The VideoLAN Forums

Following up from a previous post about this problem:

Just updated to current program.

I don't know much about how movie type DVDs auto-play or find their menus. I have two sample DVDs that play on WinMedia player or Dell DVD player with decoders that came with the system. But on another system with vlan I have to manually tell it what to play. Here are the details.

DVD1
Nothing in root or audio
video_ts folder has:
video_ts.vob 114K
video_01_0 27m
video_01_1 140m
In winmedia this autoplays the big video file. In vlan it plays the video_01_0 file which is just a short background animation that I suppose would be behind the menu, except this DVD wasn't set up to go to a menu but straight to the big file. So the "menu" has no menu selections, you're just stuck on this little looping animation. I have to manually find the big file and open it.

DVD2
Nothing in root or audio
video_ts folder has:
Video_ts.bup
Video_ts.ifo
Video_ts.vob
vts_01_0.bup
vts_01_0.ifo
vts_01_0.vob
vts_01_1.vob
vts_02_0.bup
vts_02_0.ifo
vts_02_0.vob
vts_02_1.vob
When this runs in winmedia it goes to a menu to choose between two main videos. I can't get vlan to show the menu no matter what I do. If I manually find and run one or the other main video files it shows them.

Thanks

Does it help if you disable Start directly in menu option that can be found from Tools -> Preferences... (Show settings: All) Input/Codecs -> Access modules -> DVD with menus ?

One step better, a couple of steps to go.

Turning off that setting did result in DVD2 auto-playing to the menu, and I could choose and run one of the videos.

On DVD1 it still wants to play the unused, unsetup menu background animation. I still have to find the biggest VOB file and run it.

In winmedia or dell player when viewing a video there are controls, pause, go to menu, etc. Not in VLan. I looked through the settings and thought I found a couple (Display mode: Complete. Show a controller in full screen) but I still didn't get any control. So on DVD2 when one video is done I have to close and rerun to get to the menu to play the 2nd video.

I may just have to buy a bunch of codec licenses. There are a bunch of computers here and it's not unusual for one to get messed up and reloaded, or updated to a new OS, and then there is no player, or just winmedia but no codec. I thought it would be simple to keep vlan handy and just throw it onto any system that has a dvd. But playing demo dvds by secretaries and such looks like it's just going to lead to confusion.

I'll keep it on my own system for my own use. Any other thoughts on making it run smooth for the others?

Thanks

might be wrong but won't windows media player play DVDs with ffdshow, which uses same avcodec as VLC basically, saving you from buying licenses and providing a more familiar interface for users? i'd try it, but actually have no machine with DVD-ROM available to me at the moment heh, yeah i'm old school.

edit: yeah found a usb dvd, ffdshow with dscaler mpeg filters did it and my 600mhz celeron is almost doing a decent job at it even

"Don know much about codecs." It occurred to me that if vlan was running some codec then maybe winmedia would use that same codec, so I tried viewing the DVD that way. Still said no codec available. Took the suggestion to try FFDshow. Wasn't clear whether it was a viewer or a codec but I downloaded and installed it and tried winmedia with the same idea. It acts like it wants to play it but complains there is some video problem, that I might need to lower my screen resolution. I guess I'll keep looking.

Thanks

sorry, DScaler5 is required for DVDs. ffdshow does the rest though.