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Power DVD skipping first play menu
We author tons of DVD5 projects with Encore CS5.5 without incident, burn to printable DVD-R discs.
Inserted a disc in newish Windows 8 computer which has Power DVD installed as well as VLC.
It defaults to Power DVD which opens in Cinema mode, and skips the first play menu, displaying a black screen with no controls and no obvious way to play videos.
I was able to switch to Classic mode which immediately displays the menu and all is fine after that. However teh average computer user might not think that way.
Of course the DVD works perfectly in VLC as is usually the case.
Is there anything funky with how Encore packaged its content that would make Power DVD work as described?
Thanks
Mike Cohen
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7 Replies
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No, unfortunately those are all player issues. We’ve been dealing with this crap for years. 🙂
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Mike,
this is a spec-problem!especially with replicated DVDs, but also with DVD-R/+R the players expecting to play a real videotitle (VTS), not any video title set menu (VTSM) as first-play. this is necessary to keep the players resume-buffer happy.
in that reason: NEVER use a menu as first-play-option, always use a short (3-5sec.) track as first play of any DVD. could be an FBI-warning or a black-track with silence AC3-audio.
I guess this will solve your problem here as well.
danny
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Some software DVD players try to play title set 1 directly in an effort to play only the main program, skipping all the other stuff on the DVD. The idea works only if the main content is actually located in TS1.
Software DVD players are notoriously poor at executing the DVD Spec correctly.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
agreed Bill,
most player-software (even some players) do not work tight to the specs, theses manufacturers interprete the specs more like a “guideline”.the result is allways the same: misbehaveior while navigating through the disc.
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Adding a 3 sec black timeline as first play seems easy enough. I have not seen this behavior in Windows Media Player or Mac player which are the two most common. However Windows 8 does not, oddly, include DVD playback, unless Dell or whatever the manufacturer is chooses to bundle it.
Thanks guys
Mike
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Mike,
windows media player is NOT a certified DVD-playback-software, only totalmedia player and some others are, and of course the mac-player is certified.most win7-systems wont have the windows media-player with the MPEG2-playback-component, so you wont be able to playback DVDs.
it´s a licences-thing!
and finally: if the disc would be a replicated disc, it would behave the same way on mac-player as well.
I´ve tested things like this in the very past! in that reason be awared allways to have a black track as the firstplay-item (best position) placed within VTS1.
good luck
danny
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The short black sequence as first play, end action to the main menu worked perfectly to circumvent Power DVD’s weird behavior.
While DVD is gradually falling by the wayside in some parts of the economy, we still move a lot of DVDs.
ThanksMike
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