Open Video MenuDVD import profile (early draft)
This profile describes how a tool that reads a DVD's menu structure (from an unencrypted disc image or VIDEO_TS folder) should express it as a manifest, so any importer produces files every player understands. Level 1 rows give menus every player shows. Level 2 rows cover what a player shows and plays as written: motion menus and timeouts, button sets, angles, segments, remote keys, and what happens during playback (cues, seeks, still cells). Level 3 rows cover the disc's programs: registers, conditions, named actions for shared programs, the resume point, live track changes, the navigation timer, counters and parental requests. An importer that translates the disc's programs, rather than simulating them, can write each PGC's commands once as named actions.
What to export
An importer that exports a disc's menus SHOULD export the whole disc: every title its navigation can reach, all audio and subtitle tracks, and the complete logic, so the menus behave as the disc does. Partial exports (only some titles, simplified logic) are valid manifests; how faithful to be is the importer's choice.
An export with the disc's logic declares "level": 3, so players without Level 3 show its fallback list
instead of menus whose buttons would do nothing. An export kept free of logic declares the level it uses
(openvideomenu validate shows it).
Mapping
| Disc concept | Manifest |
|---|---|
| FirstPlay PGC | firstPlay (e.g. play of a warning/logo clip). If FirstPlay just jumps to a menu, set rootMenu and omit firstPlay. |
| VMGM / VTSM menu PGC | One entry in menus. Use a stable id such as vts1-pgc2 or vmgm-pgc1. |
| Menu video frame size | canvas.width/height = storage size (720×480 NTSC, 720×576 PAL). |
| Menu display aspect | canvas.aspect = "16:9" or "4:3" from the video attributes. |
| Still menu background | background.image: the menu's still frame without the highlight subpicture, as PNG. |
| Button rectangle (PCI: X0,Y0,X1,Y1 inclusive) | rect: [X0, Y0, X1 - X0 + 1, Y1 - Y0 + 1] |
| Button neighbours (up/down/left/right) | nav, using the manifest ids of those button numbers. Drop self-references. |
| Auto-action button | autoAction: true |
| Initial button (highlighted on entry) | defaultButton |
| Button groups (4:3 / 16:9 / letterbox / pan-scan) | rect from the group that matches canvas.aspect (widescreen when there is a choice); the letterbox and pan-scan groups of a widescreen menu go in the button's altRects. |
| Highlight subpicture + colour/contrast per state | Render per-button PNGs with alpha: the selected colours → states.selected.image, the action colours → states.activated.image. A hard-edged look is authentic. Don't smooth it. |
| Button command resolving to title/chapter | play { media, chapter }, where media points to the file that holds that title |
| Button command resolving to a menu | goto { menu, button? } |
Resume (LinkRSM), including a conditional one such as if (gN != 0) LinkRSM else a link elsewhere | resume; the path taken when there's nothing to resume becomes its otherwise (e.g. goto a widescreen/fullscreen picker), so the button works the first time too. |
| The disc's resume information (RSM) | resumePoint: "untilUsed", so it lasts until a Resume uses it, as on the disc. A title's call to a menu (CallSS with a resume cell) is saveResume with that cell's time (no media: the playback in progress) before the goto. The resume point keeps SPRM 7 (@lastChapter) as it was at the call, and a Resume restores it until playback reaches the next chapter, as the disc's resume registers do. A jump out of a title that saves nothing (JumpSS, JumpTT) is clearResume before the goto, or nothing if the disc keeps an earlier point. A save in a program shared by several places, which can't say "here", gives the title's play item (with its end, cell-command cues, button overlays and holds) and adds queue and after for what the title's own commands play next (the rest of a play-all). |
| Links that end the playing title (a cell command or a button in a title that jumps to another title, or to a menu program that starts one) | cuePlayback: "replace" at the top of the manifest: playback started from a cue or a button over the film then ends the title instead of returning to it, and may have an after, as on the disc. Like the disc's links, these leave the resume point alone; only calls save it (saveResume). |
| Title that plays other titles first (e.g. intro + episode) | playAll { items } |
