ok i was able to play around with this earlier today. For a project i am doing i made a photo vcd with 98 albums. Now here is my problem, have any of you found a way to select pages using a dvd player? On mine it shows page 1 with the first 9 albums. In the top right corner it says "1/11". Now i tried everything on my remote and i just could not select/or change pages to see the other albums.i did try to select higher numbers using my dvd remote but that did not work either. For the record this was tested on a pioneer 525. Have any of you tried this? Could any of you try a photo cd with maybe 10 albums(for my test each album had 1 pic) this way it will be 2 pages and tell me if you find a way to get it to select pages using a homedeck player. thanks

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), January 01, 2001

Answers

As discussed recently here, the Pioneer-525 has this problem also when you try to advance through the secundary menus; the menus with the thumbnails. It could be that the problem is caused by not completely adhering the mpeg1 codes for menus by WinOnCD. I have encountered the same problem you have and heard from a knowledgeable person that WinOnCD does not precisely follow the (CD-i) structure for menus. I am now anxiously awaiting the new version Nero5.5 which will fully support the standard (CD-i) structure for making slideshows and menus.

Friendly greetings, Eppo R. Kooi.

-- Eppo R. Kooi (E.R.Kooi@XS4all.NL), January 02, 2001.

thanks for the info, but i never had any problems at all with anything using winon cd 3.7 power edition the photo cd/and extended vcd worked fine and i was able to scroll through secondary menus with thumnails using my next and previous button on the 525. I did not try this yet though with win on 3.8. I cna do what i want now using video pack 4 but this method would take a considerable amount of time. I will let you know about 3.8 and scrolling through the thumbnail pics with the mext and previous and post it here

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), January 02, 2001.

RESULTS: the thumbnail viewing worked fine with my 525 using winon 3.8- Let me make sure though we are both talking about the samething. Do you mean this:: ok lets say i have 1 album. Inside that album are 4 pictures. So i hit "1" and this puts me in the album and i see thumbnails for the 4 pics. I push 1 to see the first one. Now the pic takes up the whole screen. To see the next one i push "next" on my dvd remote. If this is what you are saying people have trouble with i do not know what is wrong. this worked fine on my pioneer 525. The only thing the "next"/previous buttons did not work on was to change pages.

However i tried it in my Apex ad600a and it worked great!!! On my first test disc i was able to scroll through all 11 pages i made with 9 albums on each page. Still wonder exactly why the next wil not work for the pages part with the 525(and 606d both pioneers)

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), January 02, 2001.

When you said in your first reply that you next/prev buttons worked fine in advancing/backwarding secundairy menus I was very surprised. It is now clear that there is a misunderstanding.

I call the primairy menu the one with the names of the albums. When you have more than nine albums you need to use your next/prev buttons to advance to the next group of primairy albums numbered from 10-18 etc.

When you select an album you get the secundairy thumbnail menus. These contain a maximum of 12 thumbnails per page. If you want to move to the next 12 thumbnails you will have to use also the next/prev buttons.

Selecting a thumbnail in the secundairy menu brings you to the third level with the actual pictures. To move to a next picture you can use again the nex/prev buttons.

From my own experience, but also others have reported the same problem, using the next/prev buttons in the primairy and secundairy menus will not work. Only when advancing pictures in the third level with the next/prev buttons will work.

I guess you have the same experience.

Friendly greetings, Eppo R. Kooi.

-- Eppo R. Kooi (E.R.Kooi@XS4all.NL), January 03, 2001.

now maybe i can see why winon cd 3.7 only allowed you to make 9 albums per photo cd. But on the secondary menu to advance to the next set of pics you can always just use the return button to bring you back to the main menu. I do not think even in winon 3.7 it allowed you toi jump from album to album in the secondary menu

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), January 03, 2001.

Whoops i misread your answer. if im not mistaken in winon 3.7 i had one that had more then 12pics and the next button did work, or if it did not work still inputing the number despite it not being seen on that menu still brought it up. I will try this out as well

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), January 03, 2001.

Once you are the third level showing the pictures you can advance with the next/prev buttons to pictures beyond numbers 12, 24 etc. BTW, the pictures can advance automatically if you have set the time between pictures at 5 or 10 seconds. You don't have to use your next button. The show will play from beginning to end within the selected album.

