Availability Flag for Subtitles and Audio Streams

[Eric Pautsch]

Since this is a discussions forum I think it might be right to ask your question first. If you need private support call Sonic – you paid 10s of thousands of dollars for your authoring system – I know there support sucks but give it a try.

[Noah Kadner]

Exactly- we are not tech support that way. If you ask an actual question it’s a lot more likely it will be answered.

Noah

[Michael Lazar]

Sure. No problem.

First, I don’t own a Scenrist system and I’m not looking for technical support.

I am investigating a relatively obscure feature of the DVD Video specifiction know as the Availability flag. This allows the DVD author to restrict access to subtitles and/or audio streams in a given VTS on a per-title (PGC) basis. So, for example, a VTS can be created with four different subtitle streams but the Availability flag can – in theory – be used so that one Title (PGC) provides access to just the first two streams and another Title (PGC) provides access just to the last two streams. By “providing access” I am specifically referring to the use of the subtitle button on the remote. There’s a similar flag associated with audio streams as well.

[NOTE: One can use UOPs to completely disable access to subtitle and audio streams in a Title (PGC) but the Availability flag – in theory – provides a finer grained control.]

To the best of my knowledge, Scenarist is the only non-proprietary authoring system that exposes the Availability flag.

Now, back to my question: I’m looking to contact someone who’s authored a commercial (replicated) title that used the Availability flag feature of Scenarist to restrict viewer access to subtitle and/or audio streams in a VTS.

Thanks!

Michael Lazar

[Eric Pautsch]

Yes its an obscure. I could probably answer your question if I knew what it was? 🙂 🙂

[Michael Lazar]

The specific question regards player behavior when there are “gaps” in the list of available streams.

For example, if the VTS has four subtitle streams (0, 1, 2, & 3) and you only mark streams 0 and 2 as Available in a Title (PGC), do all the players you test behave in a useful and consistent manner when playing this Title (PGC)? Or, are the results undefined with different players behaving differently?

Michael

[Eric Pautsch]

I have no idea….Sorry

Just Kidding 🙂 From what Ive gathered this feature is not required by manufacturers of set top players. Better players will play the disc fine but some cheapos will faulter. But I must admit Ive never had a reason to use this feature….How do you want your disc to function exactly?