Preview menu

 

The preview window is a little DVD player, where you can Play the PGC, go forward or back by an I-frame at a time (> or <) or by 5 I-frames at a time (>> or <<).  You may advance forward to the next cell (Cell+) or back to the previous one (Cell-).  

Note:  In Trace mode, the preview has some additional functionality – the ability to blank the cell being previewed and a button to close and break the trace.

Toggle play on and off with the spacebar (or the Play button).  You may choose to play the preview with or without audio (only Dolby AC3 or LPCM audio can be played).  Use the dropdown box in the preview to select which audio stream to play.  If you want the preview to stay on top of other applications while it is open, right click the preview’s title bar and select Always on Top.

You may also make a bitmap of the current frame by pressing the BMP button.  Pressing Shift-BMP will make a graphic in the PPM format.  Checking the info box will give information about the cell being played, including its VOB/Cell ID, aspect ratio, frame rate, time, the sector being displayed, number of buttons (if a menu) etc.  Information about the Title, PGC and Cell is displayed in the Preview’s titlebar (as well as the PGC Comment, if there is one).

 

 

The options in the preview menu are available only under Windows or Linux (if you have installed WINE).  Note that due to a problem with recent Linux kernels, you must run the Windows executable under Wine in order for the preview to work correctly.  See here for more information).

 

Preview PGC (Ctrl + p or `/~ above the Tab key):  Launch the preview for the current PGC.  All cells are shown, in sequence of the cell table of the PGC.  To see a particular cell, you can also use the Play button (at the extreme right) in the cell table of the PGC Editor.  The preview is also available in the menu button viewer and in Trace mode.  In the Preview window, you can toggle the Always On Top mode in the little system menu of the Preview window (or by right clicking in the preview’s title bar) and you can change the default window size with the Options → Preview video screen size menu.

 

Preview full domain VOB(s):  Shows the whole VOB file (or files) of the current domain.  This is helpful if you wish to preview the content of the whole domain before blanking all PGCs.  Take care, however.  If the domain contains still frames, they will be shown very briefly and you can miss them.

 

Automatically start Preview playback:  If this option is checked, when the preview window is launched, playback will begin immediately.

 

Playback mode:  You may choose to play the preview at real speed, with or without audio, or as fast as possible (no audio).

 

Default audio stream:  You can play the preview based on the setup of your virtual player or instead play the first playable audio stream.

 

Full Size, Medium Size, Small Size.  Allows you to change the default size of the preview window and of the menu button viewer.

 

Disable DirectDraw overlays:  Direct draw overlays use the very low level overlay buffer, which is much faster than the usual way of displaying video to the screen.  However, PgcEdit has no idea what is being displayed so you can’t take snapshots of the GUI while this option is selected (but you can make BMPs of what’s inside it).  On some systems it may actually be faster to disable DirectDraw.  As well, Linux users should disable DirectDraw overlays, otherwise the display will crash.  If you are having problems with the preview (for example, after having installed a buggy codec pack), turn this option on – it may help greatly.

 

Use Preview? (requires restart):  This is self-explanatory – it turns the preview on!  If the preview is causing problems or is not supported (e.g. Mac/Linux without WINE), then use this option to turn it off.  With the preview off, the menu button viewer will still work but will not show backgrounds.