The VideoLAN Forums

Gents,

I'm currently working on a project which includes MPlayer as an embedded VOB/DVD playback application. I find it buggy and unreliable, and I'd like to make the move to VLC instead.

I'm currently using MPlayer's slave mode, and would like to port my existing functionality over to VLC's remote control interface instead. Before I head down this route, I've got a couple of introductory questions. Using the VLC Remote Control interface:

1) Is there a simple way to determine if we're currently viewing a DVD menu? In MPlayer I can query the total length of the current title. If the length is zero, I'm on a menu.

2) How is DVD menu display/navigation? MPlayer uses DVDNav. It doesn't display selection highlights on DVD menus correctly at all (semi-transparent blocks instead). Does VLC cope any better? I'll be viewing DVDs that have been authored using DVDAuthor.

3) Is there any appreciable startup delay? When playing back using DVDNav in MPlayer, we have to specify the nocache option. For DVDs that the system hasn't seen before, we sometimes get a rather long (of the order of a few seconds) startup delay. Is there anything similar I have to watch out for here?

Hope these questions make sense. Happy to clarify if not.

And if anyone has any good tutorial links for VLC's remote control, get 'em posted!

Ta!

I don't have experience with the remote control interface, so I can't help with the first question, but about DVDs:

2) How is DVD menu display/navigation? MPlayer uses DVDNav. It doesn't display selection highlights on DVD menus correctly at all (semi-transparent blocks instead). Does VLC cope any better? I'll be viewing DVDs that have been authored using DVDAuthor.

Usually, works fine. VLC uses DVDNav, too. (You can tell it to start at a title directly, but the default is DVDNav with the menu when you open a disc.)

I'm aware of two problems:

• Occasionally, menu highlights get colored wrong.
• Especially in still-image menus, the highlights might not show at all. This occurs seemingly randomly.

3) Is there any appreciable startup delay? When playing back using DVDNav in MPlayer, we have to specify the nocache option. For DVDs that the system hasn't seen before, we sometimes get a rather long (of the order of a few seconds) startup delay. Is there anything similar I have to watch out for here?

A few seconds of startup delay for a DVD the system hasn't seen before (especially if it's a commercially pressed disc) sounds like libdvdcss is doing its job. That's normal and basically unavoidable. For home-authored discs, I'm not sure but I think it shouldn't happen.

The startup delay of VLC itself depends on the computer used, so I'd recommend to just try it.

(Been away, so a little late replying).

Thanks Techno, I'll give it a whirl.

Re: Menu display: MPlayer does always display a cursor of some sort, it just doesn't look as it's supposed to. I use VLC at home and have never seen a problem with it's menus, so I think I'm good to go on that front.

The real kicker is determining whether I'm currently viewing the menu or not. The MPlayer method is clunky, but I might be able to replicate it using the "get_length" command.

Another question to add to the list: Does anyone know how the VLC remote control rewind works? I know that generally it's pretty intensive to perform what is technically a "reverse play" on DVD streams due to the format of the stream etc. Can VLC do this? Or is the RC command "rewind" similar to "play forwards at half speed / quarter speed / etc."

Hmmm.