Posts: 2,510
Joined: Dec 2012
Reputation:
216
What do you find imperfect? Maybe there's room for improvement that can be addressed.
Posts: 2,510
Joined: Dec 2012
Reputation:
216
Isn't Kodi 'Now Playing' just a background for when playing music? I use Kodi for music anyway. I use external players for video where no background is wanted.
There are settings in every external player to resume playback where you left off prior just like Kodi. 'Partial' watched status doesn't appear on posters in Kodi but 'Watched' and 'Unwatched' do when using external players. You can also predetermine what constitutes 'Watched' even if you only partially watched by setting a value in the playercorefactory.xml used. Otherwise, it will naturally determine using normal start to finish. It would be nice if external players marked Kodi posters partially watched but to be honest, I rarely partially watch anything and if I do, I manually mark the poster unwatched (as a reminder) and then launch the external and let it resume where I left off. If I routinely partially watched things, I would just use Kodi VideoPlayer. Nice to have choices. I suppose the cached data memory for the external vs Kodi's are two separate things. It would be advantageous to merge the external players cache with Kodi's or perhaps a titles nfo.
I agree, REW and FF do not exist on MPC players but do on others. I use skip back and forward 10 sec feature. Repeated presses skip further if desired. Thankfully the chapter skip and frame step works perfectly though.
Yes, using external players leaves the Kodi environment and lets the external player do its thing. And when you close the external, you are returned to Kodi in focus no harm done and ready for the next task. It's seamless and I don't see the problem?
I agree, adding external players as a choice alongside Kodi's VideoPlayer is an exception and not a standard. A necessary one too if you want to use 3rd party software such as madVR. DSPlayer is an exception too. Nothing standard about it. It's a fork unlike the addition of external players added to Kodi. As DSPlayer diminishes and Kodi and external players with other components continue to advance, it's my belief enthusiasts will have no other choice but to migrate to what works. I've been preparing for that inevitability.
As with anything, there will be some compromises. Minor imo. This is why I request likes and dislikes and necessary improvement suggestions reading posts like these here. Thankfully I've not run across anything major that could even suggest a deal breaker that hasn't already been addressed.