"non-hidden buttons NOT acessible with the remote"

[Stephe]

Hello,

I used the PgcEdit Menu feature
Menu > Edit > Hide Button > Jump to non-deleted button (recommended)
to hide buttons in the Special Features menu of a DVD I was trying to copy, and encountered a problem.

I navigated to

VTSM 1, LU 1 (en), 9 (0:30) 9b.

Keeping buttons 2, 3, 6 and 9 as is, I hid buttons 1 (TV spots), 4 (storyboards), 5 (behind the scenes), and 7 (a trailer), but when I tried to hide 8 (another trailer), I got the following warning:

<<
PgcEdit: Menu Editor: Warning
There are non-hidden buttons NOT acessible with the remote!
That's probably not what you want!
From button 9, buttons 2, 3, 6 are not accessible.
Use the cursor key of the remote to test the adjacent link.

Close the editor anyway?
Yes | No
<<

Button 9 is the Main Menu. I chose Yes and it seemed to work, but in the resultant ISO and resultant DVD, I was not able to go from button 9 to buttons 2, 3 or 6. I could go from buttons 2, 3 and 6, though.

Buttons 2, 3 and 6 are all in the left column of the menu, whereas button 9 is at the bottom right of the menu (i.e. in the right column of the menu). My guess is that in order for button 9 to work correctly, the bottom-most button (8) in the left of the menu had to be a non-hidden button, whether I liked it or not.

Is there a workaround for this?

[bigotti5]

You have to redo your button routing for button 9 (Menu buttons - Edit - Adjacent buttons).

[Stephe]

Great. Thank you.

I see that the two choices are

• Show menu buttons > Edit > Edit > automatically link buttons (numerically)
• Show menu buttons > Edit > Edit > automatically link buttons (by position)

I chose

Show menu buttons > Edit > Edit > automatically link buttons (by position)

and the results were as desired, but what is the difference between the choices "numerically" and "by position"?

With the

Show menu buttons > Edit > View > Show adjacent buttons links

box ticked, I am able to see the paths of what button points to what, but it is bewildering to me what the differences are.

I tried hiding only buttons 1 and 8, and the result was that
whether buttons are linked numerically or by position,
all but button 5 (of buttons 2-7) in the left column link to each other and to button 9 in the right column.

None of this stuff is in the Help documentation.

[TheSkiller]

You don't have to use automatic linking. For each button in the menu you can also manually map which button on the remote (up, down, left, right) moves the highlight to which adjacent button.



In this example button 1 is highlighted and pushing the right button on the remote will make the highlight jump to button 2; for up, left and down, button 1 remains highlighted.

[Stephe]

Wow, very cool. Thank you, thank you.

As you may recall, I wanted to reveal only
buttons 2, 3 and 6 in the left column
and button 9 in the right column.

I was able to change the buttons adjacent to button 9 so that now

Up makes the highlight jump to button 2 (Deleted Scenes)
Left makes the highlight jump to button 3 (Auditions)
Down makes the highlight jump to button 6 (Stills Gallery)
Right keeps the highlight on button 9 (Main Menu)

+---+---+---+
| . | 2 | . |
+---+---+---+
| 3 | 9 | 9 |
+---+---+---+
| . | 6 | . |
+---+---+---+

So, since the navigation is constrained by the remote, that leaves only
four buttons that can be directly linked to manually.

I guess all that was really necessary was for the
Left button to jump to the topmost choice of the left colum, which is 2 (Deleted Scenes).
In that context, I could make Up, Left and Down all jump to 2 (Deleted Scenes).

+---+---+---+
| . | 2 | . |
+---+---+---+
| 2 | 9 | 9 |
+---+---+---+
| . | 2 | . |
+---+---+---+

What's the story on

When the buttons are displayed, force the selection of ...
button in sprm(8)
button 1
button 2
button 3
button 4
button 5
button 6
button 7
button 8
button 9

Does it mean that you can select a button to be automatically selected for the menu?
And if so, why is "button in sprm(8)" the default setting? I realize that SPRM means
System PaRaMeter, but I don't understand its context here.

[r0lZ]

Originally Posted by Stephe

... what is the difference between the choices "numerically" and "by position"?

