17 replies to this topic

[Darin]

I've currently got a dvd that was named using the "<" and ">" characters. The problem is those characters are not allowed in folder names, therefore Zoom Player is unable to create a DVD-Bookmarks folder for the movie, which of course is keeping me from using the Scene Cut Editor.

Is there anyway around this? Is there a way to get Zoom Player to recognize the "greater than" symboles as maybe underscores or something? Or is there an alternate way to create the disc.cut file, and have it point to the dvd with the weird name?

Thank you.

[boogafreak]

Hi,

 

I think they are probably not valid chars for this format, but I'll ask around..

 

Booga.

[Darin]

I appreciate it.

If there's not a way around it, that'd be a great addition in a future update. Maybe if Zoom player would recognize that the DVD has characters in the name that cannot be used in a folder, therefore it just reads them as spaces or underscores, allowing the DVD-Bookmark folder to be created, something like that. Just a thought. I'm definitely not a programmer.

The DVD with the odd name that included invalid characters was a store bought, regular movie.

Thanks.

[ehathgepiurhe]

Hi,

 

I had to do some google work for this - I'm not familiar with the optical media specs themselves. From what I could find, it seems that DVD video is covered by the UDF spec (which is a profile of the ISO/IEC 13346 and ECMA-167 specification). I believe that those two characters are illegal according to the UDF spec.

 

Unlike with Joilet (ISO 9660 - used for CD's), the list of illegal characters in UDF seems to be not specifically stated (at least that I can see). However, an appendice to the spec gives code for checking for illegal characters on DOS, OS/2, Mac and Unix. Windows should be covered by the DOS code, which lists these characters as illegal:

\\/:*?\"<>|

 

That looks to be the same as the normal list of characters you cannot use in a Windows filename (the list of illegal character for the other operating systems are different, both to Windows and each other). So it would make sense that the standard operating system disallowed characters would form the basis of the set disallowed for optical media.

 

Joilet specs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660 (see "Directories and Files" section, paragraph beginning 'The standard also specifies the following name restrictions')

 

UDF specs:

http://en.wikipedia....sal_Disc_Format (there is a download there to the actual spec itself, I sed v1.02 and found the code on page 114)

 

The DVD may have been authored on a non-Windows system - it is hard to see how a Windows burning application would have allowed those characters. For example, the illegal characters for Unix are null and slash (so < and > are fine). The only thing I think you can do is to rip the DVD and then burn it back to disk, not using those characters in the name.

 

Regards,

 

ehat

[Darin]

Bummer. Well I appreciate the reply and all the info.
Thank you very much, and have a good weekend.

[ehathgepiurhe]

Even though the DVD may be non-compliant for Windows based systems, I will ask bLight if he can do anything in cases like this. Substitution of an underscore for certain characters in a filename is not uncommon for various types of Windows programs (a number of add-on's for Firefox implement this scheme when they save content from the web to a local drive), so I think it is a reasonable idea.

 

I will post back here when I get a response.

 

ehat

[ehathgepiurhe]

Hi Darin,

 

I asked bLight about it. He wanted to i. Confirm that it is the disc volume label you are talking about (if not, please clarify), and ii. Would it be possible to get an image of the disk to test against?

 

Regards,

 

ehat

[Darin]

Sorry for the delayed response. That would be excellent, because I have since come across a second DVD in my collection with the same problem.

 

I believe it is the Disc Volume Label we're talking about. You know when you're playing a DVD, and up at the top of Zoom Player Max, the name of the DVD, or what I believe is also the Volume Label is shown (if you're not fullscreened). Also if you go to My Computer, and look at your drive, you'll see the name of the inserted movie, that's the name that is messing up Zoom Player's bookmark and scene cut editor, if it has invalid characters.

 

I actually can get you an image of the movie. Are you talking about a single ISO file, and how would I transfer the file to you or bLight? I'm new to this forum.

 

Thanks,

Darin

[ehathgepiurhe]

That would be excellent, because I have since come across a second DVD in my collection with the same problem.

Intriguing - I thought seeing one of these would have been rare enough, let alone a second!

 

You know when you're playing a DVD, and up at the top of Zoom Player Max, the name of the DVD, or what I believe is also the Volume Label is shown (if you're not fullscreened).

I had to check this myself - it seems that Zoom does use the volume label for the window title.

 

Also if you go to My Computer, and look at your drive, you'll see the name of the inserted movie, that's the name that is messing up Zoom Player's bookmark and scene cut editor, if it has invalid characters.

Definitely the volume label in that case:
http://i.imgur.com/FKvwXYy.png

 

I actually can get you an image of the movie. Are you talking about a single ISO file, and how would I transfer the file to you or bLight? I'm new to this forum.

