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[WINDOWS] External Player Support Thread - Printable Version

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+---- Thread: [WINDOWS] External Player Support Thread (/showthread.php?tid=43511)



- RandomXBMCUser - 2009-02-11

Looking forward to jesters next update to use this Smile


- Dannydeman - 2009-02-12

Finally the CPU problem is fixed, now I can finally throw away and puke on mediaportal Wink


- Jester - 2009-02-12

Build coming...


- Jester - 2009-02-12

Upped new build
XBMCSetup-Rev17673-jester-ext.exe


- ghizzu - 2009-02-12

Hi. When trying to play local files, external player (in my case mplayer) works fine. But if I try to play an internet video stream, mplayer starts and close immediately, as if a wrong URL had been passed by XBMC. Unfortunately the console window don't stay on screen enough to understand what's happened. Any clue?
Oh, I use XBMCSetup-Rev17640-jester-ext.exe


- moby-uk - 2009-02-12

ghizzu Wrote:Hi. When trying to play local files, external player (in my case mplayer) works fine. But if I try to play an internet video stream, mplayer starts and close immediately, as if a wrong URL had been passed by XBMC. Unfortunately the console window don't stay on screen enough to understand what's happened. Any clue?
Oh, I use XBMCSetup-Rev17640-jester-ext.exe

Look in the XBMC logfile. The read my earlier post which includes details of how you can have the path passed to your external player rewritten.


- RandomXBMCUser - 2009-02-13

Jester Wrote:Upped new build
XBMCSetup-Rev17673-jester-ext.exe

Thanks Moby-uk and Jester, now all my DVDs will play externally by default!
Big Grin

In a somewhat related note, xbmc has refused to launch batch files as the external player since mid-january it seems (earlier builds had no problems whatsoever), so instead of using a batch file, I have to set the external player as
c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe
with the arguments
/C <MY BATCH FILE>

as a workaround, then everything works great.

Anywho, this is fantastic, thanks again!


- hobojester - 2009-02-13

hobojester Wrote:I'll look into it when I get home (2-3 hours) and post back and let you know. I hadn't thought about testing it using the built in player so I'll let you know.

Thx for the quick response.

Sorry I'm a few days late on this, but here's an update as to what I've found:

I believe I've found the trouble I was having, and it was self-inflicted. I had set XBMC's screensaver, but I had given it a path which apparently I happened to relocate. So, when I exited my external player, and XBMC went to 'reload', I believe it was 'stuck' in its attempt to enable the screensaver but since it didn't find the correct path it just kinda hung for 20-30 seconds.

Now that I've set the correct path to my SCR pictures, when I close out of external player and XBMC comes back up front the delay is practically gone. I say practically, because when XBMC loads back up it comes right up into the SCR but quickly scrolls through 2-4 pictures as it they were stuck in cache or something. Once it's 'caught up', I can click my OK button to exit the SCR.

So, I believe I have found and resolved my original (stupid) issue, but now I have a question. Is it possible to set the SCR to not be enabled while XBMC is 'hidden' as set in the Advancedsettings since I'm using an external player (zoomplayer)? It's not a huge deal, but coming out of a show (closing zoomplayer) it would definitely be nicer if it simply came straight back into the list where I was at previously, vs. coming into the screensaver which I have to exit. I can't really complain 'cause it's just not a huge deal, but it would be a little more convenient (it mostly bothers my wife).

Thanks guys!


- Jester - 2009-02-13

Upped updated build
XBMCSetup-Rev17694-jester-ext.exe

Notice, the famous intel patch, has now been included into the SVN and is included with this build, not sure if there is an impact.....so test away Smile


- ghizzu - 2009-02-13

moby-uk Wrote:Look in the XBMC logfile. The read my earlier post which includes details of how you can have the path passed to your external player rewritten.

I found what the problem is. Passing the URL to the external player XBMC replace "/" with "\". This is fine for local windows files, but it gives an illegal URL for net streams.
So it seems that I must learn some regular expression stuff for using the <replacers> tag...

Update: OK, this seems to work:
<replacers>
<replacer global="true">
<match>http:\\*</match>
<pat>\</pat>
<rep>/</rep>
</replacer>
</replacers>


- moby-uk - 2009-02-13

Jester Wrote:Upped updated build
XBMCSetup-Rev17694-jester-ext.exe

Notice, the famous intel patch, has now been included into the SVN and is included with this build, not sure if there is an impact.....so test away Smile

Hopefully there shouldn't be, the final version of the intel patch was mine too (mostly based on CapnBry's work though) and I'm running on an Intel GPU with both of these patches Smile

In theory it should mean you don't need either the forceontop or hidexbmc options set to true as for non-Intel the XBMC window is no longer TOPMOST and for Intel XBMC should lower itself when it loses focus.


- moby-uk - 2009-02-13

ghizzu Wrote:I found what the problem is. Passing the URL to the external player XBMC replace "/" with "\". This is fine for local windows files, but it gives an illegal URL for net streams.
So it seems that I must learn some regular expression stuff for using the <replacers> tag...

Update: OK, this seems to work:
<replacers>
<replacer global="true">
<match>http:\\*</match>
<pat>\</pat>
<rep>/</rep>
</replacer>
</replacers>

That will override the existing replacers and prevent smb URIs working, you'd need an action="append". I think the builtin replacers should probably change to only swap / for \ in smb URIs. I'll change the code when I get a minute but in the meantime you can do it with this (I think, I haven't tried it Wink):
Code:
<replacers>
  <replacer global="true">
   <match>^smb://</match>
   <pat>/</pat>
   <rep>\\</rep>
  </replacer>
  <replacer>
   <match>^smb:\\\\</match>
   <pat>smb:(\\\\[^\\]*\\)</pat>
   <rep>\1</rep>
  </replacer>
</replacers>



- THX-UltraII - 2009-02-13

Moby, I ve send you a PM. If you have time, can you take a look at it? thxz m8


- tknice1 - 2009-02-13

Hey Jester, thanks for all of your hard work on this. I noticed that the last few builds have included a message that pops up in XBMC about the external player being spawned. Have people been giving feedback on this? I'm just curious because I think my preference is that it's a little more seamless without it.

Also, I use zoom player because it appears to be the most flexible/robust. There doesn't seem to be a lot of talk about which players people prefer. I think I've seen AVC, mplayer and zoom player. Are there any others? What do people like the most, especially when used in home theater systems and not just casually?

Thanks again!

Tom


- moby-uk - 2009-02-13

@taxigps, @ghizzu & @hobojester

I've PM'd you all a link to a test-build that contains a few things you may like to try

For taxigps: an extra action to start the externalplayer when the builtin player is default that you can map in keymap.xml

For ghizzu: updated builtin replacers that will only change / to \ for smb URIs

For hobojester: a poke of the screensaver when returning from the externalplayer which may prevent your issue of a flick through a few screensaver images when XBMC return.

I'd appreciate some feedback from you all before I update my patch in trac and eat some more of Jester's bandwidth Smile