With Numerically, PgcEdit connects all buttons in the numerical order. For example, button 1 is connected to button 2, that is connected to button 3, and so on. Same thing in the reverse order. That method works always, but may not be "natural", if, for example, button 3 is physically located between buttons 1 and 2. (That's rare but not impossible.)

With the Position method, PgcEdit tries to connect the buttons with the nearest buttons in each direction. That works usually well, but sometimes, it might be difficult to determine the right button to use. For example, button 1 may be to the left and in between buttons 2 and 3. In that case, the button to highlight when the user presses the right button of the remote is not obvious. (In that precise case, PgcEdit selects the top most button, but it's not necessarily what you want.)

You know now that you can also use the manual method, and decide yourself how to connect the buttons. Don't forget that a TV has no mouse to click the buttons, so be sure to use the cursor keys of your keyboard to test if all buttons are mutually accessible with of the remote. (They act exactly like the directional arrows of your remote. You can also press Enter in Trace mode to activate the currently highlighted button.)

When PgcEdit hides a button, it must disable all links pointing to the hidden button. By doing so, it may break a chain of connection and make some buttons unavailable (unconnected) from other buttons. It tries to reconnect them by analysing the original links, but it's not always possible. Hence the error message that is the original subject of this thread. In that case, you have to use one of the 3 methods above to fix the problem.

[r0lZ]

Originally Posted by Stephe

What's the story on

When the buttons are displayed, force the selection of ...
button in sprm(8)
button 1
button 2
button 3
button 4
button 5
button 6
button 7
button 8
button 9

Does it mean that you can select a button to be automatically selected for the menu?
And if so, why is "button in sprm(8)" the default setting? I realize that SPRM means
System PaRaMeter, but I don't understand its context here.

Yes, that option is used to force the menu to always highlight a specific button when the menu is entered.

The SPRMs are system registers, that's correct. But unlike GPRMs that are "variables" that can hold anything, SPRMs are devoted to hold specific system values. For example, SPRM(1) holds the audio track number, and can be changed only with a SetSTN command.

SPRM(8) holds the number of the button to highlight when the menu is entered (multiplied by 1024 for technical reasons). It holds also the button that has been activated by the user when the menu is closed (again times 1024). SPRM(8) can only be modified with the SetHL_BTN command, or interactlvely, by the user. When the DVD is first inserted in the player, SPRM(8) is reset to its default value 1024 (button 1). That means that, if no SetHL_BTN command has been executed before and it the auto-highlighting option is set to "button in sprm(8)", the first menu encountered will have the button 1 highlighted. Now, imagine that you select button 2 to play a short bonus clip. SPRM(8) will hold 2048 when the menu stops playing and the post commands are executed. Now the nav will continue with the short clip. When the bonus has finished playing (and again if no SetHH_BTN command changes the value of SPRM(8)), the nav returns to the menu, and this time button 2 will be automatically highlighted. That's probably a good thing.

But in more complex scenarios like button 2 leading to a new Bonus menu instead of directly to a small clip, things are more difficult to master. The new menu will be entered with value 2048 in SPRM(8) and therefore button 2 will be selected by default. In that case, you have to change the value of SPRM(8) with a SetHL_BTN command, or force the selection of a specific button (usually button 1). Similarly, when the "Return" button of the bonus menu is selected, SPRM(8) will hold the number of that button, and when the main menu is entered, a wrong button will be selected.

It's especially a problem when SPRM(8) holds the number of a button that does not exist in the menu. Some (luckily rare) players try to select the non-existing button and hang. Other players select button 1, the last button, or any arbitrary button. That's not what we want.

Similarly, when some buttons have been hid, the menu can be entered with a value of one of the hidden buttons in SPRM(8). In your case, since you have hidden button 1, that will almost certainly happen. It's a little problem, because the hidden button will be highlighted by default, and the user will see a strange menu with no button highlighted. (He can simply press the OK button or any arrow to leave the hidden button and highlight a non-hidden button, but that's not very intuitive.) So, in your case, you should force the highlighting of a non-hidden button.

Or you can still use the value present in SPRM(8) to highlight the button that should normally be highlighted, but to avoid the problem of the hidden highlighted button, you should select the menu PGC and use Menu -> Select a non-hidden Button/BOV by default. That feature checks what buttons have been hid, and add some pre-commands in the menu PGC to modify the value of SPRM(8) if it holds the number of a hidden button, so that a non-hidden button is always highlighted by default.