[MPlayer-dev-eng] proposal of a dvdnav layer

[James Courtier-Dutton]

Reza Jelveh wrote:
> hi,
> im rethinking a possibility of adding dvdnav support to mplayer. 
> i checked earlier mails on the mailing list from arpi and saw this:
> 
> i disagree. the main problems of dvdnav vs. mplayer:
> - cache
> - no mouse input handled
> - no still images support -> non-animated menus wont work
> - no subpicture highliting support -> you can't see selection in menu
> - no runtime track switching (audio, sub, etc) possible
> 
> 
> currently ignoring caching and the mouse input issues i had in mind for subpicture highlighting and still images that a layer would be introduced to *mux* all that info together and then pass it to the demuxing layer. also for the demuxing layer it would have to allow multiple video demuxers to run at once(i dont know does it allow that yet?). of course vo would then have to get *priorities* for the image and then let a layer before vo overlay the images it gets from the decoder. 
> as for the runtime track switching. i think it would be enough if mplayer allowed  the suspend or stopping of the demuxing, codecs/filters and then seek to the appropriate chapter(chapter would always guarantee correct loading!).
> 
> note im not complaining or anything. im only thinking of an efficient way to adding that support to mplayer. if you have any suggestions or anything else please let me know
> 
> 
> regards
> Reza Jelveh
> 

dvdnav is a lot more complicated than you are assuming.

As one of the main authors of libdvdnav, I offered to help with 
integrating it with mplayer, but received no contructive feedback.

mplayer just does not seem suitable for playing DVDs with menus.
It is a big step moving from a non-interactive video stream to a fully 
interactive video stream like a DVD. With interactivity, you have 
problems of stream changes, whether or not to flush the buffers etc., 
still image detection and handling.

So, for DVD playing, please use Ogle, xine of any other player that 
supports it.

James