[WINDOWS] External Player Support Thread

[WINDOWS] External Player Support Thread - Printable Version

+- Kodi Community Forum (https://forum.kodi.tv)
+-- Forum: Support (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=33)
+--- Forum: General Support (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=111)
+---- Forum: Windows (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=59)
+---- Thread: [WINDOWS] External Player Support Thread (/showthread.php?tid=43511)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

- MrBasset - 2009-04-08

Hey Sy,

I was originally trying to get PowerDVD working for Blu-ray playback as well, but in the end gave up on that idea; For some reason PowerDVD just wouldn't begin playing the DVD in the tray, it just sat there doing nothing and wouldn't respond to any button press ... but mostly because I would have had to spend extra £££ to get more than 2 channel audio for blu-ray playback Shocked

For your args problem you could look to using the regex part of the external player to strip out the arguments that are passed (memory fails me at this point, I will look it up and post in a bit)

As for the Aeon player, I looked at that too. Unfortunately, that command fires up the internal dvd player unless you include the dvdplayer option in the advancedsettings.xml, so your forced into the external player for everything if your using that.

In the end I set up MPC-HC to playback everything including blu-ray. I'm using the PowerDVD decoder for blu-ray and ffdshow for regular DVD upscaling. Not the best solution I know, but all that I could get to work at this point. I can post details of the set up later tonight if you want?

~Dan

Edit ---

Here is a link to my post asking a question where the solution was the replacers to edit the args
Here is a link to MobyUK's explaination of args

- ashlar - 2009-04-08

daniel.pool Wrote:In the end I set up MPC-HC to playback everything including blu-ray. I'm using the PowerDVD decoder for blu-ray and ffdshow for regular DVD upscaling. Not the best solution I know, but all that I could get to work at this point. I can post details of the set up later tonight if you want?

Yup, all the details you could provide would be really good to have. Thanks in advance!

MPC-HC, Blu-ray and DVD Upscale - MrBasset - 2009-04-08

ashlar Wrote:Yup, all the details you could provide would be really good to have. Thanks in advance!

now that is just ... I just spent the last hour or so typing up some notes on my config. Thought I should take a backup just in case before submitting it, but then figured what the hey ... and of course I'd been logged out. Gaah, just lost it all.

Consider this a placeholder for now, I'll come back and edit this once I've cooled down ...

----
Edit - I was asked for my config again over at avsforum and it reminded me I hadn't updated this. I'll just provide the link to that post instead of replying now as it's been such a long time (yes, I suck).
----

My advancedsettings.xml

Code:
<advancedsettings>

<video>

    <defaultplayer>externalplayer</defaultplayer>

    <defaultdvdplayer>externalplayer</defaultdvdplayer>

</video>

<externalplayer>

    <filename>C:\Program Files\mplayerc\mplayerc.exe</filename>

    <args>/fullscreen /play /close /d3dfs</args>

    <forceontop>false</forceontop>

    <hidexbmc>false</hidexbmc>

    <hideconsole>false</hideconsole>

    <hidecursor>false</hidecursor>

    <startuptime>10000</startuptime>

    <replacers>

        <replacer stop="true">

            <match>dvd://.*</match>

            <pat>.*</pat>

            <rep>D:</rep>

        </replacer>

    </replacers>

</externalplayer>

</advancedsettings>

The replacer transforms the dvd:\\1 into D: for the drive, could also be empty for your PowerDVD question earlier Sy.

Notes on MPC-HC:

Haali media splitter - doesn't support splitting TrueHD stream, use the built in MPC-HC one instead.
VMR9 and EVR don't seem to work when XBMC is running. VMR9 produces sound but black screen, EVR nothing (if anyone knows how to fix this, great. Please let me know, I'm resentfully using VMR7 a.t.m).
ffdShow - Don't enable "Raw video" and disable H264 and MPEG4 formats so that ffdshow doesn't apply your upscaling settings to HD content.
Turn of internal filters for any HD content
External filters - have Cyberlink h264, ffdshowvideo and audio set to prefer.

Update on this
My wife and I sat down to watch a blu-ray movie last night, which we had to abandon. It seems although MPC-HC will begin playing the main feature of blu-ray (there is no menu support) it seems to have issues stitching together the transitions between .m2ts files. We'd see a very noticeable pause between them as the next one was loaded, often with the first few seconds skipped. The movie actually stopped playing halfway through, and we couldn't get the next segment to load. This doesn't always seem to happen, but it means that I might have to go back to the drawing board Sad

Cheers,
~Dan

- Syrowe - 2009-04-08

Daniel - Thanks mate. I had thought about stripping out the args I will have a go at the weekend and see how I get on.

In terms of the aeon issue. If there is a command to launch external player then all I need to do is hack the skin's xml file and replace play dvd with the correct command, I think?

Programming, not my stong point, but messing around with other peoples hard work is always entertaining! Big Grin

- MrBasset - 2009-04-09

Syrowe Wrote:In terms of the aeon issue. If there is a command to launch external player then all I need to do is hack the skin's xml file and replace play dvd with the correct command, I think?

