Can't play video inside .rar-files (1 Viewer)

[Scope]

Hello!

First of all I want to say THANKS for a great plugin!
I have the RarFileSource directshow filter to be able to play videos inside .rar-files.
I believe that RarFileSource is included in Mediaportal nowadays?
Anyway since it is a directshow filter, ffmpeg should be able to attach that filter to be able to open .rar-files.
Also VLC should have support for opening .rar files.
But this does not seem to work when MPExtended uses ffmpeg nor VLC.

Is this a known issue?

Kind regards,
Torbjörn Westerlund.

 

[Oxan]

I believe that RarFileSource is included in Mediaportal nowadays?

I dont think it is.

Anyway since it is a directshow filter, ffmpeg should be able to attach that filter to be able to open .rar-files.

That's not true, ffmpeg doesn't use DirectShow.

Also VLC should have support for opening .rar files.

If it does, then it should work in MPExtended too... Please post your logs so that I can see why it doesn't work.

Is this a known issue?

It's simply that we haven't thought about it. For now it might be the easiest to just extract the rar files.

 

[Scope]

...

Hello Oxan!

Thanks for the fast response. I'm not as fast.
Okay so ffmpeg does not use directshow, I should've figured that out since it would probably be a hazzle to stream from a directshow-filter.
Anyway, I tried opening a rar-file with the VLC-dist supplied (after adding the GUI). And it opens .rar-files correctly and plays them.
But it does not seem to work when using the commandline and outputting the data to a named pipe.
Perhaps it doesnt use the correct access-plugin? Maybe some parameter is missing?

Unfortunately there are no errors in the log. The video just doesnt start in ampdroid.

Kind regards,
Torbjörn Westerlund.

 

[Oxan]

Anyway, I tried opening a rar-file with the VLC-dist supplied (after adding the GUI). And it opens .rar-files correctly and plays them.
But it does not seem to work when using the commandline and outputting the data to a named pipe.
Perhaps it doesnt use the correct access-plugin? Maybe some parameter is missing?

Maybe, but without your logs I can't tell.

 

[Scope]

Anyway, I tried opening a rar-file with the VLC-dist supplied (after adding the GUI). And it opens .rar-files correctly and plays them.
But it does not seem to work when using the commandline and outputting the data to a named pipe.
Perhaps it doesnt use the correct access-plugin? Maybe some parameter is missing?

Maybe, but without your logs I can't tell.

I have been trying to figure out what may be failing when playing .rar-files with VLC.
I have enabled debug-logs in VLC and attached to the post.

I have modified the command-line and added "--access=rar" but it should not be needed since VLC iterates all access modules until it finds a fitting one.
As you can see in the logs it starts to open all the rar-files but then the VLCWrapper seems to cause some problems:
I VLCWrapper version 0.2.1, using VLC 2.0.2 Twoflower
...
S playing
main debug: EOF reached
S finished

If I use VLC.exe directly with the same commandline, and replace the named pipe to an actual file, VLC will start to transcode the file inside the .rar files.

Is the wrapper checking the size of the file or something to be able to seek? Maybe this is causing some issues?

Kind regards,
Torbjörn Westerlund.

 

[Oxan]

If I use VLC.exe directly with the same commandline, and replace the named pipe to an actual file, VLC will start to transcode the file inside the .rar files.

Did you use the VLC.exe we shipped, or the one from a manually installed VLC?

Is the wrapper checking the size of the file or something to be able to seek? Maybe this is causing some issues?

No, we aren't.

The same log file from using VLC.exe (when it does work) can be useful as well.

 

[Scope]

If I use VLC.exe directly with the same commandline, and replace the named pipe to an actual file, VLC will start to transcode the file inside the .rar files.

Did you use the VLC.exe we shipped, or the one from a manually installed VLC?

Is the wrapper checking the size of the file or something to be able to seek? Maybe this is causing some issues?

No, we aren't.

The same log file from using VLC.exe (when it does work) can be useful as well.

Using the same VLC.exe that you are shipping - yes.
I will attach a log-file from when it works.

Do you have any idea what may be wrong?
I am a developer and I can help out if you dont have time to fix this.
But I'm guessing that it will take alot longer for me to do it than you

Kind regards,
Torbjörn Westerlund.

 

[Oxan]

The difference seems to be that the failed log referes to a .rar.m3u file on line 651, while the working one doesn't. Do you have .m3u paths in your database?

 

[Scope]

The difference seems to be that the failed log referes to a .rar.m3u file on line 651, while the working one doesn't. Do you have .m3u paths in your database?

Maybe you can try to rar a video and then try to play it?