PGCs too short?

[VRYK]

In PgcEdit, pressing “Go to calling command” in a Root Menu which has 3 menu buttons gives the following message: “NOT callable with remote control. RootMenu button due to PUOs or the PGCs are too short to have a chance to press a button.”
No PUOs are set. The video in question is indeed a small very “basic” one. Is there a solution to this problem?

[r0lZ]

I guess the Cell Still Time is not set. Normally, with a still menu, there is only a single frame, but the menu waits for a certain time or indefinitely for the user to press a button. That delay is set via the cell still time in the PGC cell's table. Set it to 255 for an infinite delay, or to any number of seconds between 1 and 254. When the timer is over, the nav will continue normally with the post (or cell) commands.

Note that the menu buttons must have been programmed for a still menu. If it's not the case, the highlights may disappear when the playback of the cell ends, after less than 1 second!

Note also that some protections use fake menus that are NOT intended to be usable! They are just there to confuse the rippers. You should NOT change the cell still time of such fake menus. (Usually, they contain a lot of buttons, but the video is pure black.)

[r0lZ]

Hum, I have read your post again, and I think I have misunderstood the problem.

The message tells probably that the Titles are too short to call the menu. It's not the menu that is too short. That means that there is probably only a very short title (or a blanked title) in the VTS. Therefore, when that title is played, it stops almost immediately, and continue with the post commands. The menu is therefore not (easily) callable. Maybe the title has been blanked. Right?

Anyway, there is no way to fix that, but it's not an issue. Probably, the post commands of the title return to the menu or go to another movie immediately, and you don't need to call the menu manually anyway. If the menu is not called by any command, you can probably blank or even delete it.

[VRYK]

Many thanks for your reply.

I had thought of the Cell Still Time issue and checked that was set to 255.

What precisely is meant by a Title’s being “too short” – how is the length measured?

The menu concerned has three buttons – two for turning subtitles ON or OFF, plus one for Return (to the Main Menu).
The two subtitle buttons have button commands that set gprm values then LinkTopCell, button 1 [e.g. 71 01 00 03 00 40 04 01]. Initially I set the Return button command as (JumpSS) Jump to VMGM PGC 3 [30 06 00 03 00 C0 00 00]. However, this didn’t work; I had to move this command to the post-commands and change the button command to LinkTailPGC. I wonder if there is a rule about such navigation issues?

I would have preferred to have “twin” menus for switching subtitles ON or OFF – i.e. one where the ON button is highlighted by default and OFF appears in dimmed text without a button and the other with OFF highlighted. However, since it doesn’t seem possible to clone a menu in the same VTS, can a new VTS be created? Or is there some other solution ? On further reflection, would importing menus from an external video’s VTS containing two menus be a possibility (even though requiring a certain amount of re-programming)?.

[r0lZ]

IIRC, PgcEdit considers a title or menu as being too short if its duration is less than 1 second. That means that only still frames without cell still time are considered too short. What is the duration of the movie in the same VTS than the menu?

IMO, doing a menu with two stills to show the state of a toggle (such as subtitles on/off) cannot be spread over several VTSs. It will take too long to switch the image, as the nav will have to switch to the VMGM then to the VTS to finally read the still image. That can take up to 5 seconds.
But you can easily use a menu with 2 subtitles buttons: one for ON and one for OFF. Then, when the user goes to the menu, you can automatically highlight the button corresponding to the current state. It's just some pre-commands to add. (You can even "dim" the other button by using a non-fully transparent black colour scheme 0, but that requires some skills. I have never tried to do that myself, but commercial examples exist.)

If you really want to add a new "page" to an existing menu, you can add a new dummy PGC, then create a new blank cell in that PGC, replace it with any still background with VobBlanker, and create the menus buttons with DVDSubEdit and PgcEdit. It's long and difficult, but it's theoretically possible.

But I don't understand why you need a subtitle selection menu if the movie duration is really less than 1 second! Do you use that menu to switch the subtitles of a movie in another VTS?

[VRYK]

Many thanks for your reply. I should explain that the main movie is in VTST1 while the menu in question is in VTST2. The latter has two titles both of which last less than 1 second and serve no useful purpose. Accordingly, after re-programming I ran Delete uncalled PGCs which eliminated one title and left one uncalled title (presumably by definition a VTS must have at least one title). I was curious to understand the cited error message for future reference.

