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mikempet
Visitor

Which Screen to Use for selecting DVD chapters?

I am developing a channel that provides DVDs to play. I plan to use a poster list screen (roPosterScreen) to present the DVD choices to the user. What screen should I use to allow the user a choice for an individual chapter within the DVD selected? After reviewing the Developer Guide, I believe I should use the episodic picker. I plan to provide the DVD chapters in individual MP4 or TS VOD container files. Please advise if this is the correct approach.
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5 REPLIES 5
destruk
Streaming Star

Re: Which Screen to Use for selecting DVD chapters?

Judge Rules Against Remotely Watching DVDs over the Internet

http://techland.time.com/2011/08/03/jud ... -internet/
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destruk
Streaming Star

Re: Which Screen to Use for selecting DVD chapters?

I just think it's a real bad idea - most everyone I know watches a movie from beginning to end - or from where they left off with their own viewing of the content on the same service (Netflix resume, Amazon Resume, whichever) - Chapter jumping to favorite selected scenes isn't a big priority in my experience. For particularly popular content like the cut scenes in Ice Age, they just cut out those sections and run them as a single separate file.
For TV Shows, there are 2 or 3 chapter points - but even then it's the same thing - 'most' people will watch the episode from beginning to end instead of starting watching at chapter 2. If you don't want the beginning credits, or end credits, or the 'previously on' then just crop that out before encoding.
As for what screen to use if I wanted to do this with DVDs I actually own the rights to redistribute (home movies perhaps?) - I don't think I'd set up chapters for those either - I'd have my home wedding video, my birthday video, etc all on a gridscreen as single play content items, and I'd have master MP4 files already encoded from source raw camera recordings - I wouldn't be reducing quality by even putting it on DVD to begin with - maybe BluRay.
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mikempet
Visitor

Re: Which Screen to Use for selecting DVD chapters?

Thank you both for your replies. The DVD content would is an instructional sports program with chapters targeting specific areas of development. Destruk, each chapter would be stored as an individual VOD file asset (5-15 minutes in length) and could be streamed on demand. Using baseball as an example, the viewer may want to view a particular subject on a given day.

For example:

Chapter 1 - Pregame warmup & stretching
Chapter 2 - Throwing
Chapter 3 - Catching
Chapter 4 - Infield skills
Chapter 5 - outfield skills
Chapter 6 - batting
Chapter 7 - pitching
Chapter 8 - Rules

etc..

I wouldn't want to have to fast-forward through the entire program to get to a chapter of interest. Does that make sense?
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mikempet
Visitor

Re: Which Screen to Use for selecting DVD chapters?

Sorry Destruk. You posted both replies.
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destruk
Streaming Star

Re: Which Screen to Use for selecting DVD chapters?

Your exposition still doesn't change the resulting choices. You either encode the entire DVD as a single file, and then use the "Playstart" meta-data attribute on roku to start playing from the desired timestamp within the file, or you encode each portion separately and use one of the numerous screen types or springboard buttons to play the file you want played.
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