Quoting mediadogg:

Quote:
DVDInfo - DVD MetaData Extraction

So ... bring out the hard cases ...  (gunning for special audio tracks)

1) German "Wallace & Gromit" DVD:
    Audio Stream 1 ................
    Language = Französisch (Frankreich)
    Extention = NotSpecified
    Audio Format = MPEG1
    Number of Channels = 2
    Quantization = 16
    Frequency = 48000
    Audio Stream 2 ................
    Language = Französisch (Frankreich)
    Extention = NotSpecified
    Audio Format = MPEG1
    Number of Channels = 2
    Quantization = 16
    Frequency = 48000

The Languages should be german and englisch, and are reported this way by DVD-Player and VLC. Mayhap just an oversight as MPEG Audio is quite rare. Or is it again a case of "this information is stored in more than one location on a disc"-case? I vaguely remember that the region-info is present in more than one place.

no, scratch that
2) canadian "Monters Inc" has similar problems, all 3 DD-Tracks are reported as french

3) german "Chicken & Run"
Errormessage (full per PM) after
    Audio Stream 3 ................
which is a "Score and Soundeffects only" track that has no name in VLC and is reported as "others" by my DVD Player

4) US "Highlander" - The Immortal Edition
shows only "Disc is DL" and then there is an error

5) US "Se7en"
no error but a supposed dts 6.1 is reported as
    Audio Stream 7 ................
    Language = Englisch (USA)
    Extention = NotSpecified
    Audio Format = DTS
    Number of Channels = 6
    Quantization = 16
    Frequency = 48000
but channels should be 7?
I'll try to find if this is really 6.1 or 5.1 matrixed

cya, Mithi

PS I used DVDInfo V1.01

Thanks Mithi for all the testing. Right now I'm not sure how to handle the debugging, since the DVD must be in the drive for the API to work. For the running times, I am scanning the IFOs, and so I would only need a zipped up copy of the IFO files for debugging (that worked well for Wigram's case). But the main bulk of the info comes from the Microsoft IDVDInfo2 interface - and that requires the actual physical DVD (or ISO) to be mounted in a drive.

In terms of enhancements to DVDInfo, my main focus is on data accuracy, since it is not the real tool - just a test platform to view the extraction results. The real tool will be the plugin - unless people also need a standalone tool. It is extra work - maybe one of the other developers will volunteer to make a nice GUI presentation class that I can embed into DVDInfo and pass a structure of extracted data for display.

Edit: @Mithi: For the language issue, the lookup table might depend on the localization of where the program is running. I will explore that. And I agree I would have expected the 6.1 to be represented as 7 channels. That was the way I was intending to use the channels info in the plugin for #channels > 2.

And I am also wonderimg ... I always am using AnyDVDHD: perhaps the accuracy of the tool is somehow dependent on using it - also for BDInfo? Maybe people can try with / without, so we get a definitive answer.

Quoting Mark Harrison:

Quote:
I see it doesn't seem to read the actual aspect ratio (unless I'm seeing it wrong).  Looks like everything will be 4x3 or 16x9.  That's too bad.  But not completely unexpected.

Wish I had time to work on a GUI, but I don't.  Still, for my Database Query plugin I developed a few custom controls.  A tree view with tri-state checkboxes (no big deal) and a gradient panel (less of a big deal).  But my custom tab control is fairly powerful.  If you, or any other plug-in developer, would find them useful, let me know.  I'd be happy to share.

Thanks. I'll send you a PM when I get to that point. But for now, data accuracy is my main focus. I don't follow your comments about aspect ratios. What I'm getting is what is encoded on the DVD. Is there something different / better that I should be looking at?  Note: I also pull the x/y resolution - should I be computing an aspect ratio from that instead of using the aspect ratio stored in the DVD info? (Edit: nope I can see now that is wrong).

Quoting Mark Harrison:

Quote:
Quoting mediadogg:

Quote:
I don't follow your comments about aspect ratios. What I'm getting is what is encoded on the DVD. Is there something different / better that I should be looking at?

Based on the limited feedback I've seen posted, it appears the aspect ratio is either 4x3 or 16x9.  And in a sense, that's 100% accurate.  The DVD standard only allows for those two aspect ratios.

What I'm not seeing is 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 or 2.39:1, etc.  Those are all encoded (with black bars added obviously) at 16x9 (1.78:1).

So I'm seeing the aspect ratio of the video on the disc (either 4x3 or 16x9), but I'm not seeing the aspect ratio of the content within the 16x9 frame (taking black bars into account).  I'm not sure if there's a library function to pull that or not.  If not, the only way I know how to get an answer is to pull an actual frame off the disc and literally search top to bottom and try to determine where the black bars start and end.  Obviously that would be difficult, but not entirely impossible.

