ATTENTION! The author declines any responsability from the use of this program. This software may not be used with copyrighted material. The author doesn't intend to promote piracy by any means, and the scope of the application is limited to video processing tasks with home made digital video material.

Contents

• Overview
  • Main Purpose
  • Main Features
  • Requirements
  • Further Features
• Using the Player
  • General Information
  • Autostart and Command Line Parameters
  • Copying language audio files to HDD
  • The Control Bar
  • The On-Screen Display
  • The Configuration Dialog
  • Storage of Configuration Data
  • Remote Control Support
• Making your own Micro DVD
  • Introduction
  • Seven Steps to a Micro DVD
    • Step 1: The Main Movie
    • Step 2: Special Features
    • Step 3: Navigation Menu
    • Step 4: Multilanguage
    • Step 5: Subtitles
    • Step 6: Directory Structure
    • Step 7: The INI File
  • Some additional information and hints
• Format of the INI file
  • General information
  • INI file entries with explanation and information
    • The Main Section
    • The Movie Section
    • The Chapters Section
    • The Specials Section
    • The Languages Section
    • The Subtitles Section
    • The Menu Section
    • The Page Section
    • The Selection Section
• Using the INI Editor
  • What is a MDVD INI File?
  • What is the INI Editor good for?
  • The Main (Parent) Window
  • The Toolbars
  • The Editing Window
  • The Popup Menues
  • The INI File Wizards
• Contacting the author
• Credits

Overview

Main Purpose

Play DVD movies from CD or HDD as close to the original as possible, including as many features of the original DVD as possible and giving as much comfort as possible compared to original DVD viewing.

Main Features

To achieve its goal, MDVDP has the following main features.

• Play Main Movie: The main movie may be any audio/video file type playable by the Windows Media Player (highly recommended is MPEG4 video and MP3 audio due to great quality at low filesizes).
• "Emulate" original DVD Navigation Menu: To get the look-and-feel as close to the DVD as possible, you can also rip the navigation menu of the DVD to video and still images and have MDVDP display it!
• Play Special Features: Often DVDs offer additional videos containing "making-of"s; or similar background information. Those special feature videos can also be included and played by MDVDP, usually they are reachable through certain click-areas in the nav menu.
• Display Subtitles: An important feature, especially when you watch foreign language movies, are subtitles if you don't understand all of the dialog. Micro DVD Player can display your ripped subtitles.
• Play Multi Language: To make it all complete, MDVDP can even play multilanguage movies!
• High Comfort: To give you all the comfort you want when watching MDVDs, the user interface of the popular software DVD player tool PowerDVD 2.5 was used for MDVDP. Most of PowerDVDs features are available, plus some more.

Requirements

• CPU: depends on the type of video you are playing. For the suggested MPEG4 you need a Pentium II or faster for smooth playback, for MPEG1 a Pentium 233 MMX or faster should be enough.
• CD-ROM with fast track access time for smooth winding/jumping in the movie and to minimize skips+lag when playing multi-language
• Windows 9x/NT/2000
• Microsoft MediaPlayer 6.4+. Downloadable for free here.
• MPEG4 Video Codec ("DivX ;-)" recommended), MP3 Audio Codec (Fraunhofer recommended, included in the DivX package). This is not needed if you don't intend to use MPEG4-MP3 AVIs.
• Optionally other codecs you wish to use for playback.

Further Features

• Automatic detection of Micro DVDs inserted in CD-ROM drives (can be turned off)
• Up to two CD-ROM drives can be used so you do not have to switch CD when watching a 2-CD movie
• Four different modes of operation:
  • "Load Movie from CD-ROM" checks the selected CD-ROM drive continously for insertion of MDVDs
  • "Load Movie from HDD" useful for development of MDVDs, all files belonging to all CDs of a MDVD are expected in the given path on your HDD
  • "Quick-INI Mode" if you wish to play a video file, plus optionally an audio file with foreign language synchronously, and display subtitles, and all that without having to write an INI File (see here for details), use this mode. It's much like the tools SubViewer/SubMagic then.
  • "File (Playlist) Mode" acts like a normal A/V player like Windows Media Player or Winamp and lets you play single files just right away.
• Movies can consist of one to three CDs (main movie may be one or two CDs, special feature videos may be on CD 1, 2 or 3).
• Video files can have any file type/codec/resolution/data rate you wish (or rather: playable by Windows Media Player)
• Windowed or fullscreen playback
• Comfortable configuration options allowing customization of all important program features, e.g.:
  • Autostart movie after N seconds without activity in Nav Menu
  • Immediately start movie (skip main menu)
  • Skip transition videos in nav menu (those annoying video sequences that normally cannot be interrupted when watching a DVD) always or on clicking the mouse
  • Auto-hide mouse and/or control panel after N seconds without movement
  • Switch to fullscreen mode automatically when starting movie
• Comfortable control bar offering all the usual play control features and some more :-)
• Quick-access chapter/files list available while playing movie
• Bookmark feature: you can set bookmarks at any point in a movie and quickly jump to them later. Bookmarks are saved to the MDVDP.INI for all movies.
• Remember-last-play-position feature: when you press Stop while watching a movie, the current play position is saved and can be recalled later, so you can go on watching exactly where you left off.
• Automatic request and detection of next/another CD for a movie when necessary. Can be aborted.
• Supports different subtitle file formats, e.g. SubRipper/SubViewer, SubRip
• Audio files for secondary languages can be automatically copied to and played from HDD to reduce CD-ROM laser movement.
• The player supports the following parameters on the command line upon start of the EXE:
  • One filename with extension .INI or .MVD (switch to MDVD Mode, set the movie loading mode to "Load Movie from Directory", use the given file as INI file and play the movie).
  • One filename with extension .LST or .M3U (switch to File Mode, import the given filename as a playlist, and play the first entry.)
  • One or more filenames with any extension except .INI and .MVD (switch to File Mode, use the given filenames as playlist entries, and play the first one).
  • The text "/AutoPlayCD" (switch to MDVD Mode, set the movie loading mode to "Load Movie from CD-ROM", set the Primary CD-ROM to the drive you are running the EXE from, and play the currently inserted CD).
• Remote Control support. The player can be controlled through an IR remote control like the RealMagic Hollywood+ remote.
• Transparent subtitles. The subtitles are only shown in fullscreen mode and can be displayed either in the black space between movie and screen edge, or (if you force that or if no black space is available) transparently over the video.
• On-screen display. The following parameters of the player can be displayed transparently over the video when in fullscreen mode: timer, play state, chapter information, seek bar, volume bar and movie information.
• Drag-and-drop support. Files can be dropped from any Explorer window or other file manager on the control bar. The player behaves then as if the file name was passed on the command line.
• Pan-and-scan function for video. A widescreen (e.g. 2,35:1) movie can be vertically stretched to use the screen like a 1:85:1, 16:9 or 4:3 movie, cutting part of the movie to the left and right.

