Branching

[adamstewiegreen 149]

I was reading this article about the Criterion Collection's special edition of The Tree of Life and it goes on to talk about some DVD and Blu-ray technology they call "branching":

 

Malick was also intrigued by the seamless branching technology in DVD and Blu-Ray players. Traditionally, these are used to allow different versions of the same movie to be stored and played on a single disc. (R-rated vs. NC-17, different ending, added scenes, etc.) With seamless branching, the disc’s metadata instructs the player which scenes to play and in which order. Malick thought the technology could be used for other purposes.

 

I know that a similar method can be used to skip commercials when using comskip, I'm wondering if someone has heard of anyone trying to rip a dvd/bluray so that all the scenes are present but a separate metadata track plays the scenes required for the version that is selected.  It seems to me that this could be a faster and more efficient way of ripping media where 2 different versions are present.

 

Are there reasons why this method isn't being used with projects like Kodi?

 

And after all that typing I just spotted the obvious pun.