-pages/menu.md.

The document appears more like a wishlist than a specification. Is there any further information available on Menu features of Matroska? Should the document be removed for now? Do Matroska menus exist?
Dave

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From: hubblec4 <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2016 23:54:57 +0200

Hi Dave and all others

I like the idea that Matroska support in the future a menu. The DVD-menu 
is supported in an early version of VLC-Player (Steve told me the number 
on the Matroska meeting, but I can't me remember).

> There is a draft document at https://matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html which has been incorporated into our Matroska working repository at https://github.com/Matroska-Org/matroska-specificatio…

I have read this page many times because it is the only one which 
contains information about the Matroska menu.
I quickly realized that the information was not enough to create a 
Matroska menu.

> The document appears more like a wishlist than a specification. Is there any further information available on Menu features of Matroska? Should the document be removed for now? Do Matroska menus ex…

Of course this page looks like a wishlist. But there are two important 
Informations what is required to play
a Matroska file which have a menu-structure inside.
1. Chapter Codec
2. Player has a feature "Control Track"

More menu information you found here. 
<http://www.matroska.org/technical/specs/chapters/index.html#dvd>
With this infos I was able to figure out how DVDMenuXtractor works, 
which helps to understand the menu structure.
The native Matroska menu is theoretically always used. The default value 
is set(ChapProcessCodecID = 0).
This two pages could be combined to a new Matroska menu page. I missed 
some information, but this page <http://mod16.org/hurfdurf/?p=8>
helps me at most.

Matroska already has a small menu on board. LAV,Haali and VLC(maybe 
other players too) supports this.
A simple edition selection. But with ordered editions/chapters it is not 
so simple anymore.
And if the ordered chapters are additionally combined with nested chapters.

But the top thing is to combine all this with ChapterSegementLinking, 
than you already have a bit of the feeling of a menu.
All my preservations get from now on such a short mainmenu.mkv file. 
That let me control the content of all files within the player.

The Matroska menu will be ever limited by the splitters/players, so I 
think there is not much interesting to improve it. But I hope.

In my limited leisure I rewrite my chapterEditor that it will be easier 
to generate such menu.mkv files.
If I had more time, I'd like to do more for Matroska menu.

Best regard
Martin

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From: Steve Lhomme <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2016 16:22:14 +0200

Files exist, playback exists. But it's mostly proof of concept things.

It's the kind of thing that will definitely benefit from proper
documentation. But for now we may strip the elements that are specific
to menus so it can be specified properly without blocking things
people actually use. There are also 2 possible chapter codecs in use
the Matroska one and the DVD one. The Matroska is simple enough and
supported in a few players so we may keep that one and/or work on that
in priority.

2016-10-10 21:52 GMT+02:00 Dave Rice <[email-masked]>:
> _______________________________________________
> Cellar mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/cellar

-- 
Steve Lhomme
Matroska association Chairman

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From: hubblec4 <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2016 21:01:59 +0200

Hi all,

> supported in a few players so we may keep that one and/or work on that

To understand the DVD menu system, I got a lot of headache, cause its so 
complex. But the Matroska menu is simple and it has at the moment only 
one command(GoToAndPlay-ChapterUID).
We could add more commands which we need to create a simple but powerful 
Matroska menu.
Menu features like:
Track selection (which is supported by HAALI via Tags(TRACKSETEX))
Vob Buttons -> Matroska Buttons to controll the Matroska content in the 
player screen
should be included.

Maybe I have a little bit time than I could write an overview about the 
Matroska menu.
- Infos about what is possible in theory and what in practice
- Needed things to play a Matroska menu
- Controlling
- Using
- Samples
- and more

In what for a format should I write this Infos?

Best regards
Martin

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From: Steve Lhomme <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2016 10:11:32 +0100

2016-10-16 21:01 GMT+02:00 hubblec4 <[email-masked]>:
> complex. But the Matroska menu is simple and it has at the moment only one
> command(GoToAndPlay-ChapterUID).

Right now any format that fits your needs. We can formalize later if
it's usable.

>>> There is a draft document at
>>> https://matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html which has been incorporated
>>> into our Matroska working repository at
>>> https://github.com/Matroska-Org/matroska-specification/blob/gh-pages/menu.md.
>>>
>>> The document appears more like a wishlist than a specification. Is there
>>> any further information available on Menu features of Matroska? Should the
>>> document be removed for now? Do Matroska menus exist?
>>> Dave