[ashlar]

Not sure if there's any interest, but I intend to compile a modified version of the latest Kodi and a modified vesion of MPC-BE that will enable the use of "resume playback" when using an external player.

I might look into making some more slight modification to support additional features. If anyone's interested in the details, I plan on enabling communication between Kodi and MPC-BE using file system (meta data files that will be automatically created and removed).

Open to more ideas or support.

I'd be interested in testing, for sure. I know it's probably asking too much but it would be great if you could find a way to have subtitles add-ons from Kodi working from within MPC-BE. I ask because you talk about "communication between Kodi and MPC-BE", thus raising my hopes.

Edit: feel free to contact me by PM for test builds, help, discussion, whatever really. I'd like to contribute as much as I can.

[purpleman]

Not sure if there's any interest, but I intend to compile a modified version of the latest Kodi and a modified vesion of MPC-BE that will enable the use of "resume playback" when using an external player.

I might look into making some more slight modification to support additional features. If anyone's interested in the details, I plan on enabling communication between Kodi and MPC-BE using file system (meta data files that will be automatically created and removed).

Open to more ideas or support.

I'd be interested in testing, for sure. I know it's probably asking too much but it would be great if you could find a way to have subtitles add-ons from Kodi working from within MPC-BE. I ask because you talk about "communication between Kodi and MPC-BE", thus raising my hopes.

Edit: feel free to contact me by PM for test builds, help, discussion, whatever really. I'd like to contribute as much as I can. 

I think that a dramatically easier approach would be to make it so that the subtitle feature of Kodi (and any plugins you have installed) are accessible from the context menu within Kodi (before playback starts) rather than from within the video player.
I'll look into this.

[ashlar]

Not sure if there's any interest, but I intend to compile a modified version of the latest Kodi and a modified vesion of MPC-BE that will enable the use of "resume playback" when using an external player.

I might look into making some more slight modification to support additional features. If anyone's interested in the details, I plan on enabling communication between Kodi and MPC-BE using file system (meta data files that will be automatically created and removed).

Open to more ideas or support.

I'd be interested in testing, for sure. I know it's probably asking too much but it would be great if you could find a way to have subtitles add-ons from Kodi working from within MPC-BE. I ask because you talk about "communication between Kodi and MPC-BE", thus raising my hopes.

Edit: feel free to contact me by PM for test builds, help, discussion, whatever really. I'd like to contribute as much as I can.    

I think that a dramatically easier approach would be to make it so that the subtitle feature of Kodi (and any plugins you have installed) are accessible from the context menu within Kodi (before playback starts) rather than from within the video player.
I'll look into this.   

Yeah, that's another option, for sure. I honestly don't know whether that would entail modification to all subtitles add-ons code or just the portion of Kodi that handles the process. On the other hand, thinking about it, that means starting playback to check whether subs are present or not, and if they are good or not. If they are not, stopping playback, searching for subs, restarting playback.

Meanwhile, I've done some experiments with EventGhost (a programmable remote software solution). While launching MPC-HC as an external player, I managed to get Kodi to open the subtitle search window, while MPC-HC is paused. It works and it downloads subs. There's some video corruption outside the subtitles search windows but everything works perfectly.
The problem is going back to MPC-HC and having it use the subs you downloaded. So far I've only managed to get there using the "Reload file" functionality, in combination with the "remember position" functionality so that the file is reloaded from where it was paused before searching for subs.

Edit: and I've actually managed to configure EventGhost to handle everything in a pretty seamless way. Thanks for the inspiration!

[purpleman]

I'd be interested in testing, for sure. I know it's probably asking too much but it would be great if you could find a way to have subtitles add-ons from Kodi working from within MPC-BE. I ask because you talk about "communication between Kodi and MPC-BE", thus raising my hopes.

Edit: feel free to contact me by PM for test builds, help, discussion, whatever really. I'd like to contribute as much as I can.    

I think that a dramatically easier approach would be to make it so that the subtitle feature of Kodi (and any plugins you have installed) are accessible from the context menu within Kodi (before playback starts) rather than from within the video player.
I'll look into this.    