Using the Player

General Information

Usage of the Micro DVD Player is quite straightforward, most of its functions are self-explaining. Still I'd like to give some hints and information.

In order to be recognized by the player as an MDVD, a CD has to contain the movie's INI file in the root, named "MDVD.INI". If no such file exists on the CD, it is not treated as a Micro DVD.

The player supports drag-and-drop. You can drop files from any Explorer window or other file manager on the control bar. Depending on the file extension, the player behaves like the file was passed as a command line parameter (see next section!).

The on-screen display is available only in fullscreen mode and is currently turned on/off only via keyboard (default key is "O") or remote control.

Autostart and Command Line parameters

You can run the MDVDP.EXE with the following types of command line parameters:

1. One filename with extension .INI or .MVD (example: "MDVDP.EXE d:\mdvdtest\MDVD.INI").
   This will cause the player to switch to MDVD Mode, set the movie loading mode to "Load Movie from Directory", use the given file as INI file and play the movie.
   Besides .INI the player here also accepts .MVD in case you want to make a Windows Explorer file type association to automatically run MDVDP.EXE when you click on an .MDV file (.INI is a bit generic for that purpose). Attention: Be aware though that the INI file on a CD MUST be named MDVD.INI, otherwise it won't be recognized.
2. One filename with extension .LST or .M3U (example: "MDVDP.EXE e:\mp3\classic.m3u").
   This will cause the player to switch to File Mode, empty the playlist, import the given playlist, and play the first entry.
3. One or more filenames with any extension except .INI and .MVD (example: "MDVDP.EXE d:\movies\test.avi d:\movies\test2.avi").
   This will cause the player to switch to File Mode, empty the playlist, use the given filenames as new playlist entries, and play the first one.
4. The text "/AutoPlayCD"
   This causes the player to switch to MDVD Mode, set the movie loading mode to "Load Movie from CD-ROM", set the Primary CD-ROM to the drive you are running the EXE from, and play the currently inserted CD
   This function is useful if you want to put the player together with the movie on a CD, and execute it through AUTORUN.INF. Just use the command "MDVDP.EXE /AutoPlayCD" and the player will automatically launch and start the movie upon insertion.
5. The text "/QuickINI /V:VideoFile /A:AudioFile /S:SubtitleFile"
   This causes the player to switch to QuickINI Mode, set the video, audio and subtitle files to the given names and play the movie. Using this you can very quickly launch a video with optional secondary language and subtitles.

Note: If the name of an .INI or .MVD file does not begin with a drive letter and ":\", like "C:\", it is regarded to be a relative pathname to the directory where MDVDP.EXE (in case of command line) or the .MVD file resides.

If the player is already running, then the command line you start a new instance of the player with is passed to the already running instance.

>You can also Drag-and-Drop a file from any Windows Explorer or other type of file manager style window to the player's control bar. This makes the player act like it was just started with the corresponding file as command line parameter.

Copying language audio files to HDD

When playing a secondary language of a movie that uses Method One, MDVDP plays the video from the primary file and the audio from another audio-only file. Therefore two files have to be accessed at the same time. Although the data rate of the second file is only about 20 kB/sec, which should in no case cause performance problems, the reading laser of the CD-ROM is moved unnecessarily much.

To get around this problem, the player offers the function to automatically copy secondary audio files to a temporary directory on the harddrive and load them from there, while still playing the video from CD.

You activate this feature on the MOVIE tab of the configuration dialog. You can choose there whether you want to be asked if the player should copy audio to the HDD, or whether it should do so automatically. Plus you can choose whether the copied files are removed from HDD after the movie ends, either automatically or after a confirmation. If you leave the files on HDD, they will automatically be used again when you watch the movie again. Furthermore you can set the directory where to store the temp audio files.

The copying of audio files to HDD is initiated when a secondary language is activated while watching a movie. Deletion of audio files is done when the movie stops.

You can manage the temp audio (meaning: delete them independently from inserting the movie CD) in the BOOKMARKS tab of the configuration dialog.

The Control Bar

The control bar is where all the interesting action takes place. A little screenshot:

I'll explain the function of all its buttons now, from left to right. Note: Buttons that are currently inactive (=not clickable) are shown in light grey, while active buttons have a black icon.

