[PatK]

@popy Thanks for the trac ticket, this issue is known and has been discussed behind the scenes and will be dealt with as time permits, as noted in post #1495 of this thread the ticket helps.

@mv-- Screen blankers work fine inside Kodi, (Kodi disables The o/s screen blanker; because of conflicts with multiple screen blankers; no end of trouble ). once an external player is called, Kodi minimizes and hands over all functions to the external player and more or less goes to sleep without undoing the disable. Atm I can't seen a easy fix without getting your coding hat HOW-TO:Screensaver addon (wiki) https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid1148784

Considering we're talking about external players here, and the devs have done some incremental work with the default Kodi player, I encourage you to try out the latest and leave feedback as to why your external player is worth the sacrifice of losing controls, and all the rest.

[popy]

@PatK 
Heres is a pull request which fixes the issue: ​https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/14291

[Warner306]

Good job. I hope that fixes it.

[popy]

Good job. I hope that fixes it.

 At least on my dev maschine it does 

pOpY

[PatK]

I see it's already garnered some action "Rechi requested a review from FernetMenta", I'm crossing my fingers!

[mv--]

@mv-- Screen blankers work fine inside Kodi, (Kodi disables The o/s screen blanker; because of conflicts with multiple screen blankers; no end of trouble ). once an external player is called, Kodi minimizes and hands over all functions to the external player and more or less goes to sleep without undoing the disable. Atm I can't seen a easy fix without getting your coding hat HOW-TO:Screensaver addon(wiki)https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid1148784

Thats strange. On mine Windows 8.1 HTPC with 17.6 and 18 night builds Kodi disables Windows screensaver only during video playback. But when no video is playing Windows screensaver kicks in after timeout. Further more - if it does so when Kodi s/saver is active then Kodis hangs up.
Here is full log with fresh Kodi 17.6 install: https://pastebin.com/S2dWZhEJ

Also I could be wrong but seems that it's not screensaver addons who is responsible for controlling Windows s/saver. At least when I disable Kodi s/saver Windows s/saver is still disabled during video playback with both internal and external players.
 

Considering we're talking about external players here, and the devs have done some incremental work with the default Kodi player, I encourage you to try out the latest and leave feedback as to why your external player is worth the sacrifice of losing controls, and all the rest.

I'm using both internal and external players and I can see that Kodi player is making huge progress: dithering, 3DLUT support, HDR-SDR conversion. But the main reason I'm using external player is madVR and it's advanced processing (upscale, 3DLUT, native HDR support, etc.)

[captainfearless]

Hi,

I‘ve added VLC which is working great using this XML


<playercorefactory>
<players>
<player name="VLC" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
<filename>C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\VLC.exe</filename>
<args>"{1}" /fullscreen /close</args>
<hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc>
<hideconsole>true</hideconsole>
<warpcursor>none</warpcursor>
</player>
</players>
</playercorefactory>

Only snag is if i play an mp4 file now with the Kodi player there is no audio!

Can anyone help please?

[ronnyw]

Forgive if it was asked before, at least I tried searching in this thread 🙈

a) are there further attributes that are not yet in the wiki? I'd like to start a player differently dependent on which screen is connected. (I have a projector and flat screen, I would like to stark MPC HC with BlueskyFRC only with 4K files (done) and only when my projector is connected (no way found yet). All other cases should start another instance of MPC HC without BlueskyFRC)
EDIT: maybe there's a way to have a prompt to choose a player from a list when I hit play in Kodi?

b) when MPC HC / MadVR changes resolution from 2160p to 1080p and after playing changes back to 2160p it leaves Kodi left at a 1920x1080 window. Is there a elegant solution to that? (more elegant than hitting ALT+ENTER twice :-) )

[bsoriano]

Forgive if it was asked before, at least I tried searching in this thread 🙈

a) are there further attributes that are not yet in the wiki? I'd like to start a player differently dependent on which screen is connected. (I have a projector and flat screen, I would like to stark MPC HC with BlueskyFRC only with 4K files (done) and only when my projector is connected (no way found yet). All other cases should start another instance of MPC HC without BlueskyFRC)
EDIT: maybe there's a way to have a prompt to choose a player from a list when I hit play in Kodi?

b) when MPC HC / MadVR changes resolution from 2160p to 1080p and after playing changes back to 2160p it leaves Kodi left at a 1920x1080 window. Is there a elegant solution to that? (more elegant than hitting ALT+ENTER twice :-) )

ronnyw,

a) You can always choose a player from a list.  Instead of pressing Play, press C, in the resulting menu you have the option "Play Using...", which when selected will give you a list of your defined external players as well as the internal player.

