Home › forums › Archived Customer Forums › Discussion Forum

Request for assistance

Thu, 2006-11-16 10:43 — ianshepherd

Hi All,

I'm hoping that some of you might have 15 minutes free to help me out with a little research. Even if you aren't interested in / don't understand the explanation, it would be great if you could download the test project and let me know the results.

In this thread there was discussion about players incorrectly using SPRM 7. I have a project that this will cause problems with, and asked if anyone knew whether SPRM 6 was correctly implemented in players. No-one replied, and I asked the same question on the Tully list with the same lack of response, which tells me - no-one knows !

I imagine that it is, since players almost certainly use it to keep track of navigation - but, you never know...

So, I've created a small project that should test for this. It's in the Public folder of my iDisk - U/N: ianshepherd, P/W: nAv_pAck. Please would anyone who can burn the project to a DVD and test it in any players you have to hand and then report back ?

The expected behaviour is:

Intro plays
PGC 1 plays [Press menu key]
Menu displays "SPRM 6 = 1" [ This means the player has correctly stored the VTS_TT in SPRM 6]
PGC 2 plays [Press menu key]
Menu displays "SPRM 6 = 2"
PGC 3 plays [Press menu key]
Menu displays "SPRM 6 = 3"

etc.

If it works, or you see wrong values ( eg. SPRM 6 = 0, or the wrong number for the PGC which just played ) please let me know ! My goal is to get at least 20 different players results to reassure me my fix for the SPRM 7 problem will work.

Thanks for your help !

Ian

AttachmentSize
SPRM6_TESTER.jpeg387.72 KB
‹ Menu button - Root Menu & Resume Wierd Apple DVD Player problems.. ›
Wed, 2007-01-31 15:04 — ianshepherd

Thanks !

Just a quick message to says thank-you to everyone who responded !

The final results were that over 90% of the players people tested used SPRM 6 as I hoped - a significant improvement over the 50% success rate with SPRM 7 in non one_sequential PGCs. Unfortunately Power DVD doesn't, and this ruled it out for use in my project.

Thanks again - and if anyone has a spare 5 minutes, please see my new mini research question here :-)

Cheers !

Ian

Mon, 2006-12-11 10:56 — Fiete

half 'n' half

Hi Ian,

I first tested your project on my laptop (a PC - Ah!). It works perfectly with the VLC Player and the Media Player Classic (unicode build) v 6.4.9,
but not with Cyberlink Power DVD 6.0 ("SPRM 6 = ?").
Then I tested it on our Macs, with similar results: It works perfectly with the DVD Player v 4.6.5, but didn't play at all at version 4.0.
Finally, I test it on our stand-alone players: And again, it works normally with a Pioneer DV-444, but not with a Maxim MX11-21 (again "SPRM 6 = ?").
I hope that helps.
Cheers,
Fiete

Wed, 2006-12-06 09:28 — benchmarque

Success With Pioneer DV-285

hey ian,

i tested the project on my Pioneer DV-285, and everything worked correctly.

-ben

Mon, 2006-11-20 04:58 — ianshepherd

Hi bigotti5, Thanks for the

Hi bigotti5,

Thanks for the info,

Ian

Sat, 2006-11-18 10:56 — okeanos

Right...

But to the best of my knowledge I don't make those either. ;->

I would be interested in learning about the applications for such things, BTW.

Michael

Sat, 2006-11-18 10:19 — bigotti5

@Ian Pioneer DVR-5100 -> all

@Ian

Pioneer DVR-5100 -> all ok
Pioneer DV-350 -> all ok

------------
SPRM7 is valid for one_sequential_titles only (title playback type in TT_SRPT < 64), and it is possible to have single-PGC titles that are not_one_sequential.

Sat, 2006-11-18 09:25 — okeanos

Never use multi-PGC titles

Ian -

As a rule, I don't author with multi-PGC titles. I have still seen players that don't manage SPRM 7 correctly with single-PGC titles and that's what I was referring to. These players usually report a 0 regardless of where you are in the title.

Now I see why you would find SPRM 6 of such interest.

Michael

Sat, 2006-11-18 02:24 — ianshepherd

Hi Michael, Thanks again for

Hi Michael,

Thanks again for the info.

> BTW, SPRM 7 works correctly in all of these too, FWIW.

Are you sure ? As I discussed in the original thread, the issue only becomes apparent if you try to test SPRM 7 in a multi-PGC title, where it's possible for the PG no. to be different from the PTT.

Ian

Fri, 2006-11-17 22:48 — okeanos

Player's tested...

Ian -

I had six players in my studio at the time plus I tested with the Apple software player. SPRM 6 seemed reliable in all of these.

The set-top players are:

Pioneer 7400
Cyberhome CH-300
Sony NS425P
JVC N410
Toshiba SD-4900
plus another older Sony (given away a couple of months ago, not sure of the model)

BTW, SPRM 7 works correctly in all of these too, FWIW.

Michael

Fri, 2006-11-17 15:45 — ianshepherd

Thanks for the feedback,

Thanks for the feedback, Michael - can you remember roughly how many players you tested ? If there's only a couple with problems then I'm not too concerned - this is a re-authoring job, and the chapter detection relied on SPRM 7 anyway, ( ie. would have failed in 50% of players ) so any improvement is a bonus.

I'm not emulating SPRM 7 as much as side-stepping it - I'll posts some details later.

Cheers,

Ian

Fri, 2006-11-17 09:50 — okeanos

Not reliable in at least one player...

Ian -

I built a fairly complex DVD last year in which I initially used SPRM 6 to determine which of about 50 video programs was playing when the viewer pressed the Title or Menu keys on the remote. I used that information to keep track of which sub-menu was active and then which button should be highlighted.

This appeared to work in all the players to which I had access but then my client (of course) found one which caused tracking to fail. Interestingly enough, it's a player that's sold in the UK so you might even have access to one. The brand was Acoustic Solutions, model AS8099.

As a result of this report, I modified the programming to use a GPRM set in the pre-command area of each video program (to which I assigned a unique ID) and then everything was righty-right. So I no longer use SPRM 6.

Regardless, I'm very curious how you plan on using SPRM 6 to emulate SPRM 7. Very different kinds of housekeeping.

Michael

Fri, 2006-11-17 03:00 — ianshepherd

It works on my colleague's

It works on my colleague's machine - please can you try it again ?

If anyone hasn't used someone else's iDisk before, just go to the OS-X "Go" menu, select iDisk>Other User's Public Folder and enter the username & password from my first post. Both are case-sensitive, btw.

[Edit] I have attached the zipped project to the first message in this thread - the site will only accept image files so once it's downloaded you'll need to change the extension from .jpeg to .zip

Thu, 2006-11-16 23:47 — bigotti5

Can not access your folder

Can not access your folder

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <center>
  • You may quote other posts using [quote] tags.
  • You may link to images on this site using a special syntax
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • You may use [inline:xx] tags to display uploaded files or images inline.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Copy the characters (respecting upper/lower case) from the image.