Icon	Function	Short- cut
	The long horizontal bar below the display is the Movie Position Slider. You can quickly jump in the movie by clicking and/or holding the mouse in this slider. Note: When your main movie consists of two CDs, a little vertical bar shows the position in the movie where the CD needs to be changed.
	Increases the main volume of the movie (including movie itself, the menu and all special feature vides) by one level.	PAD +
	Decreases the main volume of the movie (including movie itself, the menu and all special feature vides) by one level.	PAD -
	Mutes/unmutes the movie (including movie itself, the menu and all special feature vides).	PAD *
	By clicking this area you can open/close the hatch hiding the advanced contol buttons.
	Toggles the time display between elapsed and remaining time.	T
	Opens a popup window containing the Run Special Video list when in MDVD Mode. Only available while the nav menu is running.	S
	When in MDVD Mode, this button lets the player return to the menu from a running movie, or, when clicked a second time, restart the movie at the position you left it for the menu. In File Mode this button opens the Playlist Editor, which is very easy to use. Besides the command buttons at the bottom: to add/remove single files, double click them in the filelist/playlist window.	M
	Opens a popup window containing the Jump to Chapter list when in MDVD Mode, or the Choose File list when in File Mode.	C
	When in File Mode, this button toggles the Shuffle Mode of the player. When shuffle is active, the files in the playlist are played in random order. Each time shuffle is activated or playing starts, the random order is renewed, and lasts until you turn off shuffle or playing again.	H
	When in File Mode, this button toggles the Repeat Mode of the player. There are three modes: no repeat, repeat one and repeat all. Repeat one plays the selected file over and over again, repeat all starts the whole playlist from the beginning when it reaches the end.	R
	Lets you add a new bookmark for the movie currently running. Bookmarks can be edited in the Configuration dialog. Note: A bookmark is a personal marker in the movie that you can jump to directly; you can mark your favourite scenes that way.)	A
	Opens the Jump to Bookmark popup window.	B
	Lets you choose another language in a popup window if the movie being played has more than one language available.	L
	Lets you choose another subtitle or deactivate them in a popup window if the movie being played has subtitles available. IMPORTANT: Currently Micro DVD Player only displays the subtitles when you watch the video in Fullscreen Mode ! This might change in a future version.	U
	Using this you can quickly choose the necessary files for the Quick-INI Feature. See Configuration for details.	Q
	Opens the Configuration Dialog.
	Toggles between MDVD and File Mode. In MDVD Mode the program is ready to play Micro DVDs from the CD-ROM or HDD (as selected in the Configuration or using the Movie Source button), or construct INI data internally on the fly if Quick-INI Mode is selected. Quick-INI Mode is useful if you want to play a video file with either an audio file (foreign language) synchronously or view subtitles, without having to write an INI file. In File Mode you can play freely play single audio/video files, which you compose in the Playlist.	F
	Toggles the movie source for MDVD Mode between Load from CD-ROM, Load from Directory and Quick-INI. See Configuration for details.	G
	Toggles the Zooms State the video window. There are three size states: original size, double size (only available if the double-sized video still fits on your screen!) and fullscreen.	TAB
	This currently keyboard-only function toggles the OSD (on-screen display) in fullscreen mode. Depending on the settings you made in the configuration dialog, the OSD is either turned on/off, or toggled through off/mode 1/mode 2.	O
	Steps one frame back/forward in the movie. Note: These buttons are only available when the movie is in Pause-Mode.	PGDN PGUP
	Play. Starts the movie/file when in Stop mode, or continues playing when in Pause mode. When already playing and not winding, and player is in File Mode, then the currently playing file is restarted. Note: When the menu of a Micro DVD is running, pressing Play starts the movie at the position where you last stopped it.	SPACE
	Stop. Sets the player in Stop mode no matter what mode it is in just now. When playing a Micro DVD, the current play position is remembered (see Play command).	ESC
	Pause. When currently playing a movie or file, the player is set in Pause mode. This also activates the functions Previous/Next Frame.	BACKSPACE
	Previous chapter/file. When in MDVD Mode, the player jumps to the previous chapter of the movie. When in File Mode, the previous file in the playlist is loaded.	P
	Next chapter/file. When in MDVD Mode, the player jumps to the next chapter of the movie. When in File Mode, the next file in the playlist is loaded.	N
	By clicking on the dark circle around the play/stop/etc. buttons you can set different playback speeds. There are 2x and 0.5x forward (while playing continuoulsy), and fast winding (jumps once per second, 10 or 30 seconds forward or 5, 10 or 30 seconds backwards).	Cursor Left/Right
	This button ejects the CD(s) from the CD-ROM(s) you set as primary and secondary CD-ROM drive in the configuration dialog.	E
To move the mouse around on the Nav Menu or in the Chapters/etc. Selection Window, use the Cursor Keys. To simulate a mouse click in those cases, press the space bar.
Some explanation for graphics that appear in the left-hand display area of the control bar:
	This icon tells you that the player is in MDVD mode with Movie Source set to CD. Details on INI file format are here.
	This icon tells you that the player is in MDVD mode with Movie Source set to Directory (Harddisk).
	This icon tells you that the player is in MDVD mode with Movie Source set to Quick-INI. Details on Quick-INI are here.
	This icon tells you that the player is in FILE mode.
	Here the player shows the active subtitle.
	Here the player shows the active language.
	This tiny symbol tells you about the player's mute state. If you just see a white dot here without the curved lines on both sides, the player is set to mute.
	When you see this, the player is in Shuffle Mode.
	When you see this, the player is in Repeat Mode.
	When you see this, the player is in Repeat All Mode.

The On-Screen Display

When in fullscreen mode, you can activate an OSD (on-screen display) which shows important information like play time, play mode, chapter info, volume bar, seek bar, movie info etc. transparently over the video.

Therefore the OSD is only available when you use transparent subtitle mode. The OSD is activated by pressing the O key. (This is the default key which may be changed in the config dialog.)

When switching to fullscreen while a movie/file (not nav menu!) is running - or starting a movie/file when in fullscreen - for the first time since player start, the transparent overlay window is initialized. A little timer is necessary to enable the video to "settle down" (see here for details) before the init is done.

This initialization uses some kind of trick, and is quite timing critical. To make sure the next keyframe of the AVI passes before the init). Use the setting Minimum Wind/Sync Delay in configuration. Do not click the mouse or press keys while the init timer is running. On some systems, the transparency might totally fail due to behaviour of the graphics card etc. In that case, you can turn off transparent subtitles (and thus unfortunately disabling OSD) in the configuration dialog.

The OSD is only active when you watch the main movie of an MDVD, or watch a video in file mode. It is not available when the nav menu of an MDVD is running.

In the configuration dialog you can choose what elements of the OSD are visible, optionally you can use two OSD modes which are toggled using the OSD activation key.

Furthermore you can choose whether certain elements of the OSD (play mode, chapter info and volume bar) appear for a short time when the corresponding player parameter changes, and automatically disappear again (if they are not active due to active OSD anyway) after a configurable number of seconds.

The Configuration Dialog

This is where you set all of the player's parameters.