b) I don't know if this is possible or desirable in your environment, but in mine (Windows 10 Pro 17735, Kodi Leia nightly 64-bit, nVidia GTX 1080 latest drivers), what I do is have the Windows desktop at native resolution for my TV (3840 x 2160) at 60Hz, 8 bit RGB Full Color (set in the nVidia Control Panel), and also have Kodi resolution at 3840 x 2160.  I let madVR do the resolution switching.  In this way, there is no resolution change when I start or exit any of the external players.  In my case there is a brief flash to black as my TV switches to/from HDR mode when I play 4K HDR content.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Bart

[popy]

Pull request is merged!
Next nightly the issue with the default kodi player and PCF should be gone.

pOpY

[ronnyw]

a) You can always choose a player from a list.  Instead of pressing Play, press C, in the resulting menu you have the option "Play Using...", which when selected will give you a list of your defined external players as well as the internal player.

Great! Can I have "Play using" as a default play-behaviour?
 

b) I don't know if this is possible or desirable in your environment, but in mine (Windows 10 Pro 17735, Kodi Leia nightly 64-bit, nVidia GTX 1080 latest drivers), what I do is have the Windows desktop at native resolution for my TV (3840 x 2160) at 60Hz, 8 bit RGB Full Color (set in the nVidia Control Panel), and also have Kodi resolution at 3840 x 2160.  I let madVR do the resolution switching.  In this way, there is no resolution change when I start or exit any of the external players.  In my case there is a brief flash to black as my TV switches to/from HDR mode when I play 4K HDR content.

I run Windows desktop (and Kodi) at 3840 x 2160. I think Kodi and madVR both use window modes to display (as exclusive mode in madvr causes problems). So madVR's resolution switching affects Windows desktop and scales Kodi to e.g. 1080p in the background when playing a 1080p movie. Switching back to 3840 x 2160 after playback doesn't resize Kodi again (but at least it's in the foreground as a 1920x1080 window on my 3840x2160 desktop). I tried running kodi in Fullscreen mode: movie plays at 1080p, MPC HC quits, madVR switches resolution back to 3840 x 2160, I'm back at the desktop and Kodi stays minimized at the taskbar until I manually activate it. That seemed even more awkward than the windowed mode ;-)

[PatK]

Pull request is merged!
Next nightly the issue with the default kodi player and PCF should be gone.

pOpY

Hallaluha... the gods have spoken!

[PatK]

Only snag is if i play an mp4 file now with the Kodi player there is no audio!

 This would not be an issue with the external player or your script, it's likely to be a Kodi auidosetting. Audio troubleshooting (wiki) and Audio quickstart guide (wiki) Submit a log, if you've followed the wiki's without relief.

[captainfearless]

Sorted it , an extra wasapi option had appeared!

[bsoriano]

a) You can always choose a player from a list.  Instead of pressing Play, press C, in the resulting menu you have the option "Play Using...", which when selected will give you a list of your defined external players as well as the internal player.

Great! Can I have "Play using" as a default play-behaviour?
 

b) I don't know if this is possible or desirable in your environment, but in mine (Windows 10 Pro 17735, Kodi Leia nightly 64-bit, nVidia GTX 1080 latest drivers), what I do is have the Windows desktop at native resolution for my TV (3840 x 2160) at 60Hz, 8 bit RGB Full Color (set in the nVidia Control Panel), and also have Kodi resolution at 3840 x 2160.  I let madVR do the resolution switching.  In this way, there is no resolution change when I start or exit any of the external players.  In my case there is a brief flash to black as my TV switches to/from HDR mode when I play 4K HDR content.

I run Windows desktop (and Kodi) at 3840 x 2160. I think Kodi and madVR both use window modes to display (as exclusive mode in madvr causes problems). So madVR's resolution switching affects Windows desktop and scales Kodi to e.g. 1080p in the background when playing a 1080p movie. Switching back to 3840 x 2160 after playback doesn't resize Kodi again (but at least it's in the foreground as a 1920x1080 window on my 3840x2160 desktop). I tried running kodi in Fullscreen mode: movie plays at 1080p, MPC HC quits, madVR switches resolution back to 3840 x 2160, I'm back at the desktop and Kodi stays minimized at the taskbar until I manually activate it. That seemed even more awkward than the windowed mode ;-) 

a) I don't think you can have a "Play Using..." as default action, only Play, Choose or Info.  I use "Choose", since it brings up the menu from where you select "Play Using...".

b) I am not sure what is going on in your environment.  In Kodi I have disabled to Adjust display refresh rate in the Player Settings, as well as Sync Playback to display.  In System Settings, Video, I have Display Mode set to Full Screen, and Use fullscreen window enabled.