VLC and video recorder DVD formats

[sdoradus]

Hello, there. I originally posted this in "Contribute and help with the Videolan Project", but I think it really belongs here.

Can I draw attention to what I think is a serious problem with versions of VLC later than about v8.2? This really ought to be fixed before the v1.0 release, because otherwise VLC is not feature-complete.

I'm a retired Engineer now trying to teach myself Python and C, and keep up to date with my Cisco certification. As it happens, I once spoke fluent French (and Spanish), in which I hold a post-graduate degree from a decade or two back, so if need be I could post in that language. I'm aware that VLC started out life as a French project, and for all I know it still is.

I've found that while VLC used to play DVDs from my video recorder quite happily, it no longer does. The recorder is a Philips DVR-615. The DVDs in question play quite happily in a stand-alone DVD player like a Pioneer DVD-343. Commercial utilities like PowerDVD and WinDVD also have no trouble coping, which means they have as far as I can tell a quite important advantage over VLC. The problem for VLC seems to be that the root menu (which contains thumbnails of the sessions recorded) confuses it.

The visible directories are a little different: there is a VIDEO_RM folder as well as the usual VIDEO_TS, but no AUDIO_TS. I could send a copy of a DVD with the odd structure if it would help, but it's been my experience to date that VLC is confused by all the DVD-based video recorders I've tried (only three so far, however).

Regards, TC

[VLC_help]

because otherwise VLC is not feature-complete

VLC will never be feature-complete

Have you tried to directly open then VIDEO_TS folder by using Media -> Open Disc...?

[sdoradus]

Heh. I figure v1.0.0 is supposed to be feature complete, at least that will be the presumption by many, so I figured it would be wise for me to raise the issue - which I've noticed for some time - before that magic version number.

Root menu access freezes VLC, if there is more than one recording session. Opening a mounted disk as a directory, as you suggest, has the same effect as "open disk" - it kills the VLC player before it ever manages to display the root menu, unless there is only one recorded session (and therefore one thumbnail image in the root menu). This behaviour is machine independent. I have replicated in in Windows XP and XP64 (which bring up an error); also in Linux - both Fedora and Ubuntu - which fail silently; and Mac OSX.

I've actually investigated this in some detail. The video and audio are encoded as normal on VOB files within the VIDEO_TS subfolder, as with normal DVDs. As mentioned earlier, there is no AUDIO_TS folder. The VIDEO_RM folder (which I presume holds the root menu) contains the following files: video_mn.dat, video_mn.ifo, video_rm.bup, video_rm.dat, video_rm.ifo.

Since the .VOB files are essentially MPEG-2 format they play just fine. If you open the disk in "simple mode" (no menus), everything works fine, except that sometimes playback ceases after the first recorded session.