Streaming RAR files (1 Viewer)

[tourettes]

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

I would assume that xbmc is not using DirectShow at all (as it isn't) so the code would be pretty much not that good point to start the development. Reading and parsing the data from RAR would be the easiest part (as there are already libraries available) of the development effort.

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.

Well, it's not the laziness actually why people want to keep the RARs. They need to have those RAR files around to be able to share the movies back to the "scene" .

 

[zag2me]

..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.)

Wow that sounds like something Microsoft or a big nasty media company would say Its not lazy at all, its just people want to keep their downloaded releases in rar format, there are many auto un-rar programs around, this is not the issue. It is to keep the rar's so they can be shared again or stored in a standard way.

I have a nice ftp and auto un-rar script from ioftpd on my media server, but it does replicate filespace on my raid5 partion.

If it requires a direct show change maybe this could be tackled from another angle, like launching mplayer and using the xbox code already written.

 

[infinite.loop]

/turn on caps lock

IN CASE SOMEONE HAS NOT NOTICED IT YET​

This thread is going around in circles.

Some ppl would like the ability to play rar files. Nothing wrong with it.
But it wont help anyone to keep posting here "how cool" it is, and "how good MediaPortal would be with this feature added".

1. we do not even know if it is POSSIBLE to supportit, because MediaPortal uses DirectShow
2. there is no developer around atm. who wants to work on it.

so all you can do now is wait until someone is coming along and willing to do it.

if this thread continues like this, then i will have to close it.

 

[piranha]

 

[Semla]

Dziobas Rar Player is a media player that can play RAR-files without extracting them (only content stored using STORE-compression). They are not compressed at all, simply split. I bet it would be easy to implement, just stack the files together as one, and perhaps ignore some bytes that are from the RAR-program.

It is really the only feature that I lack, too bad, because MP would be perfect otherwise. Buing an XBOX and running XBMC doesn't work either since the XBOX doesn't support large files or NTFS file systems.

 

[infinite.loop]

Dziobas Rar Player is a media player that can play RAR-files without extracting them (only content stored using STORE-compression). They are not compressed at all, simply split.

somehow i doubt that downloaded rar files are created in "store" mode

I bet it would be easy to implement, just stack the files together as one, and perhaps ignore some bytes that are from the RAR-program.

integrating a 3rdprtay application as mediaplayer is much, but not easy

 

[Semla]

Dziobas Rar Player is an open source project too. One way is to simply change the default player, but that would kill the nice integrated feel. Also, the player itself and it's menues are horrible.

 

[binary64]

I might have missed the original feature request point here, but if it fits, perhaps some could port my Decompress plugin for Meedio? It basically lets user "watch rar's". The only thing is it decompresses to same hard disk as source, but can be changed to accept another drive letter... it's open source. http://www.meedios.com/OpenMAID/detail.php?plugin_id={5CE6FBC8-445D-43D5-9C34-04308CFE6962}
Alternatively, you could run a hidden Meedio session to do maintainence work like decompress

 

[tourettes]

I might have missed the original feature request point here, but if it fits, perhaps some could port my Decompress plugin for Meedio? It basically lets user "watch rar's". The only thing is it decompresses to same hard disk as source, but can be changed to accept another drive letter... it's open source. http://www.meedios.com/OpenMAID/detail.php?plugin_id={5CE6FBC8-445D-43D5-9C34-04308CFE6962}
Alternatively, you could run a hidden Meedio session to do maintainence work like decompress

I guess the basic idea what people are after is that there wouldn't be any need for the unpacking of the RAR (or any other archive format) but directly unpacking on the fly. This would require indeed a direct show source filter.

 

[FreQi]

somehow i doubt that downloaded rar files are created in "store" mode

They ARE in store mode. Trying to RAR compress a video file like XviD or x264 would be sort of like trying to Zip a .CAB file. The a/v codec compresses the data the best, so the purpose of using rar is really just to split the file into smaller chunks. Using something more sophisticated than a simple byte splitter is to ensure the files' integrity.

Note: I am not trying to beat a dead horse here, just wanting to clarify.