• The SOURCE page
  Here you set where the program shall play MDVDs from, in case it is set to MDVD Mode.
  • Load Movie from CD-ROM
    Here you can choose the primary and secondary CD-ROM, and whether CD- ROMs are periodically (and upon program start) checked for inserted CDs. Further information:
    • A movie is always started from the primary CD-ROM, but once it is running, the secondary can be used too, to provide the second CD of a 2-CD movie.
    • You do not necessarily have to insert the first CD of a multi-CD movie to begin watching. As the nav menu data have to be on ALL CDs (also see here), you can also insert the second CD and select an appropriate chapter/bookmark to begin with.
  • Load Movie from Directory
    Choose the desired INI file on your HDD here. For this loading mode, all files belonging to the movie (from all CDs) must be found on the HDD, there naturally is no request to insert another volume.
  • Use Quick-INI Mode
    In case you quickly want to watch a movie from an AVI file while synchronously playing the audio from another file and displaying subtitles from a third, but you're too lazy to write an INI file, you can use the Quick-INI mode. Just choose the desired files and press Play. Concerning file type and number of lines for subtitles: they are detected automatically.
    Note: You can also use the button Quick-INI on the control bar itself to set those parameters.
• The INTERFACE page
  Here you set several aspects of player-user interaction. You configure the on-screen display and set options for display, mouse and keyboard.
• The MENU page
  Here you set several menu related parameters. Most of the options are self-explaining, just some annotations:
  • The option Jump from main menu page to chapters selection after N video loops applies to an animated (video) main menu pages with a looping video only.
  • A menu intro page is the page that is first activated when the movie starts. Often DVD movies have some kind of introduction video before the main menu loop.
  • See here for details about transition videos.
• The MOVIE page
  Here you set several movie related parameters. The options are self-explaining. For details on copying secondary audio language to HDD, see here. On the MPEG4/DIVX tab, you can set the picture options of the MPEG4 (and DIVX which operates identically) codec directly. Support for CPU (Quality) setting is also available now.
  Important! You must download and use the release 3.11+ of DIVX in order to use the CPU Quality setting. Older versions have a bug making it ignore the CPU setting.
• The MISC page
  Here you set several miscellaneous parameters. The options are self-explaining. For details on wind/sync delays, see here.
• The BOOKMARKS page
  On this tab you can edit your stored bookmarks. You can delete all saved information for a movie (Delete-Button under Movies), remove temporary audio files (for details see here for details), and edit bookmarks and other remembered data.
• The SUBTITLES page
  Here you set several subtitle related parameters. Most of the options are self-explaining, just some annotations:
  • The subtitles are shown either above/below the movie, according to your settings, if there is enough space. If there isn't enough space, the subs are shown transparently over the movie.
  • The player can automatically display lines of subtitles in different colors if they are part of a dialog. Besides the default color, you can set 5 dialog colors here. If the entry DialogString is present in your MDVD INI file, then the dialog colors are used (color 1 for the first speaker, then color 2, color 3 and so on), otherwise the default color is used for the whole subtitle.
  • The settings for font face, size, color, style and position and be overridden by the subtitle file (of course only if that is of MDVDP's native file format), if you allow this in the settings. There may be default settings for a whole subtitle file (given in a special line) plus individual settings for specific lines. See here for details.
• The REMOTE page
  Micro DVD Player can be operated using IR Remote Controls, you set the necessary options for IR support here. Currently only the RealMagic remote is supported. For details on IR support, see here.

Storage of Configuration Data

The configuration data of MDVDP (including settings, bookmarks for all movies and the playlist) are stored in an ASCII file named MDVDP.INI. This file is usually located in the same directory as the MDVDP.EXE

I find this method more practical than using the registry for the whole configuration, because you can easily transfer the program together with its config to another computer or Windows installation without worrying about config stored in the registry. Plus you can clean the program up more easily without having to deal with registy entries.

Important: When you burn a movie CD, do not include an MDVDP.INI on the CD. It won't be used anyway, cause it is not writeable on the CD. As you'll see later in this section, the file is automatically created and managed for each user. For playing a movie from CD, the user has to set the player to MDVD mode and the loading to "From CD", so the entry "MoviePath" has no effect in this case!

But since Micro DVD Player is able to run from HDD as well as directly from CD, and the MDVDP.INI has to be writable, it cannot be stored in the same dir as the EXE if it is run from CD.

To get around this problem, the location of the INI file is stored in the Windows registry, in the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\DVE\Micro DVD Player\INILocation" every time the INI file is saved. In case the program is run from CD, and there is no path stored in the registry yet, the INI file is saved in the user's WINDOWS directory, whose name is taken from the environment variable %WINDIR% (usually C:\WINDOWS for Windows 9x and C:\WINNT for Windows NT/2000).

When the program is started, it tries to read its configuration. First it checks if it is run from HDD or CD. (To do so, it tries to create a temporary file in its own directory and deletes it again, if creation was successful.)

In case of running from HDD, the program does the following:

• In any case, the configuration is later written to "MDVDP.INI" in the program's own directory.
• Check if there is a file "MDVDP.INI" in its own directory. If yes, use this to read the config from.
• If not, check if there is a file "MDVDP.INI" in the user's WINDOWS directory. If yes, use this to read from.
• If not, use the program's default configuration.

In case of running from CD, the program does the following:

• Check if the registry entry denoting the INI file's location exists, and if the denoted file exists. If yes, use this file to read config from and to write config to.
• If not, use the program's default configuration. Store the INI file to the user's WINDOWS directory.

After loading the configuration, it is stored again immediately, so that it is then stored in its proper place (in case it was read from the WINDOWS directory but is to be stored in the program's own directory) and so that the registry entry denoting the location is written.

This has the effect that, if the program was run from HDD once, the INI file is always written to that directory on the HDD. Otherwise, if no HDD stored INI file is available and the program is run from CD, the file is stored to the user's WINDOWS directory.

You can move the program to another directory without having to change the registry entry manually, because when run from HDD, the program does not heed the registry entry, but only looks for the INI file in its own directory and then in WINDOWS, and later automatically stores the new location to the registry.

