What is this all about?

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libdvdnav is a library that allows easy use of sophisticated DVD navigation

features such as DVD menus, multiangle playback and even interactive DVD games.

All this functionality is provided through a simple API which provides the

DVD playback as a single logical stream of blocks, intermitted by special

dvdnav events to report certain conditions. The main usage of libdvdnav is a

loop regularly calling a function to get the next block, surrounded by

additional calls to tell the library of user interaction.

The whole DVD virtual machine and internal playback states are completely

encapsulated.

Where does it come from?

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This library is based on a lot of code and expertise from the Ogle project.

Ogle was the first DVD player who implemented free DVD navigation. The

libdvdnav developers wish to express their gratitude to the Ogle people

for all the valuable research work they have done.

Initially, the dvdnav code was part of a plugin to the xine media player

called xine-dvdnav. Later on, the DVD VM specific code was split

from xine-dvdnav and went into the first version of libdvdnav.

Where is it now?

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libdvdnav is hosted on http://dvdnav.mplayerhq.hu/ .

Please report bugs to the developers mailinglist at

mailto:dvdnav-discuss@mplayerhq.hu .

We are still in beta stage, but libdvdnav is already quite usable. With

regular DVD playback, there should not be any serious issues. The library

also makes some limited effort to handle error situations gracefully, but

there are still assertions in the code that may trigger on some DVDs. Please

send a report to the developer mailinglist, if you encounter such problems.

How can I use it?

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libdvdnav is completely licensed under GPL. You may use it at wish within the

bounds of this license. See the file "COPYING" for a copy of the GPL.

Sources for documentation on libdvdnav are:

* the examples directory contains a simple program using libdvdnav

  this one is well-commented and therefore a good starting point

* the public header dvdnav.h documents the API

* the public header dvdnav_events.h documents the dvdnav events

* doc/library_layout contains some info on the internal working of libdvdnav

Sources for documentation on DVD terminology, structure and surrounding concepts:

* doc/dvd_structures briefly explains DVD terms and organization

* a more detailed description of DVD structures is available at

  http://www.mpucoder.com/dvd/

* the ifo_types.h and nav_types.h headers are also interesting if you

  are already used to the sometimes cryptical abbreviations