[solved] Passing ISO (-Path) to external Player without mounting it? (1 Viewer)

[fLaSkin]

Hi all,

some time is gone since I've watched a 3D BluRay.
Yesterday I decided to "do it again".

I've installed PowerDVD 15 Ultra on my rig and setup the usual external player and Virtual Drive (native [Win10]) Parts in MePo.
After struggling a bit with problems I could fix (more or less) with the Launcher of this thread my experience with ISO playback / mounting is (again): semi optimal....

So there have come an idea / question to me:
Why not passing the path of ISO file to the external player and let IT handle the rest.

Also with the already mentioned Launcher in the other thread, the procedure is not user-friendly and far from "clean":
- MePo starts mounting the ISO
-> Moving Pictures do wait for the mounting to finish
-> if its not done in 10 secs (default) we get a prompt to retry it
-> if its mounted, the external player will be called
-> in terms of using PowerDVD 15, the player is self-launching an other instance and so MePo is "loosing" the external player -> resulting in unmounting the ISO (for that the mentioned Launcher)

PowerDVD greatly can handle ISO playback / mounting itself - there is no need to premount it in MePo for PDVD.
For the first time opening an ISO in it, there will be a prompt that a seperate driver will be installed for that purpose -> no deal, once done PowerDVD is selfmounting the file and playing it.

So I thought, "do some changes in the MePo configuration":
I've set the external player to "C:\Program Files(x86)\Cyberlink\PowerDVD 15\Movie\Cinema\PowerDVDCinema.exe" (nice, slick fullscreen GUI) (may some misspelling in it - I'm writing it out of my mind right now) and as parameters %filename%.
I then disabled the Auto-mounting feature under Virtual Drive.

My expection was:
I haven't ticked Auto-Mounting of images, so selecting the Movie in Moving Pictures will result in just opening the external player with the path of the file as parameter.
What I did get was an (error) Message in Mediaportal / Moving Pictures, that the Image could not be mounted and so the playback can't be started....

May someone could help me?
May I got some misstakes in my thinking, or Image-handling is not done the way I wish, when mounting in MePo is disabled?!
I do want to get rid of the MePo mounting-behaviour, no matter if its the nativ Windows-way or via 3d party (DaemonTools etc.), because letting the external player handle this part seems more reliableto me.

Kind regards,
fLaSkin

 

[regeszter]

Hi,

I think the issue will be fixed here.

 

[fLaSkin]

Hey regeszter,

thanks for your finding / hint to the problem with the unmounting.

But: even if there will come a fix for that (soon), I would like to see a way to skip the (general) ISO-handling from MePo / Moving Pictures and a possibility to just give that to the external player (if the user want to).
Why not giving this load to the player, if he can do
I think that could be (another) way to avoid that / other problems or struggeling with DaemonTools etc. for some users.

May that's already possibel and I've just done something not / wrong in the configuration.

 

[regeszter]

Why not giving this load to the player, if he can do

Did you switch off the "Automount image files"?

http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...uration/21_DVD_Discs_Images/4_Virtual_Drive_*

 

[fLaSkin]

So I thought, "do some changes in the MePo configuration":
I've set the external player to "C:\Program Files(x86)\Cyberlink\PowerDVD 15\Movie\Cinema\PowerDVDCinema.exe" (nice, slick fullscreen GUI) (may some misspelling in it - I'm writing it out of my mind right now) and as parameters %filename%.
I then disabled the Auto-mounting feature under Virtual Drive.

Yupp, I did

But what happened was, that I received a message saying, that the image could not be mounted when I try to start its playback.
So what I'm thinking is, that Moving Pictures always fall back to the mounting routine or checks, if the image is (already [manual]) mounted.

I do interpret "Automount image files" as exactly that - if an image gets selected for playback (in MePo general), it will be automatically mounted for me; else I have to do this by myself before starting playback.