Remote Control Support

Micro DVD Player can be operated using IR Remote Controls. Currently only the RealMagic remote is supported. The remote buttons trigger the following functions:

• COMPUTER - Closes the player
• Cursor up/down - When a MDVD Menu is running, those buttons move the mouse one selection up/down. When the Chapter/Bookmark/Language/etc. Selection Window is open, the mouse is moved one line up/down. When the player is stopped, Cursor Up toggles MDVD/File Mode and Cursor Down toggles MDVD Source.
• Cursor left/right - When a MDVD Menu is running, those buttons move the mouse one selection left/right. When in File Mode, Cursor Left toggles Repeat Mode, and Cursor Right toggles Shuffle Mode.
• Select - Simulates a mouse click in an MDVD Menu or a Selection/Message Window.
• Menu/Title/Language/Subtitle - These buttons acts like the buttons on the control bar with the same name.
• OSD - Toggles the on-screen display (only available in fullscreen mode).
• Angle - Since Multiple Angles is not supported on MDVDs, this button is used for Go to Bookmark.
• Play/Stop/Eject/Chapterjump - Act exactly like the buttons on control bar.
• Fast forward/reverse - Toggle the player's Forward/Reverse in 2/5,10,30-seconds jumps mode.
• Frame Advance - If in slow-motion mode, go to Pause. If in Pause, do frame advance. Otherwise, go to slow-motion.
• Vol +/-/Mute - Act like the volume/mute state buttons on control bar.
• 0 - 9 / Ent - Can be used to enter and confirm a number in the chapter/bookmark/etc. selection window. If no selection window is open yet, the Chapter Selection window is opened.
• VGA/TV - Toggles the Zoom Mode. Later this will also control the VGA/TV output mode of the graphics board.

Making your own Micro DVD

Introduction

Ok, now for the serious stuff: how to make an own Micro DVD.

First a note: I'm not going to explain the whole process of ripping a DVD here in detail, there are many good web pages about this.

Micro DVD Player plays everything that the Windows Media Player supports, since it uses the same system functions for the actual playback. So all video/audio files you create in this process just have to be playable by MediaPlayer to be recognized by MDVDP !

You could use normal VCD-format MPEG1 files e.g., or M-JPEG AVIs, or MPEG2 or even VOBs if MediaPlayer plays them on your system. But the highly recommended format for Micro DVDs is AVIs with MPEG4 video and MP3 audio, because this gives the best possible quality at the least CD space usage!

IMPORTANT: CDs used as Micro DVDs must have a volume label, because the player detects whether a CD is inserted by checking the label.

Seven Steps to a Micro DVD

Note: The steps 2-5 are optional, so if you do not want or have a chapter list, nav menu etc., you can set up your MDVD very quickly, the INI file only consists of the MAIN and MOVIE section then. But to make it really interesting and looking cool, you should consider ripping the nav menu too, or at least putting in the chapters list.

Step 1: The Main Movie

A Micro DVD is basically a ripped DVD movie. So go ahead and use your favourite ripping method to create your main movie! It may be 1 or 2 CDs long. Give the A/V files any name you wish, I suggest something like "VTS_01_1.VOB" and so on, to make it look really cool. :)

Note: The file name is not important for format recognition, e.g. AVI files can have any name, they are still recognized as AVI.

Step 2: Special Features

Besides the main movie an MDVD may contain any number of additional A/V files for Special Feature (making-of, reports, outtakes etc.) videos on the DVD. So you can rip those, which are usually in VOB files after the main movie, too.

Special videos may be located either on CD 1 or 2 (meaning together with the main movie if there's still room on the CD) or you can put them on a third CD. Anyway all special videos have to be on the SAME CD !

Step 3: Navigation Menu

Micro DVD Player can "emulate" the original navigation menu of a DVD. For that purpose, you must first create a video file (if the DVD has animated menus) containing all the animation sequences. Do so by using your usual ripping method, plus some cutting utilities (either on VOB- or on AVI-level) to put your menu video together.

If the DVD menu also contains still images, which is the case for most DVDs, use a DVD player that can do still captures (save single frames as BMP), like PowerDVD. Capture all stills you need, and convert them to JPG to save space. Put the menu video and all still pictures in one directory.

Important: The nav menu files have to be on ALL CDs belonging to a movie, and they have to be in the same directory on all CDs.

Also important: The animated part (AVI) and the still images (JPG) of you menu must have the same dimensions (width+height), or you'll get major trouble. This does of course not apply to the movie itself, which may have a different size.

Step 4: Multilanguage Audio Files

Micro DVD Player can also play multi-language movies. To do so, it uses two methods.

METHOD ONE

The first method is to play the picture from the main A/V file and the sound from an additional audio-only file synchronously.

To use this method, you put the primary language in the main movie A/V file itself, and create an additional audio-only file for each secondary language.

You can do this the following way: convert the video and the audio for all languages separately (e.g. with Mpeg2Avi or Flask for video, and Graphedit for audio). Then use Virtual Dub to multiplex each audio file together with the video file, MP3 compressing it at the same time. This is necessary in order to keep perfect A/V sync. Then load the second resulting AVI and save the WAV from it, giving you the secondary audio file you can use for the player.

METHOD TWO

The second method is to put all the language audio tracks into one multiplexed AVI file. The problem with such AVIs is that MediaPlayer (whose functions MDVDP uses) always plays all audio tracks at once when you feed it with such a muxed file. But there's a very elegant way to get around this problem: GraphEdit.

A good tutorial (written by SPIRIT) on how to create a multi-audio stream AVI and the necessary GRF files to play it back can be found in the file TwoStreams.HTML that came with this documentation. Take a look at it!

When you understood that tutorial, you know how to make Graph files that will play just one language from a multi-lang AVI. Make such a graph for each language, including the main=primary one, in your movie!

Important: The actual AVI file must reside in the same directory as the graph file you create!

If you use the second method, the following differences to the "normal mode of operation" concerning file types (see here) in the INI file apply:

• The entries AVIName and AVI2Name in the section [MOVIE] do not point to the actual video file but to the graph file that plays the primary=main language in the AVI. Make sure the graph file is in the same directory as the actual AVI.
• The entries File for each language in the [LANGUAGES] section do not point to the actual audio file (because no such audio language files exist!), but to the graph that makes the main AVI play the required audio stream. Make sure the graph is in the same directory as the AVI file! This means, the Directory entry for the LANGUAGES section will normally be the same as the Directory for [MOVIE].

There is one disadvantage in using this method: when you switch the language, another video file has to be loaded, which causes the player to make a black-screen break of about 2-3 seconds. Advantage is that you don't need to mess with several A/V files and no copying of audio to HDD is necessary to reduce CDROM laser movement.

