Discwelder and Groups

[JonUrban]

I have a project that I have almost finished, but need some advice.

I have 3 groups;

Group 1 is the quad album
Group 2 is the quad alternate album
Group 3 is the quad "single"

I have the DVD-A setup in Discwelder Chrome 2, and have burned a test DVD-A.

The Group 1 tracks appear on the first screen, the Group 2 tracks appear on the second menu screen, and the Group 3 track is on its own third menu page.

Is there a better way to do this. I've never really messed with groups before.

What weird is that if I select a tune from the group 2 menu, then stop or hit menu, it always goes back to the page 1 (Group 1) page.

Also, for some odd reason, when I select the last track in either Group 1 or Group 2, the graphic for Title 1 of the group flashes on screen for a second before the proper graphic for the track appears.

@:

 

[holland123]

I have worked extensively with discwelder and I am really not understanding what is going on here. my suggestion is this; put all of your tracks into 1 wav and then pack it w mlp surcode. that is what I do and it works like a charm every time, it may be that the program is partitioning your music as it would a dvd a where group 1 is fr,fl sr,sl. and group 2 is being recognized as c,lfe. group 3 is ..... I dunno. the program recognizes packed mlp without any problems, you just have to go in before burn and use the trackpoint feature to tag your tracks.

 

[georgeshannon]

When I authored some multi-album DVDAs, I found that groups didn't help me that much. Instead I put all the tracks in one group and changed the graphics at the appropriate time. Its personal preference I believe.

As far as the navigation problem you might try this:
1) right click on the album name and select album properties
2) click "Edit Generated Menu"
3) click "OK"
4) click "Edit Custom Menu"
5) You will notice on the display that your track titles are not present but boxes are in their place. Right click on the box that represents the track that always goes back to page 1 (Group 1) page.
6) You'll see the "link to track" choice. Select where you want the link to go. You can also determine where the right, left, up, and down directions are going to send you and change those if needed.

If you do save the changes, the custom menu now becomes the default menu and the Generated Menu is over-ridden.

This is kinda hard to explain in text. Hope this helps. I tried to be as clear as possible.

 

[JonUrban]

Thanks George, I'll check that all out.

The reason I wanted to use groups as they work out perfectly in the car. There's a button called 'FOLDER' and pressing it starts the disc at track one of each succesive group. So, in this case, if I want to just play the Group 2 tracks, I pop the disc in, press 'FOLDER', and I'm off to Group 2.

It's actually a pretty neat feature that was well though out but not really used widely by the public and the hardware with the format.

 

[oaqm]

George & Holland seem to be doing it the "smart way" vs the "correct way".

I have always split by groups as well, and my particular disc spinner re-indexes to the first track of the first group whenever I bring it to a hard stop/off. If I am in group 2 and hit the stop button once, it will stay in group 2 and on the same track (it acts more like a pause feature than a true stop).

The next time I burn a 'multiple-disc' disc I will try leaving everything in Group 1.

 

[neil wilkes]

The problem with the menus is that Chrome does not allow you to use Pre & Post commands, and this screws things up somewhat.
When you are in title space (a group, or it's tracks) there are only two ways to get back into system space (PGC menus):
1 - Execute End Action for the group, and the player will always return to the top menu in the PGC area.
2 - Hit MENU or TOP MENU (TITLE) on the remote, which should always take you back to the top menu in the PGC Area.
Downsides.
1: A - This method works only at the end of the last track in a group, and can be forced by adding a 1 second silent track to the group, and pointing the MENU button at that from what Chrome calls a "Track Associated Active Menu.
B - because of the lack of Pre Commands available, it is not possible to set a trap to make it fall back through where we need it to go.
2: A - See point 1 (B) above.

To make what you need here, we must use Sonic DAC. Chrome simply cannot do this.
STructure would be to have 4 menus in System Space - Main Menu, Group 1 Playlist, Group 2 Playlist & Group 3 Playlist
The type of code we need to use is essentially traps in PRE COMMAND areas.
It goes something like this:
MAIN MENU PRE AREA:
001 if (GP0==1) Branch (GROUP_1_PLAYLIST)
002 if (GP0==2) Branch (GROUP_2_PLAYLIST)
003 if (GP0==3) Branch (GROUP_3_PLAYLIST)
Then in the PRE areas of all group playlists, we set the required value of GP0, so in group 1 playlist (PGC) we set
001 GP0=1
and in the back to main menu button on the playlist, we set
GP0=0, BRANCH (MAIN_MENU)
this resets the GPRM value back to default, and makes the player stop at the main menu & not branch.
However, if we hit MENU during group track playback, because GP0=1, the player will read this in the PRE area of MAIN_MENU
and as the condition (001) is met, it will follow that branch instead.

The trouble with Chrome is that it assumes you know how DVDA is structured and what the rules are.......