Re: [Cellar] Menu System in Matroska Files

Hi,

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 8:47 PM, Dave Rice <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Dec 17, 2015, at 5:41 AM, Nithin Mathew Kurien <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> The Matroska specification includes a menu system which is currently
> in a draft state (http://matroska.org/technical/menu/index.html).
>
>
> This draft document seems to list features and requirements but does not
> clarify how to read or write such menu data. AFAIK this is still only an
> early draft, but could possibly be worked on in coordination of
> standardizing Matroska version 4.
>
> Currently there are no open-source players supporting this feature.
> But there is at least one proprietary format, namely PGMX, a variant
> of MKV, that includes a working menu.
>
>
> I'm glad to see this sample as it demonstrates a lot of edge cases in
> earlier discussion on EBML structure. The sample,
> http://download1.pegasys-inc.com/download_files/TPXC_materials/elephants_dream.pgmx,
> contains 3 EBML Headers, each followed by its own Segment Element. Within
> the current state of the EBML specification work, this file would be
> considered an EBML Stream that contains three EBML Documents. The last EBML
> Document contains 32 attachments, including Navigation.xml, which I
> extracted to https://gist.github.com/dericed/13ac0fab10a1bed54e37, and lots
> of png files. It also contains Matroska attachments within Matroska :).
>
> It also seems that most Matroska demuxers ignore the non-first Segment
> elements.
>
> I'm not familiar enough with navigation to comment much but I suspect that
> adding a menu to a Matroska file should not require the creation of
> additional EBML Documents within an EBML Stream. The existing system to
> reference to link between chapters, tracks, and time currently only
> coordinations relationships within the same EBML Document.
>
> These files are created by a
> proprietary TMPGENC PGMX creator and played by a freeware TMPGENC PGMX
> player. A PGMX file also supports including multiple related titles
> inside a single file. Opening this file on open-source players will
> play it as a normal MKV file without menus. There are some samples
> given in their website
> (http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/download/tpxp.html).
>
> I think the menu feature would be a good idea to implement in Matroska
> files and humbly request for the same. I think this feature would be
> useful for content authors who would like to distribute their works
> freely under a Creative Commons license, for example, who would
> otherwise have to adopt proprietary formats like DVD and Blu-ray.
>
>
> I agree that an open format media file with menu based navigation is
> important. I'd suggest that it could be considered as part of the CELLAR
> timeline to work on Matroska version 4.
>
> I
> understand that implementing a menu system from scratch might involve
> some complexity. In that case, would it be possible to adopt some
> features from the open-source libdvdnav and libbluray?
>
>
> I'm not familiar enough with these two to comment but integrating an
> existing menu specification with a compatible license may work. You could
> also review matroska-devel to see how earlier menu discussions progressed.

Thanks. I am cc'ing the e-mail to matroska-devel also.

> Dave
>
> Thanks and regards,
> Nithin
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cellar mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/cellar
>
>

Thanks and regards,
Nithin
_______________________________________________
Matroska-devel mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.matroska.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/matroska-devel
Read Matroska-Devel on GMane: http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.multimedia.matroska.devel