Play second part prompt - removal? (1 Viewer)

[TheBatfink]

Hi, I have a strange issue with multipart movies (.cd1 .cd2 etc).

The scraper sees them fine but when I play the movie (I use external player media player classic HC) when the movie finishes, I have a prompt in MP asking to continue onto the second part of the movie. It appears to be out of focus and I cant select from the yes and no options.. Very frustrating. I have indeed watched both parts of the movie too already so why is it there?

If I set MP to exit on playback finish, the prompt is there and I can't select using remote.
If I set MP to play next file in the folder at the end of playback, the movie continues but I have this prompt at the end of the movie..

I'm assuming there is an option somewhere to just go ahead and play multipart movies without asking to start the second part as it seems odd to have to say yes.. I cant find it for the life of me though.. If anyone could help me make these movies play automatically I'd be very appreciative.

Great plugin though. I've been using myfilms with ANT for ages now and I cant believe how much easier this plugin makes maintaining the movies and especially finding artwork. Changed my media center experience no end!

Thanks
Batfink

 

[RoChess]

Hi, I have a strange issue with multipart movies (.cd1 .cd2 etc).

The scraper sees them fine but when I play the movie (I use external player media player classic HC) when the movie finishes, I have a prompt in MP asking to continue onto the second part of the movie. It appears to be out of focus and I cant select from the yes and no options.. Very frustrating. I have indeed watched both parts of the movie too already so why is it there?

It sounds like MPC-HC in your setup by itself already plays both parts, when MediaPortal only instructed it to play the first part. What is your exact external player command line that you used? A lot of times the problem lies in there.

Another question: Why are you using an external player? The internal player can be made MPC-HC compatible as well (on codec level) and offers much higher integration with skin/remote-control/etc.

 

[TheBatfink]

I thanks for the reply.

I've been playing some more. When I said the prompt didn't seem in focus and I couldn't select yes to continue the second part, this wasn't entirely accurate. For some reason there is a 10 second delay before MP becomes responsive? Then I can select yes or no ok. Incidently when I exit MPCHC myself mid movie, there is no delay in MP control.

I don;t use any command line switches, I just have MPCHC's .exe selected as the external player. I make all the settings inside MPCHC itself. There are 3 options.. At the end of playback -

Exit MPCHC
Do nothing
Play next file in folder

If I select exit MPCHC then it does exit out and the prompt is there in MPCHC for continuing with the second part.

My problem is it totally throws you out of the movie. With MPC you can pass it two files and it will play them consecutively. Could this be a solution somehow. I'd guess most mediaplayers allow stacking of files? The plugin doesn't have to worry about knowing when to start the second file then?


As for using an external player, thats a good question. I don;t even use MPC internal codecs, I have to use CoreAVC and Haali Splitter to play back my HD content as my system isn't powerful enough for ffdshow etc with high bitrate 720p x264. Funnily enough after my initial post I thought about the internal player and I *think* I have got CoreAVC loaded in, but when I tested, whilst the video was fine my audio was very choppy (DTS, spdif passthrough). I loaded haali into the codecs too and MP just crashed when I tried to play the file again so I gave up. I guess I could look at this option again.

Also, you say remote integration is better? I can fully control MPC out of the box with my media centre remote. The internal player nothing works whatsoever. I have no play or pause, fast forward, rewind, stop..?

I guess its all a matter of configuration but I have a setup that works (and doesnt require me learning how to advance config MP ) and all I need is this 2nd disc handling to be better. I'm sure I never had this issue with myfilms and my ant catalogue, not sure why it worked with that (and no going back to that isnt an option now I've discovered this plugin!).

I guess I'll have to look at configing the internal player for my system and getting the remote working somehow. It would be nice to get moving pictures throw both movie parts at the external player though so I could use MPC.

------
Actually.... How come I can use a custom trailer (advanced options) and it fires up the movie automatically after the intro finishes (I use a DTS-HD demo trailer) but it cant automatically fire up the second part of my movie after the first? That doesn't make sense?? What am I missing?

Thanks for the help!

 

[RoChess]

I personally merge all multi-part movies into a single one, with AVI Mux GUI or other tools. NTFS allows for 4GB+ single files, and optical media limits are a thing of the past as well.

Still it should work, so first look into MovingPictures configuration, go to the movie details and locate the movie. Then change to 'file details', so you can see if the movie is stacked correctly. You should see both parts in the correct order with 1st part listed first, then 2nd, etc.

