DVD Interface Question (Looking for suggestions)

Hi all,

I "skinned" a DVD screen based on Mooses suggestion / request (took all of about 15 seconds!)

see middle of page of thread:

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...5&pagenumber=2

Unfortuantely I ran into a slight problem - the main menu screen of the DVD I was watching (Mission Impossible) has a number of configuration options ... unfortunately the large Play|Pause/Exit/Fwd/Rev buttons covered the option buttons ....

I could still get the DVD to play, by click the big play button (apparently clicking "Play" from the menu just skips the setup and starts with the defaults), but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how I could use the configuration the screen.

Given the fact that I can't to determine whether or not the startup screen is loaded, do you have any suggestions as to how to use full screen buttons ...

I thought that perhaps the buttons might become active after the movie starts playing ??? Maybe 5-10 seconds??? Any thoughts??? Does anyone know if the DVD position indicator for other software changes when the main menu is brought up? If anyone has a copy of PowerDVD or WinDVD, can you check?

Any other suggestions are also welcomed ...

thanks

GTC

Well I know that powerdvd (and all dvd software for that matter) has a button to goto main menu, first figure out how it does that. And when a DVD first starts, it eventually gets to the menu. So what you could do is when the DVD is first loaded, have the buttons disabled. OR when the Menu button (we would have to add a menu button to the touchpad display) is clicked write a true/false statement to disable the buttons again.

The menu buttons (on the DVD it's self, extra features, etc) can be clicked by them selves right? Meaning, APX software doen't have hardcoded buttons for the menus??

And then, if you press play on the DVD's menu (figure out what it calls to stat playing the movie) and with the true/false statement enable the buttons again.

I don't know if C++ does true/false statements like that, I come from having some knowledge of VB... but never the less, you get what I am saying??

Hey; I like that idea! If I were to boil the statement down, there is basically a "control" button that enables/disables all the other buttons on a given screen. This could even work to lock out all buttons from accidental touches - much like the "lock" button available on most cell phones ...

Unfortunately most commercial programs use "professional" quality DVD interfaces that gather much more information about the DVD and provide more available functionality - I'm pretty sure that I can force the player sitting under APX to go to the main menu, but I haven't tried yet (just play/pause/stop/chapter/etc)...

You are correct about the buttons in APX - none are hard coded; in theory (or practice, I guess) you could create your own skin that contains only a big fat Play/Pause button! ... you really don't need any other buttons to actually hear music - all the other functions just make the usage easier ...

thanks for the input !

cheers,

GTC

what about the main menu interface on the DVD it's self. like the one you get when you put a DVD in a home theater system. Are those menu's/buttons "clickable" in APX?

Yes, those buttons are clickable - unfortunately it seems that I have no way to tell if one of those buttons has been pressed .... In reality both the skin's button and the DVD menu's buttons will be pressed, but the skin functionality will overide the DVD functionality ... ie, you try to press the "Sound" setting in the DVD to change from 2.0 to 5.1 surround, but the "Play" button for the skin lies (invisibly) in the same place and is activated as well ...

Effectively it's just like pressing the button on your remote at on your home DVD - try flipping through the menu, then pressing play instead of select/enter ...

I think that your enable/disable idea might be a winner, perhaps with the buttons enabling a few seconds after playback begins ...

Quote:

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Originally posted by GTC
Yes, those buttons are clickable - unfortunately it seems that I have no way to tell if one of those buttons has been pressed

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Can you tell track/chapter infomation? Because maybe instead of knowing when "start movie" is pressed, we could just tell when track 1 chapter 1 begins?

LOL, i have all these ideas i just wish i could produce them myself!

so to just jot this down if what i like to call Drew++ ;)

If movie seek = 01/01; then touchpad.display = True OR
If title.menu = True; then touchpad.display = False

lol, i think i should come up with my own programming language

:):):):):)

The only problem is that not all movies' main video track are title 1 track 1. There are all sorts of exeptions and things get really confusing with the fancy branching DVD's and many menu's are simply a short looping chapter and not marked as any kind of menu. The DVD software company I work with has had too many programming headaches to count from all of the different ways to author a DVD and still be fully DVD compliant (makes you wonder why they call it a standard).
As my suggested solution, just make one of the invisible buttons a toggle for the rest of the buttons. So replace the "Exit" button in the layout with a "Ivisible buttons ON/OFF" toggle. Since the user can put this anywhere they want they can decide what works best for them so that it wont interfere with the DVD menus. I think a smaller box in the top right would be very rare to interfere. Or as a second more complex/(cool) option, since GTC said that these invisible buttons override the DVD menus, just make the whole screen one big button as the toggle but you have to hold it down for 2 seconds and then when you have all your other controls (Play/Pause/FF/REW etc) turned on make them turn off after holding any of them for 2 seconds again. So really if you hold down on ANY button for 2+ seconds it acts as the toggle. Hope that makes sense.

Crap, I just had to add, it would be slick to have this full screen toggle button split into four so that holding down for two seconds in the four corners would bring up a new set of invisible buttons. Like user defined button groups. As an example (1) for playback (like the mockup), (2) for getting to menu screens/adjusting volume, (3) for cycling audio/subtitles/angles and (4) for toggling On/Off all button groups. This way you would just hold a quadrant of the screen for 2 seconds and the activated button group would show up visually for a second to let you know what is active, but no matter what is active you can choose another quadrant for 2 seconds and get a whole new button group. Do everything with DVD without even thinking of reaching for a mouse.

Moose - great ideas!

I'm going to have to look into the "2 second" rule; probably something for post beta, but it makes sense.

I was thinking last night that the volume buttons should work this way as well (maybe not 2 seonds), with press and hold cause the volume to "scroll", but a single touch to just notch the volume up or down ...

For the beta, I'm just going to use 5 buttons placed in four corners (one corner has 2 close buttons for track forward / reverse).

thanks for the input!

GTC