Seamless branching

Seamless branching (German: seamless branching ) is a method that allows multiple edited versions of a movie to save space on a DVD or Blu-ray Disc to present. Instead of saving all versions individually in their full length on the disc, the main part common to all these versions and the scenes that differ from one another are only found once on the disc. During playback, the playback device ranks uninterruptedly within these "branched" data paths and adds them " seamless ”together with the selected version (hence the name).

DVDs with seamless branching are rather rare, as the implementation is technically demanding and can be particularly costly and time-consuming. The DVD Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition, for example, was originally intended to be mastered in Germany with seamless branching like its American model . However, because the specialized company was booked out for a long time and there would have been considerable delays in the release of the DVD, it was decided not to use seamless branching. This has the disadvantage that you can only watch the extended long version and not optionally also the theatrical version without the additional scenes.

Other examples are Star Wars , the Alien tetralogy and some Disney and Pixar titles on DVD. Thanks to seamless branching, the viewer gets to see the opening credits and / or closing credits for the selected language version or scenes that are tailored to the language version and contain fixed text overlays.

Seamless branching is increasingly used for Blu-ray discs.