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I have a (children's) DVD that consists of several short films. Here is a screenshot of the DVD's own menu where you can select the short film you want to see:

enter image description here

You can either watch from that menu, in which case you return to that menu after the film has finished, or you can watch all in a row (using another button, not seen in the screenshot). Both are not desirable because we want to mimick the old TV show this DVD is a compilation of. In that show, there was always the intro (number 1), then one episode (any of number 2 to 10), then the outro (number 11).

So I basically want to make a playlist saying: play number 1, then play (e.g.) number 5, then play number 11. Is that possible without transforming the data of the DVD into something else? If yes, what do I need to do? I am okay with installing software and using the terminal.

Here is what I tried so far:

I opened the DVD with VLC media player and expected to find a list of tracks/movies just like for music CDs, but there weren't any (ok, one):

enter image description here

When I open the DVD in a file explorer, it has the usual structure of an AUDIO_TS and a VIDEO_TS folder.

Kjara
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  • Ach du meine Nase! While playing back (including "showing the menu"), the playback menu should contain "chapters". Does that allow you to jump to individual videos, incl the intro? – Marcus Müller May 06 '23 at 19:18
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    I don't see how this is on topic. – Eduardo Trápani May 06 '23 at 19:55
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    @EduardoTrápani usage of software on Linux is. In this case, "how do I control my media player to do my bidding working with DVD data" isn't any less on-topic than "how do I control my jq to do my bidding working with JSON data". Neither program is specific to Unix/Linux, but they're usage is specific to the environment users work in. Would this get much larger an audience on SuperUser.com? sure. Is it off-topic here? Not by our rules: *Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)* – Marcus Müller May 07 '23 at 08:23
  • no, I mean the vlc menu, not the menu that is part of the DVD, like this – Marcus Müller May 07 '23 at 13:11
  • @MarcusMüller fair enough. It'd be nice to have the answer title reflect that though. – Eduardo Trápani May 07 '23 at 16:02
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    @EduardoTrápani why? "On UNIX/Linux" is implied on this site! – Marcus Müller May 07 '23 at 16:25
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    @MarcusMüller The VLC menu "Playback" has "Title" and there has 13 entries: DVD menu, Title 1, ..., Title 12. Title 1 to 11 are the same ones as in the screenshot, title 12 is some trailer. Yes, I can jump to individual videos by selecting any of these titles. The "Chapter" menu is only available while in the DVD's own menu and does not contain any entries that allow playing the movies. – Kjara May 08 '23 at 09:50

1 Answers1

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go to VLC's "Playlist" interface (Ctrl+l, usually, else under "View").

Right click, "Advanced Open…".

In the opening dialog, select "Disk". Select DVD, enter the device name of your optical drive (/dev/sr0 is a good guess) and enter the title nr of your intro.

Repeat for the first video.

Repeat for the intro again.

Repeat for the second video.

and so on.

If that seems annoying, it is. You can also manually write a playlist file in the m3u8 format

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:0,dvdsimple:///dev/sr0
#EXTVLCOPT:disc-caching=300
dvdsimple:///dev/sr0#1
#EXTINF:0,dvdsimple:///dev/sr0
#EXTVLCOPT:disc-caching=300
dvdsimple:///dev/sr0#2
#EXTINF:0,dvdsimple:///dev/sr0
#EXTVLCOPT:disc-caching=300
dvdsimple:///dev/sr0#1
#EXTINF:0,dvdsimple:///dev/sr0
#EXTVLCOPT:disc-caching=300
dvdsimple:///dev/sr0#3

and save it as playlist.m3u8, and open it with VLC.

Marcus Müller
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