| "Play all" titles (one PGC chaining episodes) | playAll, or play of the combined file if one was written |
| Button text (e.g. from OCR) | label, and a11yLabel if the text is unhelpful |
| Buttons unreachable by arrows / tiny hidden buttons | Keep them. Put their media in a fallback group with hidden: true. |
| Titles and chapters (PTT) | media entries with chapters (start time in seconds within the output file) |
| Remote Return (Go Up) | Menu back, chosen per menu to behave like the disc: the PGC's Go Up target when it has one (goto that menu); otherwise the menu's own on-screen back button, i.e. a button that returns to the menu this one was entered from (activate it, so its highlight shows and the viewer lands on the right item); otherwise leave back out (history). |
| Highlight information that changes during a menu cell (new HLI start/end times in the menu's navigation packets) | buttonSets on the menu: one set per run of the cell with the same buttons, from/to on the menu video's clock; the menu's own buttons are the ones it shows longest. |
| Menu cells without buttons (clips and stills between programs, in loops, or a cell that links to itself as a trap) | A menu with no buttons: the cell's video as background.video with loop: false (or its still as background.image), and a timeout after the cell's length plus its still time whose action is what the cell's command, the next cell or the PGC's post commands do. Each cell is written once; a cell that links to itself is a menu whose timeout goes to itself, and one with infinite still time has no timeout. The viewer can skip such a menu with any key, as a DVD player's Next skips a cell, and a title started from it returns, on Back, to the menu before the clips. |
| Menu that moves on by itself (still time or end of the menu's video, then a link) | If the next part has the same buttons, it's the same menu looping: background.video with loopStart. Otherwise menu timeout with after = the time until it moves on and the link as its action; restartOnInput: false to match the disc's timer exactly. |
Next / previous page (LinkNextPG, LinkPrevPG, PGC next/prev) | goto with history: "replace", so paging adds no Back steps. |
| General registers (GPRM 0–15) | Manifest vars (integers). Registers in counter mode (SetGPRMMD) are also listed in counters. |
| Temporary parental level (SetTmpPML level, line) | requestParental with level; then is the program from that line, else what follows the command. |
| Parental blocks (PGCs chosen by the player's parental level) | if on @parentalLevel choosing the play. |
| Navigation timer (SetNVTMR; SPRM 9 and 10) | timer with after = the seconds and action = a run of the PGC it names (a play of that title); a time of 0 is cancelTimer. SPRM 9 reads as @navTimer. |
| Register commands (Set: mov, add, sub, mul, div, mod, and, or, xor, rnd) | set with the matching op (rnd → random). |
Conditional commands (if (a op b)), Goto/Break programs | if, do; a program's skipped lines become else branches. |
| Player settings read by commands (SPRM) | Player state: SPRM 1/2/3 → @audio/@subtitle/@angle (SPRM 2 is off when bit 6 is clear), 8 → @focus (button number ÷ 1024 → its id; during a title, the button highlighted over it), 0/16/18 → @menuLanguage/@audioLanguage/@subtitleLanguage (ISO 639 codes as text), 4/5/6 → the title playing, as @lastMedia (or, for arithmetic, @lastNumber, with each title's media given that number as its number), 7 → @lastChapter (live during playback), 12 → @country, 13 → @parentalLevel, 14 → @aspect, 20 → @region. |
| SetSTN (choose audio/subtitle/angle) | set on @audio/@subtitle/@angle. In a cell command or a button over the film, it changes the playing title's track at once. |
| Multi-angle title (angle blocks in its cells) | Media angles: one file per angle, as the rip wrote them (each whole title, the angle blocks differing). Or angleTracks when the rip keeps the angles as video tracks of one file. Menus that choose an angle with SetSTN set @angle. |
Title that ends at a cell (a cell command LinkTailPGC, e.g. one song of a concert) | Play item end at that cell's end time. |
| Other cell commands during a title (SetGPRM, CallSS to a menu, conditional links) | Point cues { at, action } at the cell's end time: set, goto, if. Jumps within the title (LinkCN, LinkPGN, LinkPTTN, a cell linking to its own start to loop) are seek to that cell's time on the title's timeline. |
| Still cells (a cell's still time, 1–254 seconds or 255 = until the viewer goes on; a PGC's still time after its last cell) | holds on the media (or the play item, when only one way of playing it holds): { at, for } at the cell's last frame on the title's timeline, for the seconds or "input". |
| Menus made of title cells (a still or short cell whose buttons wait for a choice) | An overlay with the cell's buttons over the cell's time, and a hold "input" at its last frame; a cell that loops instead is a point cue at its end that seeks back to its start. |
| Buttons in a title's navigation packets (highlights shown over the film) | Overlays { from, to, buttons } on the media, one per run of VOBUs with the same buttons; a button that calls a featurette (and resumes with RSM) is a play from the overlay, which returns to the film. |
| Titles that share video, or play it out of order (a play-all and its episodes, songs of a concert, cuts of a film; seamless branching's interleaved cells) | Either one file per title as the rip made them, or, to keep one copy of shared video, a media with segments per title over the ranges of the files that hold each run of cells. Chapters and cues then count on the title's own timeline. |
| Shared programs: PGCs many links lead into (their pre-commands), menu-domain dispatchers, title post-commands, loops (a Goto back to an earlier line) | Named actions, each written once and reached with run. A loop is a named action that runs itself in tail position. Keeps the export about the size of the disc's own programs. |
| The remote's Menu and Title keys, and menu calls (MenuCall: root, title, audio, subpicture, angle, PTT) | keys: menu, title, audioMenu, subtitleMenu, angleMenu, chapterMenu. During a title, the title set's menu of that type (its VTSM entry), on the media; in menus, on the manifest (VMG title menu) and per title set's menus. |
| User operation prohibitions (UOPs, on PGCs and in navigation packets) | prohibits on the menu, media or play item: UOP 0/5 → seek, 1 → chapterJump, 2 → titleJump, 3 → stop, 4 → back, 6 → previous, 7 → next, 8 → fastForward, 9 → rewind, 10 → titleKey, 11 → menuKey, 12 → subtitleMenuKey, 13 → audioMenuKey, 14 → angleMenuKey, 15 → chapterMenuKey, 16 → resume, 17 → buttons, 18 → endHold, 19 → pause, 20 → audioChange, 21 → subtitleChange, 22 → angleChange, 23 → karaokeChange, 24 → displayModeChange. What a PGC forbids throughout goes in prohibits; what its cells' navigation packs forbid (cell by cell, or within a cell) goes in prohibitsAt windows on the media, on its timeline. Information only: players decide. |
| Exit | exit. |
| PGC playback mode: random or shuffle (with a program count) | playAll with order: "random" and count, or order: "shuffle". |
| Karaoke mixing (SetAMXMD, SPRM 11) | set on @karaoke. |
| Menu language (SPRM 0, the player's setup) | @menuLanguage, which the player reports from its settings; menus per language as below. |
| SetHL_BTN (highlight a button) | set on @focus, or goto with button. |
| Menus per language (several language units in a menu table) | One menu per language; firstPlay (or the link into them) chooses with if on @menuLanguage. |
| The disc's own numbers and commands | x-dvd on the menu or button (below): VTS/PGC/cell/button numbers, raw VM commands, so an export can be traced back to the disc. |
Suggested x-dvd shape
x-dvd is informational. Players ignore it. Keeping it lets future versions, or full DVD-VM players, replay the disc more faithfully, and it lets an export be traced back to the disc.
"x-dvd": { "domain": "VTSM", "vtsn": 1, "pgcn": 2, "cell": 1 }
On a button:
"x-dvd": { "button": 3, "colorTable": 0, "commands": ["SetSTN (audio 1)", "JumpVTS_PTT 1:1"] }
Coverage
Every part of the DVD navigation model has a manifest form, including what wasn't seen in an audit of
954 discs (counter registers, karaoke mixing). Where a disc says what the viewer may not do, the manifest
records it in prohibits, and players decide whether to honour it.
Assets
- Images: PNG. Backgrounds MAY be JPEG.
- Motion menus (Level 2): H.264 MP4 or VP9 WebM loops.
- Menu audio (Level 2): AAC or Opus.
- Keep a menu's assets small (a few MB at most) so menus open instantly on TVs over Wi-Fi.
Reference importer
sdk/dotnet-dvd (OpenVideoMenu.Dvd, .NET) imports discs as this profile describes.
It also verifies an export against the disc it came from, by playing both side by side.
Worked example
examples/dvd-shaped is a synthetic title built the way this profile describes. Conformance case 07-dvd-shaped.json checks the same shape.