Step 5: Subtitles

Micro DVD Player can display subtitles. It reads them from a text file that has a very simple structure. For each subtitle put one line in the file that looks the following way:

{First Frame}{Last Frame}Text

The subtitle can consist of five lines max., use the character | (pipe) as line separator. Last Frame can be empty if the subtitle is to be displayed until the next one is due.

IMPORTANT: Currently Micro DVD Player only displays the subtitles when you watch the video in Fullscreen Mode ! This might change in a future version.

The subtitles are - depending on the settings the user makes in the configuration dialog - displayed in the space between the top or bottom border of the video and the edge of the screen. If the available space is not sufficient, or the user forces it, the subtitles are displayed transparently over the movie.

A real-life example:

{6027}{6101}Can I have five tickets to Terrance|and Phillip's Asses of Fire, please?
{6125}{}No.
{6175}{}What do you mean, "no"?
{6211}{}Asses of Fire|has been rated "R"...
{6263}{}by the Motion Picture|Association of America.
{6314}{}You have to be accompanied|by a parent or guardian.
{6361}{}- But why?|- Because this movie|has naughty language!
{6420}{}- Next, please.|- [ Cash Register Rings ]

MDVDP supports control codes in the text part of subtitles. Control codes may appear anywhere in the subtitle line. Most of the codes are available in two forms: with a lower-case letter (then the code only applies to a single line of the subtitle) or with an upper-case letter (then all lines are affected, no matter in which line the codes occurs).

Currently the following control codes are available:

• {c:$bbggrr}
  You use this code to make each line of a subtitle have a different color. This is useful e.g. for distinguishing lines of different people talking in a dialog.
  bb, gg and rr are 2-digit hexadecimal numbers for the blue, green and red component of the color. 00 means the component is completely off, ff means it is at full intensity. Watch the inverted standard order! First blue, then green, then red. If there is no color control code in a subtitle line, then the user's default color (chosen in the configuration dialog) will be used.
  Note: You can also make the player automatically choose another color when a new person speaks in a subtitle. See here for details.
  An example:
  {6361}{}{c:$0000FF}- But why?|{c:$00FFFF}- Because this movie|has naughty language!
  Here the first line of the two lines in the subtitle would be displayed in full-intensity red, and the second in bright yellow. The same method for placing control codes can be applied to the other codes too!
• {C:$bbggrr}
  Same as lower-case c, but for a whole subtitle.
• {f:fontname}
  You set the font face for a single subtitle line with this code. Replace the fontname with a string determining the font name you wish to use.
• {F:fontname}
  Same as lower-case f, but for a whole subtitle.
• {s:size}
  This is used to set the font size for the whole subtitle. Replace the size with an integer number.
• {S:size}
  Same as lower-case s, but for a whole subtitle.
• {y:style}
  You use this to set the style (bold, italic, underline) for an individual line of a subtitle. Replace the style with a string containing one or more of the letters b, i and u, e.g. bi to make the line bold+italic, or i,u to make it italic-underline. You can use any separator you wish, all chars besides b, i and u are ignored.
• {Y:style}
  Same as lower-case y, but for a whole subtitle.
• {P:position}
  You can set the position of a subtitle using this code. Replace the position with either a 0 (above movie) or a 1 (below movie). There's logically only an upper-case version of this code.
• {o:x-coordinate,y-coordinate}
  Using this code, you can place single lines of your subtitle anywhere freely on the movie. This is useful e.g. if you want to put a translation line under a foreign language sign that appears in the movie. Since the o code only affects one line, you can do this even while people talk, and other lines appear at their usual place, subtitling the dialog. Replace the x- and y-coordinate with integer numbers. The coordinates are relative to the upper left corner of the movie, and must refer to the original resolution, e.g. 720x480, not to fullscreen-stretched coordinates.

Important: You can set default values for a subtitle file (overriding the settings made by the user in the configuration dialog) by adding the following line somewhere to your subtitle file:

{DEFAULT}{}<Control Codes>

Replace the <Control Codes> with any number of control codes that are valid in individual subtitle entries. The control codes have to be the upper-case versions here! E.g. to make the subtitle file by default display in Arial, 18pt, bold+italic and below the movie, use this line:

{DEFAULT}{}{F:Arial}{S:18}{Y:b,i}{P:1}

The user can override all those default and sub/line-individual settings by activating the option "Ignore subtitle styles" in the configuration screen.

Besides its own format, MDVDP also supports other subtitle formats. See here for details. If you want further subtitle file formats besides the currently known ones to be supported, contact me.

Step 6: Directory Structure

Now that you have all files ready, put them together in a directory structure for the CD like the following:

X:\ +--MDVD.INI           The MDVD INI file (see next step) 
    +--Menu_TS            This directory holds all menu related files 
    ¦  +--MTS_01_1.vob    Video file for the menu (it's actually an AVI, but
    |  |                    VOB sounds cooler ;) )
    ¦  +--MTS_02_1.jpg    Some still picture files... 
    ¦  +--MTS_03_1.jpg 
    ¦  +--MTS_04_1.jpg 
    ¦  +--MTS_04_2.jpg 
    +--Video_TS           The movie- and special feature files reside in here 
    |  +--VTS_01_1.vob    The main movie AVI. For a 2-CD movie the file might
    |                       be named VTS_01_2.vob, and special feature videos 
    |                       might be VTS_02_1.vob etc. 
    +--Audio_TS 
       +--ATS_01_1.vob    An audio-only file with the first foreign language

You see, the directory structure is quite simple. And as you can name all of the directories and files as you wish, this is just an example.

Step 7: Creating the INI File

Now you have lots of video-, picture- and soundfiles cluttering around your harddrive, and you somehow need to tell MDVDP what to do with it. This is where the INI file kicks in!

Using it you tell the player in what directory it has to look for the different files, what they are named, what chapters there are and where they start, and last but not least the layout of the nav menu.

Later in this document, you'll find detailed information on the INI file structure and on how to use the INI Editor.