I think you can glean that from three values that are available in Video Attributes:
LetterBox Permitted, Pan&Scan Permitted and IsSource LetterBoxed

I have updated V1.02 to include all three of those parameters. It would help to know how I have to interpret them to fill in the DVDP fields correctly. I do have code that can pull a frame and analyze for black bars if that becomes absolutely necessary (I use it in LoadDVD Pro to detect when a YouTube video has stopped playing).

@everybody - Try V1.03 to see if it solves language / culture errors. I found one bug, but there is problem I don't know how to solve: when IDVDInfo2 gives me a "0" for the Culture Info - that is an invalid value. I am now trapping this and substituting the Culture/Language of the System/OS that DVDInfo is running on - but that of course has nothing to do with the DVD. By the way, I also check for the Default Culture - and I only substitute if the DVD default audio / video culture is also set to "0". Edit: I am now also checking for default menu language. This should never be invalid. Hopefully this will be a good solution.

Blu-Ray regions:

My understanding is that there is no specific place where Region is encoded on the BD. Instead there is code that executes while the disk is playing that checks the region setting of the physical drive and then makes decisions - including whether or not to play the content.

For this project, unless I get a better way to do it (somebody has offered to look into for us and update the BDInfo code if possible - I'll keep you posted), here is how I will make an educated guess:

Region A will be set if the major title audio tracks have languages that include English or Spanish or Portuguese or Japanese.

Region B will be set if the major title audio tracks have languages that include French, German, Spanish or Portuguese.

Region C will be set if the major title audio tracks have languages that include Russion or Chinese, or any other language in the case that neither A nor B are set.

So far, I have no way to determine "Side" of the Blu-Ray disk (if a DVD is on the other side, the DVD should report as "SideB" ). I actually do not know if there are any dual-sided BD discs.

Quoting KinoNiki:

Quote:
Not even AnyDVD can tell the region of all BDs so I don't think it's something that can be implemented easily. You will have to do it the manual way by testing the disc with different regions. And defaulting to region A, B or C is not recommended imho since most BDs (about 70% I think) are in fact region free. If anything, it's better to trust the studio, like Warner and Universal discs are almost always region free.

OK then but I will remain open to ideas. Thanks.

Quoting mediadogg:

Quote:
@everybody - Try V1.03 to see if it solves language / culture errors.

It does! French is now correctly identified as the fourth audio stream of UPC=025192336928.3

Disc is DL DVD: DiscID = E6C2BB4C6F76FAE1: SideA
Disc Label = THE_LAND_BEFORE_TIME
Disc Regions: [ 1 ]
Number Of Volumes = 1 ,Number Of Titles = 40.
Title 1 Information ( 1 : 8 : 44  )============================
Number of Chapters = 17
App Mode = NotSpecified
Aspect Ratio = 4:3
Compression = Mpeg2
Resolution (X:Y) = 720:480
LetterBox Permitted : Pan&Scan Permitted = False:False
Source LetterBoxed = False
Film Mode = False
Frame Height = 525
Frame Rate = 60
Number of Audio Streams = 4
    Audio Stream 1 ................
    Language = English (United States)
    Extention = NotSpecified
    Audio Format = AC3
    Number of Channels = 6
    Quantization = 16
    Frequency = 48000
    Audio Stream 2 ................
    Language = English (United States)
    Extention = NotSpecified
    Audio Format = DTS
    Number of Channels = 6
    Quantization = 16
    Frequency = 48000
    Audio Stream 3 ................
    Language = Spanish (Spain)
    Extention = NotSpecified
    Audio Format = AC3
    Number of Channels = 6
    Quantization = 16
    Frequency = 48000
    Audio Stream 4 ................
    Language = French (France)
    Extention = NotSpecified
    Audio Format = AC3
    Number of Channels = 6
    Quantization = 16
    Frequency = 48000
    ...


I notice that the audio is identified by both the language itself and the country. Does it mean that it is possible to distinguish between English (United States) and English (United Kingdom) ?
I'll try to find DVDs dubbed to french in Quebec and compare with those dubbed in France and report later.

retested with 1.03

1) German "Wallace & Gromit" DVD:
languages are now correct

2) canadian "Monters Inc"
languages are now correct

3) german "Chicken & Run"
Errormessage is gone
    Audio Stream 3 ................
    Language = Deutsch (Deutschland)
    Extention = NotSpecified
    Audio Format = AC3
    Number of Channels = 6
    Quantization = 16
    Frequency = 48000

The other Audio Streams are either
    Extention = Captions
or
    Extention = DirectorComments1
so I guess the "NotSpecified" was the problem

4) US "Highlander" - The Immortal Edition
still shows only "Disc is DL" and then there is an error
Quiet possible that this really is a problem on the discs-side as you wrote in your pm

I'm still on the dts 6.1 issue (if it is an issue), will report later.


cya, Mithi