>You can even "dim" the other button by using a non-fully transparent black colour scheme 0<
My first impression is that this would require programming the colour scheme – I shall keep an eye open in future for this. In the meantime, I followed your suggestion by adding a dummy PGC.

The point I raised about having to put a Jump to VMGM PGC [30 06 00 03 00 C0 00 00] command in the post-commands rather than as a button command still intrigues me, since I suppose there is some navigation rule requiring this.

Can a CLUT colour tile be changed in PgcEdit or DVDSubEdit by reference to its RGB components as defined in a Colour Picker?

[r0lZ]

OK, so your menu in VTS 2 cannot be called with the remote when the title is playing, hence the message. Of course, I suppose that it is called from VTS1 by a command.

I don't understand your question about the Jump to VMGM PGC. You CAN put it in a button.

You can change the colours of schemes 1 to 3 in RGB with PgcEdit, in the PGC editor. Click on any color box. Scheme 0 (the default scheme, used for the subtitles and the area outside the currently selected button) is defined in the subtitle stream, and therefore you must use DVDSubEdit to edit it. But usually, in the menus, it is fully transparent. (You have to edit it if you want to dim the non-active buttons, but it's a trick, rarely used.)

[VRYK]

Thanks for your clarifications.

>. You CAN put it in a button.<
I’ve put the command back on the button and it’s working fine. Don’t know what went wrong before.

>You can change the colours of schemes 1 to 3 in RGB with PgcEdit, in the PGC editor. Click on any color box<.
I’m missing something here. If I click on a colour box to redefine its colour, nothing happens.

In VTS1 which contains 1 title and a Root Menu with 2 buttons, I created a new dummy PGC and a cell therein to accommodate a Chapter menu. When the time paths were rebuilding a window appeared:
“Some durations have been fixed in VTS_TMAPTI of VTS 1:
VTS 1, PGC 2, cell 1: 00:00:00.12 -> 00:00:00.15
VTS 1, PGC 2 playback time: 00:00:00.12 -> 00:00:00.15”
A choice is proposed between “Match case” and “Regular expression” and a text file is created.
I am at a loss here and would be grateful for help on understanding this.

[r0lZ]

>You can change the colours of schemes 1 to 3 in RGB with PgcEdit, in the PGC editor. Click on any color box<.
I’m missing something here. If I click on a colour box to redefine its colour, nothing happens.

You should see the standard color chooser dialog of Windows. What OS are you using?

Are you sure you clicked on the colour box in the PGC Editor? It's NOT in the menu editor -> colour scheme editor. You have to open the editor by double-clicking the PGC in the main PgcEdit window.

In VTS1 which contains 1 title and a Root Menu with 2 buttons, I created a new dummy PGC and a cell therein to accommodate a Chapter menu. When the time paths were rebuilding a window appeared:
“Some durations have been fixed in VTS_TMAPTI of VTS 1:
VTS 1, PGC 2, cell 1: 00:00:00.12 -> 00:00:00.15
VTS 1, PGC 2 playback time: 00:00:00.12 -> 00:00:00.15”
A choice is proposed between “Match case” and “Regular expression” and a text file is created.
I am at a loss here and would be grateful for help on understanding this.

It's only a log. It tells you that the total playback time of the PGC has been fixed. Nothing to worry about.

(In that log window, since a log can be very long in some cases, there are options to search the text. "Match case" and "reg expr" are the options for the search operation. Of course, in case of a short text, you don't need them, since you don't need to search anything.)

[VRYK]

>Are you sure you clicked on the colour box in the PGC Editor? It's NOT in the menu editor<.
Mea culpa. I was in the Menu Editor.
I needed to change a menu’s subpic (highlight) colour. Accordingly, I changed a colour box in the PgcEdit PGC Editor to the required highlight colour. In DVDSubEdit the new colour showed up in the colour picker, but I was unable to change e.g. the e1 tile to the highlight colour. Nevertheless, DVDSubEdit recognised the highlight OK – presumably it scans all 16 tiles.

In VobBlanker the dummy PGC created to insert a Chapter menu (which produced the log file) appears separately in the “PGCs in Selected TitleSet” window as 02 after the 01 Entry video. Hence the command buttons created are BOVs rather than contained in a menu. Since I followed the same procedure as for creating the subtitles menus (and which appear in the “Menu PGCs” window), I wonder what could have produced this different treatment.

