The Main Window

The following diagram depicts the main PgcEdit window:

Click areas to link to help on selected feature

Note the various areas, including the PGC Selector button, which is a quick jump to various PGCs. You may also temporarily bookmark up to 10 PGCs.

Note also the auto preview box to the right of the PGC Selector. When ticked, any PGC with video will automatically begin playback when a PGC is selected (if preview is enabled).

The syntax in the PGC Selector pane (and summarised for a particular PGC in the PGC Info Area) is:

· VMG PGCs are labelled VMGM together with their Language Unit number (see below) and PGC number. One PGC within VMGM can – but does not need to – be defined as the Title Menu.

· VTS Menu PGCs are labelled VTSM together with the Video Titleset number, the LU number and the PGC number. For example, VTSM 2, LU 1(en), 3 refers to PGC 3 in the English Language Unit of VTS 2’s menu domain. Some menu PGCs have defined names; for example, Root Menu or Angle Menu which can be directly accessed with the corresponding button on the remote. In addition, these named menus are special targets for DVD commands.

· VTS Title PGCs are labelled VTST together with their PGC number. For example VTST 2, 4 refers to PGC 4 in the VTS 2 Titles domain. This information is followed by the TTN number (the “internal” title number within the VTS) and the global Title number from the VMG Title Play Map Table.

· Menu Language Units (LUs) are numbered and labelled with their official 2 letter code (for example: “en” = English, “es” = Spanish). Most DVDs have only one LU in VMG and VTS Menus.

· If a PGC has video, the duration of the video is shown after the PGC number in (hh:mm:ss) format. If a PGC has buttons, the number of buttons is shown followed by a “b.”. If a PGC has no video and only commands, it is labelled as a “dummy”.

These terms are defined more completely in the Glossary.

The Search box enables you to search the DVD’s commands back and forwards in the current PGC (buttons < and >) or in the whole DVD (<< and >>).

· The case option does a case-sensitive search

· The reg expr option will search for a “regular expression”. In such expressions, the “.” (dots) match any character, and the “.*” (dot+asterisk) match any occurrences of any character. Most special characters (parentheses, brackets etc.) must be prefixed with backslash (\). There are many other very powerful features in regular expressions. See here for the official description of the Tcl regular expressions, or this easy to read table.

· The all button searches the entire DVD for all instances of the search string and shows the results in a popup box, enabling you to move easily to each instance. Right click the all button to search only in menu buttons and buttons over video. You may also use the summary tab to see a sorted summary of the results, together with the number of instances of commands which contain the sort string. This is very useful if, for example, you wish to determine which values a GPRM can have (just search on “set gprm(x)”).

Right clicking on the search box and selecting Most recently used, allows you to select one of the last 20 search strings.

In addition, you can highlight a command in a PGC, right click on the search box and select First selected command. This will copy the command into the search box, where you can edit it if desired and search for it in the DVD.

Note also Options → Command Editor → Set current search string as default.

The Scratchbook offers a space where you can copy, paste, and edit commands without modifying the structure of the DVD. You can use this space to store commands which you will need later, or to build a program which you will be able to copy and paste in a PGC when it is finalised. It’s possible to divide your Scratchbook into sections and back up the commands of the Scratchbook on your hard drive; this feature can be used to preserve sets of commands which you often need.

See here for more details on the Scratchbook and its functionality.