I have this software (MovieMask Designer) that was originally intended to make family friendly edits of movies. You put in a DVD, and the software kind of makes this "thumbprint" of the DVD. Then you can go back in and it looks like a video editor... except that there's only one audio and video track and the only thing you can put on the timeline are "blocks" that represent the frames that should be muted or skipped to create a "family friendly" version upon playback.

The program would be sort-of-good at prototyping fan edits, except that it's really only good for skipping existing material. That and the company that made it has more or less fallen off of the face of the earth and you can't officially get a copy of it anymore.

I'm an amateuring programmer (lots of VBA, Perl, Csh, Ksh experience. Some C#, .NET and XNA experience) and I was planning on taking a stab at writing my own playback software that would support additional features. Splicing in video from the HDD, alternate audio, working with non DVD files (common computer formats, as well as Bluray), "random access" or "seamless branching" etc...

Is anyone interested in joining me in this venture?