There is a command, MobyUK added that in this release. I briefly tried changing the Aeon Alpha release to use this command with little success (I tried for a whole 5 mins), so if you have any luck do post back here.

This is the format of the command if you were using it in the keys.xml file.

<e>XBMC.PlayWith(externalplayer)</e>

~Dan

- Wooble - 2009-04-12

blorgfreth Wrote:Is there an option to use this only with specific types of playback? I'm thinking specifically in terms of launching PowerDVD or something for playing blu-ray. Ideally, it would still be able to use the internal player for normal DVDs. I love the integrated OSD and such too much to use a full-time external player.

Jester Wrote:nope

I love the idea of an external player , but was sad to see this concept dismissed so shortly. This request IS the reason I am looking into an external player.

WHAT i would like to know , is when i have a program which parses the file name and evaluates the extension is there any way I can in the code i write , send certain extensions BACK to the internal player ? Is there any way to 'call' the internal video player ? IF not I'll send my Blu-ray to PowerDVD and the rest to VLC or Media Player - HC.

- redje - 2009-04-13

just curious, as i couldn't find any solution to the streaming problem in windows. Could the external player be a solution to the streaming problem in windows? right now the xot uitzending gemist plugin doesn't work under windows.

- digital21cn - 2009-04-15

HansVDG Wrote:Hi

Would be nice to have a list of extension in the config file for external player.
And if the extension doesn't exist in this list. => to use the default internal player.

Regards

+2

It will be perfect if adding this feature

- Syrowe - 2009-04-15

Ok I have had another quick look at this and it would look like the playwith command won't work unless there is a focus on a file (logically enough) so it won't work from the main menu. Or at least not with my ability.

If I come up with another work around I will let you know.

Thanks for the tip about the args though.

Sy

workaround - tiben20 - 2009-04-16

i just did a work around that work with only one extension i added after

Code:
// only dvdplayer can handle these normally

  if (url.GetFileType().Equals("sdp") 

  ||  url.GetFileType().Equals("asf"))

  {

    vecCores.push_back(EPC_DVDPLAYER);

  }

in the PlayerCoreFactory.cpp

Code:
CURL externalPlayerUrl(g_advancedSettings.m_externalPlayerFilename);

    if (url.GetFileType().Equals("wmv") && externalPlayerUrl.GetFileType().Equals("exe"))

      {

        vecCores.push_back(EPC_EXTPLAYER);

      }

Im not really an expert in c++ but this is doing the job.
Its looking the extension of the file and its looking if the external player is an .exe extension too. Just in case you dont have an external setted

- jondr13 - 2009-04-17

Delete

- jondr13 - 2009-04-17

Regarding the use of an external player, in my case, I use ISO files and Virtual Clone Drive.
Once you select external player to play the movie, how do you get the ISO file to mount to the virual drive?
Also, is there a way to set XBMC to always use the external player instead of going to the context menu??

Thanks for any info anyone can provide

jondr13 - tiben20 - 2009-04-18

<advancedsettings>
<video>
<defaultplayer>externalplayer</defaultplayer>
</video>
will set it to default

for virtual clone drive you only have to right click on the dvd drive in your explorer and you got virtual clone drive with a sub menu with 2 choices mount and unmount drive. select mount and select your image

- jondr13 - 2009-04-18

tiben20 Wrote:<advancedsettings>
<video>
<defaultplayer>externalplayer</defaultplayer>
</video>
will set it to default

for virtual clone drive you only have to right click on the dvd drive in your explorer and you got virtual clone drive with a sub menu with 2 choices mount and unmount drive. select mount and select your image

sorry, but just want to make sure I understand.
I make an XML file called advancedsettings.xml with the info you provided?

Also, you say to "right click on the dvd drive in your explorer and select mount". When you say "explorer" you are talking within XBMC and right click as in with the mouse?? If your talking about going to My Computer and selecting the Virtual Clone Drive, right clicking on it and selecting mount, it does bring up a window to select the file in which you want to play. But this is completely outside of XBMC. If this is what you are referring to, there is no point in using XBMC to select the movie to watch and play if you have to mount the file to Virtual Clone Drive while your not even in XBMC.

Is there not a function in XBMC to select your default drive for movie playback and something that will automatically mount the file to Virtual Clone Drive?? The folks that created Open Media Library (OML) have this incorporated into their product and it works seamlessly.

Thanks but need more info

- tiben20 - 2009-04-18

for virtual drive

for the external player you create the xml file in your userdata directory like you said and you insert the defaultplayer settings like this

Code:
]<advancedsettings>

  <video>

    <defaultplayer>externalplayer</defaultplayer>

  </video>

<externalplayer>

  <filename>C:\mplayer\mplayer.exe.....</filename>

  <forceontop>false</forceontop>

  <hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc>

  <hideconsole>false</hideconsole>

  <hidecursor>false</hidecursor>

</externalplayer>

</advancedsettings>

and about the auto mount you want it would be easier to do it with daemon tools than virtual drive