Incidentally, I read in a guide that every VTS should have a RootMenu. I don’t see why this should be and wonder if it is true.

[r0lZ]

I don't remember how to change a color in DVDSubEdit. Usually, I do that in PgcEdit.

To create a new menu PGC, you have to select an existing menu PGC, and then create the new PGC. If a title PGC was selected, you have created a new title PGC. Anyway, you can also author your menu as BOVs in a title. It might even be easier to call it from the VMGM.

No, technically, a Root menu is not mandatory. But it is a good practice to define one for each VTS (at least if the VTS has playable content), as otherwise the user may be confused by the impossibility to return to the menu.

[VRYK]

Many thanks for the info.

I had less luck with the DVDSubEdit colours with another video where I added a menu PGC. I applied the colour scheme from another menu to the new menu. However in DVDSubEdit, rather than red and white for the background and highlight colours respectively; all four tiles were white. I edited the white subpic bitmap with the red/white colours, but I haven’t found the highlights (since they are in the form of underlining, it may be a problem of positioning).
The video concerned is in 4:3 format. However, 2 subpics have been created – one for 4:3, but also another for 16:9 P&S. I can’t find a command to delete the latter.
In PgcEdit Trace mode everything works fine. However, the software player doesn’t recognise the new menu’s command buttons (no hand appears).

[r0lZ]

Indeed, a 4:3 video should have only one subpic stream. You can theoretically delete the other one, but I don't know a program to do it. Don't worry, and leave the useless stream in place. It doesn't consume much disc space anyway.

I con't guess why your player doesn't recognize the menu without more info. Does it show the button highlights? What program or method has been used to create the menu? Is it the menu in the title domain, with BOVs?

[VRYK]

My Reply
I have tried three players – Media Player Classic (my default player), Windows Media Player, and VLC. While the first two simply freeze (mouse pointer doesn’t change into a hand), the VLC closes out to a blank screen immediately after navigating to the menu. You don’t think the superfluous subpic stream has anything to do with the problem?
The button highlights don’t show. As mentioned earlier, this could be a positioning problem – though I doubt it, since there are 7 buttons and I would think that at least one should be OK.

It is a different video from that with the BOVs. Incidentally for the latter, I have not found the VM command to navigate from the VTSM RootMenu to the BOVs which are in the same VTS at VTST1-2.

The procedure used the create the menu was as follows:
a. Creation of a dummy PGC and addition of a blank cell to it in PgcEdit.
b. In VobBlanker saving of a menu from the same video as a still bitmap image then importing the latter into the new PGC’s blank cell.

[r0lZ]

My Reply
I have tried three players – Media Player Classic (my default player), Windows Media Player, and VLC. While the first two simply freeze (mouse pointer doesn’t change into a hand), the VLC closes out to a blank screen immediately after navigating to the menu. You don’t think the superfluous subpic stream has anything to do with the problem?

PgcEdit adds always 2 subtitle streams to the blank cells it creates, so that they can be used for the 2 sets of buttons necessary for 16:9 menus. In the case of a 4:3 menu, you should use only the first one. (You can even "delete" the second stream from the IFO in Domain Stream Attributes. But remember that it will not be deleted from the VOBs.)

I don't know why the players freeze.

The procedure used the create the menu was as follows:
a. Creation of a dummy PGC and addition of a blank cell to it in PgcEdit.
b. In VobBlanker saving of a menu from the same video as a still bitmap image then importing the latter into the new PGC’s blank cell.

The button highlights don’t show. As mentioned earlier, this could be a positioning problem – though I doubt it, since there are 7 buttons and I would think that at least one should be OK.

You did not tell how you have created the highlights. Anyway, try to define an additional button covering the entire surface of the screen, and be sure to set ALL opacity values (including the background) to something not fully transparent. You should see your highlights, even if they are at wrong positions.

It is a different video from that with the BOVs. Incidentally for the latter, I have not found the VM command to navigate from the VTSM RootMenu to the BOVs which are in the same VTS at VTST1-2.

[30 03 00 00 00 02 00 00]   1  (JumpVTS_TT) Jump to TTN 2 in this VTS

When you don't know the command to use to jump to a specific domain, use the last menu in the command editor. It lists all jump commands sorted by target.