Great - if you know how to make an image of the disk already, that is the difficult part out of the way! The next part is the relatively easy part - once you generate the image, you need to upload it somewhere (the image will be far too large for the forum's small attachment size limit). Once you upload it, just PM me the link, and I will send it onto bLight (his internet connection is far faster than mine, so I will just let him download it).

So, we need a file host that can host larger files. The problem here is that all file hosts have size limits, whether it be the amount of space you can use in total, or the maximum size of each file (or both). For example, I use a free Dropbox account - that gives me about 3GB of space to upload stuff and no limit on file sizes if you use the desktop client.

There are a lot of file hosts out there - though I tend to use Dropbox exclusively now, I have used SendSpace, MediaFire and SkyDrive in the past (there is also Google Drive). The file size limit on free Sendspace accounts is 300MB (so you'd have to break the image into chunks of <300MB and upload them one by one). I can't find the size limit for MediaFire at the moment, Google Drive seems to be 10GB per file, and SkyDrive is about 2GB per file I think.

Anyway, generate the ISO first, and then we will see how large it is and can go from there (if you already have an account with a file hoster that could handle the file size, feel free to use it).

ehat

[Darin]

I'm tied up tonight, but in the next couple days I'll see what I can do. I'm also going to send you a PM here in a minute to see if we can do this a little easier.

[ehathgepiurhe]

Thanks, got your PM. Reproduced problem with slightly modified test ISO image I have here, and have sent it to bLight. He doesn't expect that it will be a difficult thing to fix with an image to test against.

 

ehat

[ehathgepiurhe]

Quick update - regardless of whether < and > are legal characters for Windows DVD volume labels or not, bLight has now added a workaround to Zoom for these two characters, and I have uploaded an updated Beta 29 build for MAX users (see the download link in the first post of the current 8.70 Beta thread pinned to the top of this forum).

 

ehat

[Darin]

Ehat,

 

To answer your PM, yes I do have Max, and the beta fix is working perfectly. That was fast! I tried one of the DVDs, and the bookmark folder, the StopPosition file, and the scene cut editor are all working great.

So the way I understand it, the fix is only within that separate file for Beta 29, and eventually it will be added into an official update in the near future?

[ehathgepiurhe]

Correct. The Beta's are usually provided as main .exe only (as that is where most of the bug fixes occur), unless other files need updating as well, and you simply copy that updated .exe over your current installation.

 

As the fix has now been added to the main Zoom .exe, it will continue to be in any further Beta's, and of course, the next stable/final version (all stable versions are full installers, including all the Zoom Player files).

 

Generally as well, the Beta's will be hosted on Dropbox rather than the main Zoom Player site as the stable/final versions are, unless bLight does the release (usually he only does a Beta release when it's a major update or there is something he wants as many people to test as possible, and he will quite often create an installer version for these despite them not being a final/stable). Beta 28 was an example of this, it is a full installer (for all three versions, Free/Pro/Max) and is hosted on the Zoom Player site:

http://www.inmatrix....ayer_beta.shtml

 

ehat

[Darin]

Oh I gotchya! I didn't realize I could place the new zplayer.exe beta file in the place of the original one inside Program Files, and it work like normal, with the new fixes applied. That's pretty cool.

I appreciate all the info, the help, and your time, and the same to bLight.

I reckon this topic's resolved.

Thank you and have a good weekend,
 Darin

[ehathgepiurhe]

Oh I gotchya! I didn't realize I could place the new zplayer.exe beta file in the place of the original one inside Program Files, and it work like normal, with the new fixes applied. That's pretty cool.

Ah, that means I need to explain the installation procedure better in the Beta threads. I think I used to - but then I realised that the only people seemingly using the Beta's were people who already knew how to install them (that is, install Zoom from the most recent installer version - Beta 28 in this case - and then simply copy the files from the RAR archive over the top of the existing files) - so I stopped explaining the installation and just posted the download links, changelogs, important notes etc. Next time I update the Beta thread, I will specify the full procedure again.

I appreciate all the info, the help, and your time, and the same to bLight.

You're welcome!

I reckon this topic's resolved.

Indeed - I will tag it as solved in the thread title.

ehat

[ehathgepiurhe]

The initial fix for this issue only covered the < (less than) and > (greater than) characters specifically. bLight has now added the same fix for all the other invalid characters in Beta 30, which I will post shortly. Those additional characters are:

 

\ (back slash)
/ (forward slash)
: (colon)
* (asterix)
? (question mark)
" (quote mark)
| (pipe)

 

As far as we know, those 9 characters are the only ones that Windows filenames are not allowed to contain.

 

ehat

[Darin]

Ehat,

I figured he eventually would. You never know what they'll name the dvds. Definitely a good idea.

Thanks,

Darin