Some additional information and hints

Delay (MPEG 4 and seeking)

When you seek in a compressed video file that uses delta-frames (meaning only the differences to the frame before are recorded), the decoder/player has to refer to the nearest former keyframe (the opposite of a delta frame, keyframes are compressed "standalone", without reference to former or later frames) and quickly "play" to the desired seeking position from there. This playing process normally is invisible, the decoder internally calculates the frames from the keyframe to the desired frame invisibly.

But due to a bug (or at least very unpleasant feature) in the current version of the MPEG 4 decoder, the player does not do this calculation process invisibly, but you see the frames between the nearest keyframe and the desired seek location being displayed quickly on the screen.

Therefore is is highly recommended that, when compressing using DivX, you set the option Keyframes every One second! Otherwise you might see up to 8 seconds of quick seeking whenever you change the play position in your movie.
Furthermore, this calculation process naturally takes some time. The bigger the distance between keyframes, the longer the process takes. So the player needs a certain delay when winding or synchronizing video and secondary language audio, at least one second or half the number of seconds between keyframes.

Another important point where the delay kicks in the the transparent overlay window initialization. The first time the player is put in fullscreen mode after each launch of the program, the overlay window must be initialized. This may not be done until the player is "settled down", meaning it has passed the next keyframe/completed loading a video file.

Therefore three times the movie's delay is used for delaying the transparency intialization.

You can set this delay for your movie in the INI file, plus you can force a certain minimum delay in the player itself, in case you have an old and slow CD-ROM which needs a bit more time to seek and "settle down".

Chapters

A DVD movie usually is divided into chapters. You can of course divide your MDVD in a similar way. When editing the INI file, you can write down the start frame number and the title of each chapter. (Don't worry, the INI Editor does most of the work for you.) Some annotations regarding chapter:

• When making a multi-CD movie, the chapter list must be the same on all CDs, which means all chapters have to be in the list of all CDs.
• On the second CD of a multi-CD movie, the frame numbers do not begin with 0 again, but they are continuous over all CDs (meaning the first frame of CD 2 is "number of frames on CD 1" plus 1 in this regard).
• The INI-Editor has a function "Add frames from CD 1" in the CHAPTERS section. This applies to the Aquire current frame command and is useful for creating the chapters list of CD 2, since the frame numbers have to be continuous, but the editor's movie window shows frame numbers beginning with 0 at the start of the movie.
• The tool VobSnoopy can convert the binary IFO file from a DVD, which holds (among other information) the playing duration in hours,minutes,seconds,frames for each chapter, into an ASCII version with extension .INI. There is a function in the INI Editor with that you can import the chapter start frames from such a file. If you do so, you even don't have to look up the chapter starts for yourself!

Navigation Menu

The nav menu on a MDVD is divided in so-called Pages. A page can be a still image with some clickable areas on it, or a animation with areas, or just a clickarea-less transition video which jumps to another page when finished.

The highest possible number for a page is 500, for a selection it is 50.

Details on what parameters you can set for a page can be found here.

Format of the INI file

General information

• On a CD, the INI file HAS to be named "MDVD.INI", otherwise it will not be recognized by the player! On the HDD, you can select the INI to use, so no special naming is necessary. See also the section about Command Line Parameters earlier in this document.
• You can put comments anywhere in your INI file, everything after a ; (semicolon) is ignored, and so are empty lines.
• The case of letters is ignored, and you can put the lines under a section in any order you wish. As well as you can list the sections in any order you wish, but the order given here is recommended.
• You can leave entries without value in the file if you wish, because entries that have no text behind the = character are ignored. But it is recommended for readability purposes that you omit entries without value.
• In the following table, text in italics describes a parameter (meaning when you read Number or String in the INI file, insert a number or text there), text in bold are keywords and have to appear in the INI exactly as given. | means a choice out of multiple options.

The following part of this document resembles the layout of a real INI file, showing you keywords etc. and giving explanation and information. The contents of the right columns would have to be comments in a real INI file.

INI file entries with explanation and information

Using the INI Editor

What is a MDVD INI File?

Well, since a Micro DVD is not just some boring AVI file, but consists of one or two main movie videos, and optional language files, special feature videos, subtitle files, and, last but not least, navigation menu files, the player must somehow know how to handle all this stuff. :-)

Meaning, the INI file tells the player in what directories the video+audio files are, what their names are, at what frame the chapters start and what their titles are, what has to be displayed on each menu page and much more.

Also in this document are further information on the layout of an INI file, and there are also some real-life examples.

What is the INI Editor good for?

The INI file structure is quite straightforward with almost self-explaining entries, but there are some tasks involved in creating an INI that are quite a lot of work if you have to do them "by hand", for example finding out and typing frame numbers for the chapters list or clickable areas in the menu.

To make such tasks easier, I wrote the MDVD INI Editor. I'm going to explain its functions now.

The Main (Parent) Window

The INI Editor is a so-called MDI (multiple document interface) application, meaning you can open several INI files at once (like you can do with Winword etc.). Plus there is a always a graphic window and a video window inside the main window.

When editing an INI file, the videos and still pictures it uses can be loaded into the corresponding windows for area marking and frame seeking purposes.

The Toolbars

The main toolbar (whose functions are the same than those in the main menu) holds commands to open, save, close and create INI files. The newly implemented INI File Wizard can be launched here too. Furthermore you can freely load videos and pictures to the windows which do not occur in the INI file itself, plus you can "re-parse" the INI file.

When parsing, the combo boxes "Movie File", "Picture File" and "Menu Page" are updated to reflect possible changes made to the entries in the INI. Parsing is automatically done whenever you load a file or insert a video/picture file name through a popup menu command (see below).

The Video Controls toolbar allows you to navigate through the video. With the trackbar you can change the video's playback speed, and the white textbox allows you to jump directly to the frame number that you enter.

The toolbar at the bottom of the main window holds the video slider and two textboxes displaying the selected area and the current frame number in the video window.

The Editing Window

When you open or create a new INI, an editing window opens. It mainly consists of 8 edit boxes put on 4 tabs of a page control (those things often used for config dialogs in programs) holding different sections of the INI file.

Some beta testers asked me why I don't use an interface with check- and text- boxes but simple edit boxes. I hold the view that you can work faster and more efficiently when you have a kind of text editor for your INI files providing you with functions for the more complicated tasks.

