Plays DVD images and VIDEO_TS folders in WittyMediaServer the way a DVD player does, with their real menus. You need it if your disc libraries hold DVDs.
The disc's own menu, in a browser. Sintel, Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0, from its original DVD.
A disc's page in WittyMediaServer. Sintel, Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0.
A disc going in. Sintel, Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0.
Settings, Playback & discs, in WittyMediaServer.
- Plays the disc's own program: first play, menus with highlighted buttons, titles, chapters, angles, audio and subtitle choices, stills, resume points and parental blocks. It runs the disc's commands in a small virtual machine.
- Reads without mounting:
.isoand.imgimages andVIDEO_TSfolders, through WittyDisc. - Draws subtitles and button highlights from the disc's own sub-pictures and palette.
- Copes with damage: a broken IFO table is read from its
.BUPbackup, and malformed tables, commands and sub-pictures are refused rather than trusted. - Refuses scrambled discs. CSS-protected images are detected and refused with a clear message. Nothing is ever decrypted. The server makes its own check as well, whatever a module says.
- Tells you what's on a disc. The
wittydvdcommand-line tool lists titles and menus, simulates a run through the menus, and reports dead ends.
Decoding the video and audio is left to the player: WittyDVD says which bytes to play, when, and what to draw over them. Turning those steps into streams stays with the server.
How to use it is in Help inside WittyMediaServer: see DVDs.
An admin adds it from the module store inside WittyMediaServer: Settings → Modules, then Browse the store, then Add beside WittyDVD. That needs WittyMediaServer 0.6.0-alpha or later, and it works with nothing older. The range this version fits is in module.json: 0.6.0-alpha through 0.6.x.
- FFmpeg, which comes with the server.
- WittyDisc, which reads the images, and WittyModule, which is how a server talks to it. Both are built in.
- No media comes with it.
It's written in Go with no cgo, from the published disc structure.
A program is built for each system below, and the server uses the right one.
| System | Where it stands |
|---|---|
| Linux (x64, arm64, 32-bit ARM, x86) | Its tests pass on x64, and a DVD title has played in a browser from a test server with it installed. The other CPUs are only built |
| Windows (x64, arm64) | Built. This version hasn't been run on Windows since it became its own program |
| macOS (Intel, Apple silicon) | Built by the release tool. It has not been run on a real Mac |
| FreeBSD (amd64, arm64) | Cross-compiled only. It has not been run |
On macOS and FreeBSD the server has no sandbox for a module's helper: it gets a small environment and a soft memory limit, and nothing more.
You need Go 1.26 or newer. In a worktree, first run the copy of dev-modules.mjs kept above the repositories (node D:/projects/dev-modules.mjs on the development machine). It writes a go.work that git ignores, so the checkout builds against the repositories beside it. Never run go work use.
go vet ./...go test ./... -count=1go run github.com/wittywilla/wittymodule/cmd/wittymodule check .The last one checks the manifest. On the same tool, pack -targets linux/amd64 -out release . builds a release for one system. CI also builds for every system.
To look at a disc by hand:
go run ./cmd/wittydvd info MY_DISC.ISO| Command | What it shows |
|---|---|
wittydvd info <disc> |
Titles, menus, languages and the first-play program |
wittydvd walk <disc> [button...] |
Simulates inserting the disc, then pressing menu buttons by number |
wittydvd crawl <disc> |
Presses every button of every menu and reports dead ends |
wittydvd pgc <disc> <fp, vmgm, vtsm or vts> <vts> <pgcn> |
The commands of one program chain |
wittydvd render <disc> <dir> |
The first menu's highlight pictures |
wittydvd disc ls <disc> |
The files inside the image |
To use it as a library, wittydvd.Open opens an image or folder, and wittydvd.NewNav gives a navigator: Start, PressButton, CellEnded and the rest return what to do next.
wittydvdplayer/ is the same engine as a program of its own for WittyMediaPlayer, with its own go.mod and manifest.
Apache-2.0: see LICENSE and NOTICE. If you redistribute it or build on it, keep the NOTICE attribution. It's an original implementation and contains no code from other disc libraries. Each release archive carries a THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt for what its programs link.
WittyDVD is an independent open-source project. It isn't associated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the DVD format's owners, any film studio or any other player project. “DVD” is a trademark of DVD Format/Logo Licensing Corporation; WittyDVD isn't a licensed or certified DVD product and uses no DVD logo. CSS-scrambled discs are refused, nothing is decrypted, and no media comes with it: you're responsible for having the rights to what you open. Any third-party names here only describe what it works with, and belong to their owners. It's provided “as is”, with no warranty; see LICENSE. Local law applies to how you use it. This isn't legal advice.
A version tag builds a program for every platform, signs the checksum list, and publishes a release that servers can install.
Versions move in small steps as work lands. go run github.com/wittywilla/wittymodule/cmd/wittymodule@v0.3.0 bump . raises it
everywhere it is written (add -part minor for a bigger step). A bump isn't a release: nothing is
tagged or published until you tag it. CI fails when code changed since the last tag and the version
didn't, because tags never move.
To release:
- Check that
versioninmodule.jsonis the one to publish, with the bump committed. - Tag that commit and push the tag:
git tag vX.Y.Z, thengit push origin vX.Y.Z. A tag with a suffix, such asv1.2.0-beta, is published as a prerelease. - Watch the Actions tab. The signing step uses the
WMS_SIGNING_KEYsecret of thereleaseenvironment, and nothing is published without it.
To take a version back, run the withdraw workflow from the Actions tab. It adds the version to a signed list on the release tagged withdrawals, which servers read.