Streaming RAR files (1 Viewer)

[MrT]

The day media portal has support for streaming movies inside RAR files, I will donate money via Paypal. That should'nt be to hard to understand ?

so this means that the current MediaPortal is not worth a donation?

Well, to be honest in a non crude way, no, not yet. I rather use xbmc (witch I have dontated to) until Media Portal has support for viewing movies inside rars. When that happens It's worth donating for and my xbox will not be used any more.

 

[MrT]

The day media portal has support for streaming movies inside RAR files, I will donate money via Paypal. That should'nt be to hard to understand ?

so this means that the current MediaPortal is not worth a donation?

The day media portal has support for streaming movies inside RAR files, I will donate money via Paypal. That should'nt be to hard to understand ?

Until then you can use this and donate to me, and I will donate to MP. Deal?

I'v scanned your webpage, and from first look, this is NOT what we want. We want Media Portal to stream stuff without unpacking or removing the rar files. The files could be temp unrared on the mediacenter HD, but not at the source HD.

Is'nt there anyone here who have used this with XBMC that can give the coders a good overview of what the stream rar function in XBMC does? I'm really not sure how they do this in XBMC, but I know it works great.

 

[FreQi]

so this means that the current MediaPortal is not worth a donation?

I think he just meant it more as a means to attempt motivating someone to do it. I tried looking at the code myself but haven't worked on a collaborative project before, so I am not even sure how I would contribute a change.

Is'nt there anyone here who have used this with XBMC that can give the coders a good overview of what the stream rar function in XBMC does? I'm really not sure how they do this in XBMC, but I know it works great.

Sure, I've used XBMC and to a limited degree, MP. I know exactly what "we" are looking for, but I'm have a bit of a time trying to read the source code for XBMC since I don't know C++. That being said, I started looking on the SVN. And these look like as good a place to start as any.


/xbmc/FileSystem / FileRar.h (rev 8922)
/xbmc/FileSystem / FileRar.cpp (rev 8729)

At least that's where I was looking to see how they do it.

To sumarize the desire: We do not care about compressed rar files. Rar's without compression are the target. We basically want the "Store Mode Rars" to be treated like a folder or directory.

 

[piranha]

And who are "we"?

Anyway, as much as I've heard, it's not as easy, since MP does not have it's own media player, and windows media player doesn't allow for streaming for RAR files (or thru external lib).
So this is your bottleneck. If I remember correctly, it couldn't be done without developing own MP player.

 

[scythelt]

Sorry, but I don't get it.

Just UnRAR the files. Why would you want to keep the video files in a rar and then force further support on a mediaplayer for a completely unsupported format? Seems like a completely backward way of trying to solve a problem to me.

Instead, just unpack the rars and store them as video files like normal - problem solved!

How hard is it to unpack a rar - especially if they're not compressed anyway??

 

[Aoestein]

scythelt, your needs are not the same as mine. I dont want to extract my files, I want to keep them rar'ed. I know it seems strange but all "scen" releases is shared in uncompressed rar-format, and its much simpler to browse and play rars than to extract and then play.

For all seekers out there:
I have found a solution that isnt to bad, the program is call'd "Dziobas Rar Player"
It creates a stream using UnRAR and displays it in a normal window or in fullscreen.

I would love to see this implemented in mediaportal in the future!

//Aoe

 

[Ragman]

I agree with MrT that having RAR support would be really nice. It is highly convenient to be able to watch series/movies from within the original archives without having to unpack them first. It would make a great piece of software even better

 

[infinite.loop]

Sorry, but I don't get it.

Just UnRAR the files. Why would you want to keep the video files in a rar and then force further support on a mediaplayer for a completely unsupported format? Seems like a completely backward way of trying to solve a problem to me.

Instead, just unpack the rars and store them as video files like normal - problem solved!

How hard is it to unpack a rar - especially if they're not compressed anyway??

he, he. thats the same as i thought.

but someone allready said it here, that its just because of lazyness

since MP does not have it's own media player, and windows media player doesn't allow for streaming for RAR files (or thru external lib).

just to clear this up.
MediaPortal is not using WindowsMediaPlayer. We are using directShow.

For this thread here... Well you can try to find someone who will code you a filter (in c++) or something else to get it working.

But i would not be to confident

I wish you good luck

 

[tourettes]

since MP does not have it's own media player, and windows media player doesn't allow for streaming for RAR files (or thru external lib).

just to clear this up.
MediaPortal is not using WindowsMediaPlayer. We are using directShow.

For this thread here... Well you can try to find someone who will code you a filter (in c++) or something else to get it working.

But i would not be to confident

I wish you good luck

I-loop is right, if MediaPortal wanted to support playing movie files directly inside the RAR (or any other archive format) someone would need to write a directshow source filter to handle the archives. Not a small task.

I feel (and some other devs might agree also) that it's people that are just too damn lazy. Why I (or some other dev) should be spending hundreds of hours in writing a directshow filter that is mainly targeted to help lazy people that are playing pirated stuff (and don't tell me its something else, if someone is so stupid that archives his own avi / mpeg / qt etc files in RARs let him suffer.)

I just don't see any point in spending much of valuable free time in creating a such a directshow filter to save couple of minutes of "scene" people's free time.

...and sorry if I did hurt someones feelings, but being lazy and demanding something like this makes me just angry.

 

[MrT]

Is there no way the code from XBMC can be used?

I see that it's repated until boring, that the people in this tread want this due to lazyness, but it's not. Unless you've used this excelent function, I guess it's hard to understand the need for it. If anyone out there can give the coders a rundown of the usefullness of this, I guess they would understand why the people in this thread wants it bad.