Yeah, that's another option, for sure. I honestly don't know whether that would entail modification to all subtitles add-ons code or just the portion of Kodi that handles the process. On the other hand, thinking about it, that means starting playback to check whether subs are present or not, and if they are good or not. If they are not, stopping playback, searching for subs, restarting playback.

Meanwhile, I've done some experiments with EventGhost (a programmable remote software solution). While launching MPC-HC as an external player, I managed to get Kodi to open the subtitle search window, while MPC-HC is paused. It works and it downloads subs. There's some video corruption outside the subtitles search windows but everything works perfectly.
The problem is going back to MPC-HC and having it use the subs you downloaded. So far I've only managed to get there using the "Reload file" functionality, in combination with the "remember position" functionality so that the file is reloaded from where it was paused before searching for subs.

Edit: and I've actually managed to configure EventGhost to handle everything in a pretty seamless way. Thanks for the inspiration!  

That's great. Might be a good idea to share your exact EventGhost configuration (screenshots or otherwise) so that other forum members could try the same.
I still plan on compiling those custom versions for playback resume.

[ashlar]

I think that a dramatically easier approach would be to make it so that the subtitle feature of Kodi (and any plugins you have installed) are accessible from the context menu within Kodi (before playback starts) rather than from within the video player.
I'll look into this.    

Yeah, that's another option, for sure. I honestly don't know whether that would entail modification to all subtitles add-ons code or just the portion of Kodi that handles the process. On the other hand, thinking about it, that means starting playback to check whether subs are present or not, and if they are good or not. If they are not, stopping playback, searching for subs, restarting playback.

Meanwhile, I've done some experiments with EventGhost (a programmable remote software solution). While launching MPC-HC as an external player, I managed to get Kodi to open the subtitle search window, while MPC-HC is paused. It works and it downloads subs. There's some video corruption outside the subtitles search windows but everything works perfectly.
The problem is going back to MPC-HC and having it use the subs you downloaded. So far I've only managed to get there using the "Reload file" functionality, in combination with the "remember position" functionality so that the file is reloaded from where it was paused before searching for subs.

Edit: and I've actually managed to configure EventGhost to handle everything in a pretty seamless way. Thanks for the inspiration!   

That's great. Might be a good idea to share your exact EventGhost configuration (screenshots or otherwise) so that other forum members could try the same.
I still plan on compiling those custom versions for playback resume. 

Yeah, I plan to!

[ashlar]

I still plan on compiling those custom versions for playback resume.

By the way, what I did with EventGhost... I am going to explain it probably in @brazen1 discussion on external players. But it's quite complex for "regular" users, I fear. So my experiments were more of a... I don't know how to say it. I will describe what I have done and I hope you could manage to get it working without so many workarounds.

Edit: forgot to ask, the decision to work with MPC-BE stems from it being still under development, compared to MPC-HC which, if I understand correctly, has simple "maintenance" releases? Or is there something specific that MPC-BE does that you think will prove useful in the scenario we are interested in (ie. as a Kodi external player)?

[purpleman]

I still plan on compiling those custom versions for playback resume.

By the way, what I did with EventGhost... I am going to explain it probably in @brazen1 discussion on external players. But it's quite complex for "regular" users, I fear. So my experiments were more of a... I don't know how to say it. I will describe what I have done and I hope you could manage to get it working without so many workarounds.

Edit: forgot to ask, the decision to work with MPC-BE stems from it being still under development, compared to MPC-HC which, if I understand correctly, has simple "maintenance" releases? Or is there something specific that MPC-BE does that you think will prove useful in the scenario we are interested in (ie. as a Kodi external player)? 

MPC-HC has issues with VFR playback (a lot of phone-shot videos are like that or flagged like that). I could only resolve the playback issues by switching to MPC-BE. Presumably, whatever was broken in HC (which is no longer under development) is fixed with BE. So might as well. Otherwise no difference as far I'm concerned.

[ashlar]

I still plan on compiling those custom versions for playback resume.

By the way, what I did with EventGhost... I am going to explain it probably in @brazen1 discussion on external players. But it's quite complex for "regular" users, I fear. So my experiments were more of a... I don't know how to say it. I will describe what I have done and I hope you could manage to get it working without so many workarounds.

