Archive for February, 2011
Using the number pad on a handset
A recent dialogue on the Apple support forum for DVDSP has raised an interesting point about using the remote control handset numbers to activate menu buttons. DVDSP is able to handle this from a programmatical perspective, and the user manual is quite clear:
Number Pad: Defines which buttons are directly accessible by a DVD player’s numeric keypad. Choose All, None, or a button number from the pop-up menu. When you choose a button number, that button and all buttons less than that number are accessible via the numeric keypad—buttons greater than this value are blocked from direct access.
Important: This feature is based on the button order as shown along the top of each button’s Button Inspector, and not the button names you see in the Menu Editor. See About Button Numbers for information on verifying and changing the button numbers.
Btn Offset: You can use this setting to offset button numbers so they make sense to a viewer who wants to select a button by entering its number. For example, you may have a set of scene selection menus with numbered scenes. One of the menus may have scenes 23 to 34, with the button for scene 23 being the first button on the menu. If you enter an offset value of 22 for this menu, when the viewer enters 23 on the remote control, 22 is subtracted from it, with the result being 1—the button’s actual number.
However, whether it actually works or not on your DVD player is not certain. I have made many discs and always leave the number pad option set to ‘All’. However, I’ve never bothered to try out using a number pad on a remote handset… Without checking the build using DVD After Edit I am not certain it works as advertised, but will do some checks and see what can be found out.
