DVD/AMS Hybrid

[kpsmith]

Here's what I'm after...

A DVD that will play in a set-top player with the Standard DVD file structure. Now if you throw it into a PC it will instead launch and Autplay menu with buttons that give you options like:

Play the DVD
Open Document.pdf

I've seen this done once with a Director application on the PC side so I know it works... my question is has anyone tried this using an AMS frontend for the PC side and if so How would you "Play the DVD" in the users default DVD player app?

[Geoffh]

Re: DVD/AMS Hybrid

That's an interesting one.
I am no expert at this and have never done it, so don't know if this'll work. Just thinking out loud, theoretically I guess you could author the DVD in 2 sections. The regular DVD MPEG-2 video with your menu structure that would work in domestic DVD players.

The second part could be an application authored in Autoplay and burnt as ROM data on the DVD (some DVD programs allow this)

The bit I am not sure about is whether you can author something in AMS that'll play the DVD MPEG-2 video. I wonder if you could include DVD player software in the AMS project so that you could launch the DVD player software from the AMS project.

I am presuming you want to have a hydrid so that you can create an interactive presentation but get the highest quality MPEG-2 video. I had been thinking about that for training purposes but haven't done any experiments yet.

Regards
Geoff
P.S. This is just me thinking aloud, I hope it triggers some other ideas.

[AXXESS]

Re: DVD/AMS Hybrid

The trick would be to keep the DVD viewing app from launching automatically when the DVD is inserted, but yet the autorun function to occur to launch the AMS project.

[Lorne]

Re: DVD/AMS Hybrid

The real trick will be to get an autorun.inf file onto the root of the image.

It's probably easy enough to include the AutoPlay application on the DVD...the DVD spec actually has folders set aside for miscellaneous files. I doubt there is a need for anything like a mixed-mode disc; I'm pretty sure DVDs are just data discs. (Possibly with the omission of the error bits, like VCDs and SVCDs, in order to fit more data onto the medium.)

I keep meaning to try this with an SVCD using VCDEasy...one of these days, perhaps.

[kpsmith]

Re: DVD/AMS Hybrid

Thanks for everyones responses...

Where I got this idea from is that I have a DVD that autoruns in the PC just fine and brings up the director app. The director app has a bunch of interactive grading reporting yada yada. The really cool thing is the media segments in the director app are playing the mpeg 2 encoded DVD dat files.

Now I take that same DVD and put it into a stand alone tv player and it brings up a dvd menu that lets you watch the video segments but without all the interactive testing stuff you get in the Director app.

So essentially it is a hybrid Movie DVD and Data DVD-ROM. So if this works I thinking what can I do something like this with AMS???

I'm creating a DVD with video for set-top players and Software DVD players but I also have some supporting PDF's, .doc files,etc. that I want on the DVD. Not a problem putting those on in a folder on the root of the DVD but how would a user on a PC get to them?

So I'm thinking of adding a front end autoplay menu that autoruns on CD insert. That I think will work well but the trick is I'll need to have a menu item on the menu that will launch the DVD in whatever software DVD player the user has.

I Can't figure out where windows has this DVD to software player association. It's not a file association like a .doc or .ppt so get default viewer isn't going to work. The idea of including a DVD software player on the CD is an interesting one but I'd really like to see it play in the users preferred player which will probably have the feature set they want and like.

Just thought someone might have done something like this before?

[Vito]

Re: DVD/AMS Hybrid

Now, as I said before in another thread, I tried to answer this one yesterday....
But silly me had a username that wasnt quite appropriate, so lemme have another ***** at it, hopefully without having it disappear like my last one.

You Need to read 2 registry keys to find the data ur after mate

STEP ONE
perform a "Get Value Data" Action (Registry>Get Value Data)

Variable Name: Something like %CommandValue%
MainKey: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Sub Key: DVD\shell
Value Name: (Default)

This will give you the name of the registry value where the command is kept to launch the users default DVD software.


STEP TWO

perform another "Get Value Data" Action (Registry>Get Value Data)

Variable Name: Something like %DVDSoftCommand%
MainKey: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Sub Key: DVD\shell\%CommandValue%\Command
Value Name: (Default)

This one gives you the full path to the command used to launch the users default DVD Software.

Hope that helps matey [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[kpsmith]

Re: DVD/AMS Hybrid

Thanks Vito,

Exactly what I was looking for. Now I'll have to do some testing and see how well the whole thing works

Kevin

[Vito]

Re: DVD/AMS Hybrid

No problems mate....
I have worked on a project quite similar to yours, so lemme know if you need any help. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[kpsmith]

DVD/AMS Hybrid Update

Just a little Update here. What Vito provided was a good base to detect a users default DVD player but I ran into some stumbling blocks.

Turns out the Windows XP Autorun menu stores the DVD app association one way and the File association for [DVD] another. Windows actually scans the directory stucture of the disk on insert for first an autorun.inf and then for Audio_TS and Video_TS folders to determine if the media is a DVD.

If it finds the Autorun file is uses that. If ther is not autorun.inf and it's a DVD it then either launches the XP Autoplay Menu or uses the [DVD] file association to to launch the assigned DVD software.

What Vito described takes care of the File association method which is backwards compatable with 98, ME, and 2000 as well. So that's the route I took...

To add to this the final registry key that determines the software player .exe also call variablesl. Namely the drive name that contains the DVD.

For most software players you need to substitute the %1 with the %SrcDrv%. If windows media palyer is the users Default DVD software you need to substitute the %L with %SrcDrv%

Here's the actions I finally used....

// Get and open Default DVD player
%DVDKey% = Registry.GetValueData ("HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DVD\shell", "(Default)")
%DVDPath% = Registry.GetValueData ("HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DVD\shell\%DVDKey%\Command" , "(Default)")
%DVDPath% = String.Replace ("%DVDPath%", "%L", "%Srcdrv%")
%DVDPath% = String.Replace ("%DVDPath%", "%1", ""%Srcdrv%"")

// %Result% = Dialog.MessageBox ("Title", "%DVDKey = %DVDKey% %DVDPath =...", Ok, Question)

%DoubleQuotes% = """"
IF (%DVDKey% = "" OR %DVDKey% = "%DoubleQuotes%" OR %DVDPath% = "" OR %DVDPath% = "%DoubleQuotes%")
%Result% = Dialog.MessageBox ("Could not find DVD Player Program", "This program was unable to loc...", Ok, Question)
ELSE
File.Execute ("%DVDPath%", "", Continue)
Application.Exit
END IF