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[bogdanbz]

BluRay and DVD menus (as well as TV teletext) sometimes make use of the four color buttons on remotes: red/green/yellow/blue.

I just run into a BluRay menu which allows me to set bookmarks on the timeline, but it only lets me do that using these color keys...

I would like to request MCC commands that can be used to send to the DVD navigator and the BluRay menu interpreter the red/green/yellow/blue button presses. Once these MCC commands are available, I will associate them to keyboard shortcuts myself.

[Hendrik]

The 4 colored buttons are currently not processed at all for Blu-ray playback. Ideally it would be best to make them work without needing to call MCC commands (or using a generic MCC command to send the appropriate key codes), but they have a bunch of different meanings depending on context, so we'll have to think about how to handle them the best way.

Can you let us know which disc actually uses them for testing purposes? I don't particularly remember seeing that before.

[jmone]

I had a bit of a look at some old manuals etc to see what other functions the coloured buttons were used for (they originally were for Teletext functions).  The best I could find where used to set options for:
Red = Zoom
Green = Angle
Yellow = Audio
Blue = Subtitle

FWIW

[bogdanbz]

I'll try to make a mini-version of a Bluray with such feature. It's the Danish movie Festen (The Celebration), btw.

I'm afraid I don't understand what is intended to be done to support these buttons. Do you mean MC will react to the Consumer Menu Controls 69 to 6C (Red/Green/Blue/Yellow Menu Button) key presses of a USB HID device (which can be the USB receiver of a infrared or BT remote control, btw) just as it reacts now to the key presses of CC and CD controls (the Stop/Eject and Play/Pause transport controls - which is what the Stop/Eject and Play/Pause media keys on USB keyboards with media keys send)? I'm referring to the controls definitions as they are described in the USB Human Interface Devices Usage Tables v1.3 document from here: https://www.usb.org/hid

A lot of BT remotes with USB receiver dongles that show up as USB HID devices have these color buttons (many are used by TV tuner/IPTV boxes running Android TV) and I suspect that's how their key presses are seen.

Does it mean that these menu control buttons should already be supported for DVDs (in case the Microsoft DVD navigator is used for DVD playback)?

[bogdanbz]

I found time to do some research in my DVD and BluRay collection, to find titles where the color keys are used.

I was sure I saw some DVDs that were making use of the color keys, but I could not find any among the ones I tried. Eventually I gave up, it's possible such DVDs exist, but I lost patience at some point and did not look further.

However, I found a lot of BluRays that make use of the color keys, I just never payed any attention to them.

Pretty much all Paramount BluRays have this kind of functionality where if you press the Green button, it saves a bookmark for you. On all Star Trek Movies BluRays (but not only, it's the same type of menu with the same kind of functionality on the Super 8 BluRay for instance) you can see the list of saved bookmarks if you go from the Main menu -> Scenes submenu -> Bookmarks list. I've attached two screenshots from the Star Trek - The Motion Picture BluRay (EU edition) of the Main menu and of the Scene Bookmarks submenu to show how it looks like. I could not make a mini-BluRay version of this movie however, its file structure is very complex and the size of something that would work would be too great.

I did make a mini-BluRay version of the first disc of the movie I mentioned, "The Celebration". This one has a Timeline submenu that can be entered from the Main menu, where you can move across the timeline and edit bookmarks. I added a screenshot below of this Timeline submenu, where you can see there is a legend to explain which color buttons can be used for which actions.  The mini-disc is here: https://files.catbox.moe/rz8t0d.7z


You might be left with a feeling these color buttons are only used to set bookmarks after reading the above. However, I discovered these color buttons are sometimes used for other purposes as well (I just never really payed them attention before ). On the Star Trek The Original Series BluRays, for instance, they are used as shortcuts for accessing menu items either in the Main menu or in the Popup menu. I added some screenshots of the Main menu and Popup menu below. See those red/green/yellow/blue balls in the menus? They're not just for aesthetics (resembling buttons on the 60's Enterprise console), they are hints for which color buttons to press to select a menu. Again, the file structure of the BluRay is very complex, I'm not sure I can make one of a small size for testing purposes. I've only attached some screenshots for you to see.