Again, the next/prev problem ONLY is present at the thumbnail menu and album menu levels.

Friendly greetings, Eppo R. Kooi.

-- Eppo R. Kooi (E.R.Kooi@XS4all.NL), January 03, 2001.

Hi Guys,

Guess what ?! I have the same problem with my photo cd burnt with WinOnCd3.8. I do not know the very behavier of Nex/Prev buttons works only in 3rd level and do not work in 1st & 2nd level; is a bug or normal ? I do not know how WinOnCd has been developed to function for this issue.

My real problem is with sound in the album. It is very noisy & vibrating with little faster pitch. As per CeQuadrat's web site (in FAQ section), they attribute the sound problem to the Pioneer 525 player itself. Please refer question #2 in following URL;

http://www.cequadrat.com/english/support/top5.php3

The question is about DVD Music Album. So, I did the music album and compared it's directory structure with Photo Album's structure. Surprisingly, they are similar. What I understod from this is,

1. In photo album, when you drag & drop .BMP/.JPG image and also drag & drop a .WAV/.MPA file; winoncd multiplexes these two files to create a VideoCD 2.0 complaint .dat file and places it into /SEGMENT folder of the disc.

2. In Music Album, the same thing occurs except one thing. Since we do not have photo file, it seems winoncd will place a dummy video blocks in the stream. My assumption is based on their statement in above URL; "In general, this is achieved by renouncement of the video data blocks in an MPEG stream

-- Lugi (Lugi@abc.net), January 03, 2001.

Hi Guys,

Guess what ?! I have the same problem with my photo cd burnt with WinOnCd3.8. I do not know the very behavier of Nex/Prev buttons works only in 3rd level and do not work in 1st & 2nd level; is a bug or normal ? I do not know how WinOnCd has been developed to function for this issue.

My real problem is with sound in the album. It is very noisy & vibrating with little faster pitch. As per CeQuadrat's web site (in FAQ section), they attribute the sound problem to the Pioneer 525 player itself. Please refer question #2 in following URL;

http://www.cequadrat.com/english/support/top5.php3

The question is about DVD Music Album. So, I did the music album and compared it's directory structure with Photo Album's structure. Surprisingly, they are similar. What I understod from this is,

1. In photo album, when you drag & drop .BMP/.JPG image and also drag & drop a .WAV/.MPA file; winoncd multiplexes these two files to create a VideoCD 2.0 complaint .dat file and places it into /SEGMENT folder of the disc.

2. In Music Album, the same thing occurs except one thing. Since we do not have photo file, it seems winoncd will place a dummy video blocks in the stream. My assumption is based on their statement in above URL; "In general, this is achieved by renouncement of the video data blocks in an MPEG stream"

Our audio problem with Pioneer 525 is may be with what they say; "Some DVD- or VCD-playing devices seem to be using these video blocks for synchronizing and verification of the correct timing. If this is the case, playback problems can occur that may lead to faulty recognition of the disc or playback with multiple original speed"

However, I have tried regular videocd with AVI file encoded to .MPG file; the audio is normal & perfect. The difference of regular video cd with photo/music album is that the location of actual .dat file In case of VideoCD, it is in /MPEGAV folder and in album case, it is in /SEGMENT folder.

I guess we can not do anything about this problem. We may have to live with Pioneer 525.

Any comments ?

-- Lugi (Lugi@abc.net), January 03, 2001.

Quote: I guess we can not do anything about this problem. We may have to live with Pioneer 525.

Yes as long as we are limited to the use of WinOnCD to be able to add menus and music to the slideshow. As I said before I have heard from a knowledgeable person that WinOnCD does not precisely follow the (CD-i) structure for menus. I am now anxiously awaiting the new version Nero5.5 which will fully support the standard (CD-i) structure for making slideshows with menus and music.

Friendly greetings, Eppo R. Kooi.

-- Eppo R. Kooi (E.R.Kooi@XS4all.NL), January 03, 2001.

and who knows how many other dvd players this does not work right with. But hey it is better then nothing. Also as far as winon saying some of the things with sound are the 525's problem. from things in the past with winon cd and vp4, it seems quite the majority of dvd players out there had problems with sound on certain functions, not just the 525

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), January 03, 2001.