Edit: forgot to ask, the decision to work with MPC-BE stems from it being still under development, compared to MPC-HC which, if I understand correctly, has simple "maintenance" releases? Or is there something specific that MPC-BE does that you think will prove useful in the scenario we are interested in (ie. as a Kodi external player)?  

MPC-HC has issues with VFR playback (a lot of phone-shot videos are like that or flagged like that). I could only resolve the playback issues by switching to MPC-BE. Presumably, whatever was broken in HC (which is no longer under development) is fixed with BE. So might as well. Otherwise no difference as far I'm concerned. 

Got it. Thanks for the explanation.
Since you mentioned willingness to do other slight modifications, I'm gonna list some of the things that come to mind:

Make the controls bar and seeker bar (CTRL+1 / CTRL+2) bigger and navigable with cursor keys. As a 10 feet interface the current size is kind of ridiculous.
And there's no other way to see the position one is in video playback. In Kodi you can open the menu and see "where you are", when the movie is supposed to finish, at what time, etc. The closer we could get there, the better.

This would also open up the possibility to pick and choose from audio and subs tracks through a menu, using the AUD and SUB buttons. For videos with many subtitles embedded it's kind of a pain to switch.

With a similar objective, have the pop up while pausing provide more information. It currently just says "Pause". Default Kodi skin, while paused, displays the title of the video file, the current time (a clock basically), the time when the video will end (calculated for remaining lenght of the video).

Thanks for your interest in this. Bear in mind that I have absolutely *zero* idea about the coding complexity of the above suggestions.

[Wanilton]

@ashlar 

About pause and info, check Aeon MQ8, it´s something skins have support, MQ8 has 4 levels info basic to advanced for pause screen.

[ashlar]

@ashlar 

About pause and info, check Aeon MQ8, it´s something skins have support, MQ8 has 4 levels info basic to advanced for pause screen.

Sorry, I was discussing what could be done to make MPC-BE more compatible for use from the couch with a remote. Not Kodi proper. Purpleman has offered to work on some better integration between Kodi and MPC-BE used as an external player.

[tjcinnamon]

@ashlar 

About pause and info, check Aeon MQ8, it´s something skins have support, MQ8 has 4 levels info basic to advanced for pause screen.

Sorry, I was discussing what could be done to make MPC-BE more compatible for use from the couch with a remote. Not Kodi proper. Purpleman has offered to work on some better integration between Kodi and MPC-BE used as an external player. 

This would be great!

[ashlar]

I still plan on compiling those custom versions for playback resume.

Hi, @purpleman  Any news on this?

[purpleman]

I still plan on compiling those custom versions for playback resume.

Hi, @purpleman  Any news on this?  

I'm working on it whenever I have some spare time. This week didn't have as much as I had hoped. Hopefully will be done within the next couple weeks.
If you want some progress report, I already got the source codes for both MPC-BE and Kodi to properly compile and build and have altered MPC-BE so that if playback stops and media closes before it reached the end of the file it writes a metadata file to disk with the timestamp.

Next steps would be for Kodi to check for the existence of that file when you start playback and if it finds it, read the content and pass the proper resume arguments to the external player launch.

[brazen1]

Hi.  I'm taking interest in your project although it's not clear to me what your goal is?  Every external player I use has a resume function to pick up where I left off the next time I launch the player from Kodi.  I think MPC-BE calls it a 'file position' setting.  Others call the setting something else.  This data is stored in each player.  What gain will your new compile and build offer that doesn't already exist besides maybe displaying partially watched status for the title in the Kodi library since the timestamp data will be copied to Kodi?  I use 5 external players and just added a 5th, VLC.  I doubt it but, if I was to launch playback using a different player could or would they resume at the same timestamp also since Kodi will be telling them to?  Whether all players will oblige is a different story but I take it at least the one that provided the original metadata to Kodi might?  Thanks for taking the time and interest.  Will your compile and build offer anything else of interest?  TIA.

[Warner306]

I would assume the resume and watched status features of Kodi would work correctly. You could see your progress in the video from Kodi and the video would only be marked watched in the library when it is watched. This might also make it possible to use MPC with video add-ons and be able to resume your progress with streams from that add-on.