The edit boxes have full copy&paste capability. Copy is CTRL-INS, paste is Shift-Ins and cut is Shift-Del.

The editing window also contains three combo boxes at the bottom. Those hold the path&filename of all videos and still pictures and a list of all menu pages mentioned in the INI. By selecting a file or page from the list, the file is loaded to the appropriate window, or the PAGES edit box jumps to the selected page. The contents of those three boxes are updated when you "parse" the INI file (see above).

The Popup Menues

When you left-click on the section title or right-click in an edit box, the popup menu for the section appears. (You can also press the shortcut keys of course, as well as you can do this for the main menu.)

The popup menus contain useful functions for their INI section. Note: All text that is inserted by a popup function appears at the current cursor position!

All sections except for Chapters and Pages have the command "Clear" and "Insert Default Entries". These functions should be quite obvious.

A note concerning default entries: If you don't need all of the default entries (e.g. CopyFrom is often unneccesary), you can still leave those lines in the INI file, without a value, because entries that have no text behind the = character are ignored by the player. But it is recommended for readability purposes that you erase all lines which you don't need.

The other commands for each section are as follows:

• Main
  • Calculate ID
    Generates a 8-char random hexadecimal number that you can use as the ID string for your movie. (Remember, the ID string is used to determine which CDs belong to a movie.) Make sure to use the same ID string for all CDs of your movie!
• Movie
  • Aquire Number of Frames from Video
    This is useful when you set up a two-CD movie, because in that case you have to state the number of frames in both CDs' video files.
  • Insert Video File
    Opens a file requester dialog and lets you choose a video file. Its name is inserted at the cursor position, and the path in written to the "Directory" statement of the Movie section (if this exists).
    Attention: Make sure you select a file that's in the same path as where you saved the INI file, or in a subdirectory! Do not choose files from other paths!
• Menu
  • Aquire Size from Video
    Inserts the dimensions (width,height) of the video currently loaded in the video window into the Menu edit box. Aquire Size from Picture - Does the same with the loaded picture.
  • Insert Video File
    See section MOVIE.
• Specials
  • Insert Video File
    See section MOVIE, except that there is no Directory statement here that could be filled with a path.
• Languages
  • Insert Audio File
    Does basically the same as Insert Video File, but with an audio file. :-) "Directory" statement is filled here too.
• Subtitles
  • Insert Subtitles File
    Does basically the same as Insert Video File, but with a subtitle file. :-) "Directory" statement is filled here too.
  • Insert File Type Number
    I presume you don't want to or can't remember all the subtitle file format numbers, so to help you with that, you can insert a file type number using this submenu (explanation for all numbers is there).
• Chapters
  • Aquire current Frame from Video
    Does what it says. Very useful to create the chapter list for a movie.
  • Add frames from CD 1
    This is a toggle menu entry. If activated, then the number of frames of the movie part on the first CD is added to all frame numbers you aquire. This is used when you do the chapter list for the second part of a 2-CD movie which you already split. In the INI editor's player, the second part video starts with frame 0, but in the INI file's chapters list, the frame numbers have to be continous over both CDs.
  • Import chapter starts from converted IFO file
    The tool VobSnoopy can convert the binary IFO file from a DVD, which hold (among other information) the playing duration in hours,minutes,seconds,frames for each chapter, into an ASCII version with extension .INI. You can import the chapter start frames from such a file using this function. The IFO file you have to use for this purpose is named VTS_NN_0.IFO, where NN is the VOB sequence number of the main movie VOBs (the bunch of 1 GB VOB files), usually 01. Meaning VTS_01_1.VOB and so on is usually the main movie, and VTS_01_0.IFO the file you need. An exception is THE MATRIX whose main VOBs are VTS_02_1.VOB and following.
• Pages
  • Insert PAGE Section
    A navigation menu usually consists of more than one page, so using this function you can insert a new Page section with empty values, just like when you create a new INI.
  • Insert SELECTION Section
    Well guess what this does. :)
  • New PAGE Wizard
    Invokes the wizard to enter information for a new page. The outcome is basically the same as using the Insert PAGE Section command and entering the information in the edit box, but some people seem to like a dialog-style wizard more.
  • New SELECTION Wizard
    Should be clear.
  • Aquire Area from Picture
    Now we get to the really interesting stuff. :) One of the most annoying tasks when creating menu pages is to write the coordinates of clickable areas to the INI. The INI Editor gets you rid of this task. Just click and drag a rectangle on the picture in the picture window, position the cursor in the PAGES edit box where you want the coordinates to be inserted, and choose this command.
  • Aquire Area from Video
    Same as the function before, but for videos.
    NOTE: On a video, there will be NO inverted bar to indicate your selection. This is for technical reasons and unfortunately cannot be changed.
  • Insert Picture File
    Same as Insert Video File but for a (usually JPG) still picture.
  • Aquire current Frame from Video
    I think we already had that. :-)
  • Insert Action Number
    I presume you don't want to or can't remember all the action numbers for selections, so to help you with that, you can insert an action number using this submenu (explanation for all numbers is there).

The INI File Wizards

Many people asked me for it, so I finally implemented it. :-)

Besides the usual edit box interface, you can use a dialog-like function to enter the data for a new INI file. In the File menu you can invoke the main wizard which will let you enter the data for the sections Main, Movie, Chapters, Specials, Languages, Subtitles and Menu.

The outcome of using the wizard is basically the same as using the text edit window, but some people seem to like a dialog-style wizard more. :) So feel free to use whatever you like best.

The wizard is loaded with heaps of context-sensitive information, so no explanation should be necessary here at all. Just give it a try. When you have entered all the desired information, the wizard saves the new INI file and/or opens it in the usual text edit window.

To use a navigation menu, you'll then have to enter information for Pages and Selections. For that purpose, there are two commands in the edit box popup menu for the PAGES section, "New PAGE Wizard" and "New SELECTION Wizard". Use them to enter all pages and selections you need.

Contacting the author

You can contact the programmer of MDVDP for questions, suggestions and bug reports via:

Credits

Thanks to Careyer for graphics, hints and support.

Thanks for many bug reports, suggestions and hints go to:

Special thanks to S.Virth for the French and to Mornstar for the Dutch translation of the documentation!

Also thanks to the Official Beta Tester crew: