@Mithi - Vielen Dank!

As usual, good work and a good team player!

@Wigram - also props. Thanks for the report.

Meidadogg
Thank you for doing this.
I just tried v1.04 and am receiving an error - quite possibly it is just my setup since i noticed others have been able to use it.
I get a DVDPlayer.Net error dialog - "DVD-Video playback graph could not be built due to insufficient decoders" when clicking "Go" button. 
BDInfo was able to scan the drive and show me the results.
My setup - BD player, trying to load Legend of the Guardians (the owls of Ga'hoole) bd.
Got the same results for Immortals BD.  After the error, i see this in the window
Disc is DL Bluray: DiscID = FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF: 0
Disc Label = IMMORTALS_BD

Quoting gana2k1:

Quote:
or may be it is not BD ready yet and i jumped the gun? :-)

Correct. Reports on BDInfo are still useful becuase it includes code that I will be using for the plugin. But, for the moment, the standalone test programs remain separated, even though the program logic of DVDInfo has placeholders for both BD and HDDVD, there is actually no code in there yet. Hope that it is not too confusing ...

Bottom line: use DVDInfo for DVDs, and BDInfo for BDs.

Since the code of BDInfo is essentially complete and already debugged, I decided it was better to start working on the plugin instead of merging DVDInfo and BDInfo. I'm not sure if there is really a need for an integrated standalone tool. Both are easy to use and I will only make a few changes to DVDInfo (such as nesting the data) at a later time. My prioirty is the plugin for use as a Profile Contribution Assistant (OMG, did I just reveal the plugin name?  )

@Mithi - still waiting on that Higlander report, using V1.04.

@Mithi - thank you kindly as per usual. And don't work too hard. Save some (more) time for us! 

I hit a snag over the weekend. Apparently Microsoft's DirectShow interfaces don't work when running inside an Invelos plugin. I hope I am mistaken in this conclusion. But if it holds, my fallback plan is to create a custom XML export from the DVDInfo standalone that the plugin can then read to use the data. Not as convenient or as seamless, but I might not have a better choice.

Quoting Mithi:

Quote:

E.g. I recently bought "Zoot Suit" which has, according to cover, Dolby Surround. Receiver say it's 4.0 and DVDInfo says False/True/False/False on the first channel and False/True/True/False on the 3 others ... and every other DVD looks pretty much the same apart from the number of channels.

I can't find any information on how to interpret those fields. I was taking a guess without having seen a DVD that claimed  "x.0" channels - I was expecting the first channel to share the same values with rest. So, it seems that I will not be able to make a reliable guess on this until or unless I find out more.

The other thing here is that the values in the IFO files are just what some DVD encoder put in there. I think it is entirely possible for the actual DVD characteristics to be different. As time goes by, we will all learn more about this. Maybe I have to parse the VOB headers as well to get the best information.

I would be interested to know if any other tool is able to make this distinction, or must contributors always get it from the DVD cover or by actually playing the DVD and observing the player reports about formats?

Like what I am seeing so far... but the first thing I notice is a problem in the Video section...



I popped in the DVD Pineapple Express... I don't know how to find out the true aspect ratio... but the box shows it as 2.40:1 Anamorphic.... DVD Profiler says 2.35:1 Anamorphic. Your program says 1.78:1 and has Pan & Scan checked... no widescreen and no 16X9.

I am running Windows 7 on this machine. Anything else you need to know feel please ask.

Thanks for the quick replies.

Here is what is going on:

Aspect ratio: As Mark Harrison and others point out, you will virtually never get anything other than 4:3 or 16:9 from the raw DVD data. Those numbers reflect the video stream, NOT the embedded movie. The button labelled "Aspect Ratio" is where I will put the code (not yet written) that will actually take a snapshot and measure the aspect ratio of the content, using ideas from this site. Once I have the true aspect ratio from the frame the user selects, I can go back deduce other things that DVDP wants to know, combining with the PanScan, Widescreen and letterbox info in the IFO files. I don;t know if it is possible to determine whether something is "Anamorphic" from the paramters available, or must you just know it from looking at the DVD cover.

Features: With a few exceptions, most of these are determined manually. There are no explicit data fields in the IFO files or VOB files where this information is stored. So, I am doing things like looking at the language extensions of the audio streams and subtitles, searching for words like "director" or "comment", or "CCNormal" and searching the disk folders looking for words like "digital" or "trailer", "ultraviolet", "html", "game","movieIQ", etc. I look for file extensions such as ".bat", ".exe", etc. to set the feature "DVDROM Content".

If regions 7 or 8 are supported, I note this in "Other Features."

As time goes by, we will all get smarter about where to look for clues to fill in the blanks.

But the tool is meant to be just a convenient jump start, with a quick way to create new profile with the easy stuff already filled in. But alas, I know of nothing that will replace the diligent efforts of the contributors for the forseeable future. The process would be: (1) quick snap in the raw data automatically and verify. (2) Set new flags and fields such as UPC as Locality as necessary, (3) Verify running time and adjust as necessary (4) measure the true aspect ratio using the built-in player. (5) Click "create profile" and then go on editing from there using the normal tools. DVDPca is only a head-start.

And oh, yes I did consider OCR - I tried it on some super crisp credits screens - but there were too many errors to consider automating the cast/crew detection. Maybe someday ... or maybe Blu-Ray screens are sharp enough. Can't wait to try it.