Now MovingPictures simply passes on the command to play to MediaPortal which does the actual playing of the media. I can't verify myself right now, but there are a lot of settings you can adjust how media is played. Switch to Advanced mode otherwise to see if there is a setting you need in there. I rely soley on the internal player, so I don't know too much on the issues you are having with the external one, but on a previous forum the problem stemmed from the command line setup a user did for the external player. You can configure how the filename is passed on, and the other MPC-HC commands. The correct MPC-HC command line parameters are as follows (respect their order as well):

As for internal player, I use the MPC-HC Standalone filters myself, which you can download from the MPC-HC website (these are a more recent version then the filters included with MediaPortal). They are fully DXVA compatible, which means decoding is done by the videocard. This allows a 1080p video to play even on a slow CPU such as an Atom, provided the videocard is DXVA compatible. But you need to have a relative ancient computer these days not to have this ability. And in the rare case you do, then for as low as $14.99 you can buy a DXVA videocard these days.

 

[TheBatfink]

Its not the config of MPCHC. Its a default config and there are no settings for this, nor am I passing any parameters from MP with the command line option.

This is how I see its all operating -

-Movie is selected
-Intro is opened and played
--When intro finishes, nothing else happens until the player closes. When it does close..
-Movie file 1 is played
--When movie file 1 is played, prompt is displayed asking to continue playback with movie file 2. If yes is selected..
-Movie file 2 is played

Now, I get around the intro and movie 1 transition by setting the player (internal preferences not command line) to exit the program when playback has finished. This then automatically triggers the spawn of a new player process and movie file 1. Its not pretty as it drops back to mediaportal for a few seconds while the new spawn loads up but its better than nothing.

The problem is when movie file 1 finished, we have this prompt that appears in MP asking if you want to carry on watching the movie from movie file 2. It totally rips you out the movie.. Thats where we are now, no parameters are being passed, just the plugin or MP calling the movie files as however they have been coded too as default.

What I don't understand is why the plugin would wait for the external player process which is playing the intro to exit, before then automatically opening movie file 1, but then it being completely different between movie file 1s playback and movie file 2 (the prompt which requires yes no input).. Why handle these transitions differently??

As for making MPCHC play these files together -

C:\Program Files\MPCHC\mpc-hc.exe "C:My Movies Collection Folder\My Movie Folder\cd1.avi"

That makes MPC play the file

C:\Program Files\MPCHC\mpc-hc.exe "C:My Movies Collection Folder\My Movie Folder\cd1.avi" "C:My Movies Collection Folder\My Movie Folder\cd2.avi"

That makes MPC play both the files one after another within the same process spawn. If you highlight two files in Windows Explorer and right click and open with MPCHC, it plays them both after another..
I'm not sure how I can change or what settings you want me to change in MPCHC that will play both these files when they are being called from MP or this plugin singular one at a time?!

Am I being stupid and totally missing the point? Its late, I certainly could be

Thanks!

 

[RoChess]

I looked at the previous forum post.

You need to configure MediaPortal on external player to use the following command for MPC-HC:

"C:\Program Files\MPC-HC Folder\mpc-hc.exe" "%filename%" /fullscreen /play /close

Adjust path and executable accordingly to your own setup of course.

This will cause each part to play, and end, so that MePo can correctly resume next part. *ANY* other way will fail, because then MPC-HC will not relinquish control back to MePo.

If you just focus all this energy on making the internal player work, then there is no 'resume part X' prompt, and it will seamless play them as one movie.

 

[TheBatfink]

I'll give it a try shortly. Thanks.

I'm not confident though, I already have MPC open in fullscreen and immediately play the file and close when finished! Why cant both filenames be passed to MPC like my example above?

I still dont understand why the intro handling is different either

 

[TheBatfink]

Tried it, still exits the first disc and theres immediately a prompt asking if to continue with the second part from the plugin. I still think its already set to prompt regardless as I'm using an external player or theres some setting somewhere I've missed. I've I look behind the player whilst its playing the first disc there is no prompt so it must know the first disc just ended and puts that damn prompt up instead of firing off the second part. I just dont understand how intro and part 1 is felt to not need a prompt but part 1 and 2 transition is...

Oh well. Guess I might have to start updating my ant catalogue Thanks for the help anyway. Appreciated. Otherwise an ace plugin!

 

[TheBatfink]

Also tried the internal player now. The result is unwatchable. Disapointed

 

[RoChess]

Also tried the internal player now. The result is unwatchable. Disapointed

You can make the internal player work the exact same as *any* external player you use, as long as you can match the codecs. For MPC-HC this is easy, because they supply the internal codecs as standalone ones.

So you need to properly configure the MediaPortal codec settings via advanced.