If its like that, I "just" need to get Moving Pictures to handle ISOs a bit different -> "oh, an image -> if an external player (DVD Disc/Images Player) is specified, then do just that (without mount-checking)"

Any ideas or other opinions?

 

[fLaSkin]

So, an update from me:

I've gone active by myself - I'm far away from skilled in C#, but got enough Knowledge of programming in general to reconstruct what is done by the plugin - have taken the 1.8.1 source of Moving Pictures and have added some lines to the Code.

Now there is an Option under the Advanced Settings in the Moving Pictures Configuration called "External Player PreMounting", set to True by Default.

The behaviour of that new Option is:
Set to 'True', the plugin keeps mounting image-files the normal way, before starting the Playback.
Set to 'False', the checking / Loop, if an Image is mounted will be skipped


So what I have configured and tested with that is:
Use an External Player.
The path is set to PowerDVD.exe
As Arguments it just needs the Default %filename% variable.
Set the PreMounting to false, so that this is done by the external Player.

Something "strange" in the Moving Pictures configuration was, that i had to set the variable %filename% in quotation-marks ("%filename%")- so that the external Player receives it that way (ex. "C:\.....")

Positive effect of that all:
PowerDVD mounts the Image, starts the Playback automatically, changes to Fullscreen (for me) and I don't have to hassle with the "bug" already mentioned in this thread and the temporary fix with a launcher.
PDVD don't seems to restart into another Playback mode - there is also no Need for, because the GUI is just seen for short (while mounting) and then doesn't interest anymore while Playback (in my opinion).

Also, People with Windows 7 or lower (who can't Mount "native") using PDVD would not Need a third Party mounting tool like DeamonTools etc.


I'm not very familiar with the licensing, rights of the dev(s) and Agreement (you can blame me for that, if you want to ), so I'm not sure about attaching it here for others who want's to test it.

What I will do anyway is pushing that idea / Code to the dev, so that it may be taken over (if it Looks like an usefull feature for him) and also could be done more....... "professional" (in anticipiation, that my code is nooby )

Regards!

 

[RoChess]

@ltfearme can add that code easy, as filenames should always be enclosed in quotes when there is the possibility of spaces being used.

So did you make an actual C# change, or did you just adjust the default settings values? It can also be that this was already fixed, but then you would only experience this on a fresh installation, because otherwise the installer will keep using the old-bad data under the assumptions that you are using it like that for a reason.

 

[fLaSkin]

Hey RoChess,

I actually did a C# change / extension in the code.

Maybe I've written that a bit "glibberish" - sorry for that, I'm not native in English

I've added a new Option under the Advanced Settings of the plugin and just stated, what the default value for it will be / is. (normal mounting behaviour aa default)

So nothing to do with my Installation, that Option did not exist before my own changes in the code

Cheers

 

[RoChess]

Okay, then just create a new ticket @ https://github.com/damienhaynes/moving-pictures/issues

And submit your code changes there, so it will be easier for @ltfearme to merge them into the active codebase.

Verify as well if your solution fixes the following existing tickets:

https://github.com/damienhaynes/moving-pictures/issues/297
https://github.com/damienhaynes/moving-pictures/issues/817
https://github.com/damienhaynes/moving-pictures/issues/921
https://github.com/damienhaynes/moving-pictures/issues/1028
https://github.com/damienhaynes/moving-pictures/issues/1069​

Possibly more, as I only did a search for "player".

​

 

[fLaSkin]

I've created another fork of moving pictures, done my code-changes on it and opened a pull-request on damienhaynes master-branch.
Now it's up to him, if he want to merge (or re-write) it for the next release.

Here is the pull-request, if interested.

For the other tickets you found:
Some could (more or less) be bypassed by using an external player (doing the mount itself) i think.
But i haven't tested (yet) - setting up a new rig at the moment and that is consuming my time

Maybe someone else (with a given problem from the tickets) could test my code-changes and report back, if that helps there too.
I could build a dll for them from my fork, if needed (I'm aware of, that not everyone got the knowledge or will for doing that process)