Zoom Player compatibility (1 Viewer)

[ZPBlight]

Hi Everyone,
I've been asked by a user to support Media Portal filters in Zoom Player, specifically the File Source filter that allows recording TS files to dynamically change duration.

I've tried using the user-submitted filters and couldn't get them to work in either Zoom Player or GraphEdit (or GraphStudio).
They simply wont connect to a decoder.

My question is, is there a special interface I need to support in Zoom Player, any other hints?

Any other way you'd like to see better integration between Zoom Player and Media Portal?

Cheers

 

[tourettes]

Hi Blight,

I would assume the filter we are talking about is TsReader.ax. Am I correctly? Or is it really the TsWriter.ax (since you were talking about recording).

TsReader can be used directly in GraphEdit - if it wont work then there is some issue in the environment probably (check C:\ProgramData\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Log\TsReader-xxxx-xx-xx.log).

If TsReader is used to watch recordings only there is not that much to be implemented on player side, only the subtitle support will require the player application to implement a specific interface that will handle the subtitle rendering (this was done in past to allow DXVA to be used).

For live tv there is probably some extra things that you need to take care on the player side - unfortunately I haven't been developing anything related to Tsreader + live tv for few years at least so I cannot say directly what would be required (good starting point is to look at the tv plugin and what it does).

TsWriter is really thightly coupled with the MediaPortal's TV engine imlementation and you wont be able to use that outside the tv server (well, you could but it would require lot of additional code to handle tuning etc.) Correct way to use would be to write some application (plugin for ZoomPlayer) that allows the tv server to be used.

 

[ZPBlight]

tourettes:
Hi,
Yes, I'm referring to "TsReader.ax".

As far as I can tell, these are the issues with the filter:
1. When an unsupported format is encountered, the filter doesn't return an error, it always loads with 3 output pins, regardless of actual media content.
2. Even when loading a file containing random junk data, the filter will still load and connect to audio decoders successfully (not to video decoders). The audio sub-type is listed as "MPEG2 Audio".
3. The subtitle stream returns the "MPEG2_Transport" video sub-type.
This confuses my player as it doesn't expect a filter with two video format pins that will only allow a connection on one of the pins.
If the filter doesn't detect a subtitle stream, why is it exposing a subtitle pin on the filter?


P.S.
I tried testing the filter with M2TS files from a decrypted BlyRay disc and it failed to work.
Does the filter supports this type of content?

 

[tourettes]

1. When an unsupported format is encountered, the filter doesn't return an error, it always loads with 3 output pins, regardless of actual media content.

All DVB content should be supported - do not try to load non-compliant files TsReader has hard coded formats on failure cases. Not a correct thing to do, but there is no planned change for that at least in near future.

2. Even when loading a file containing random junk data, the filter will still load and connect to audio decoders successfully (not to video decoders). The audio sub-type is listed as "MPEG2 Audio".

Same as #1

3. The subtitle stream returns the "MPEG2_Transport" video sub-type.
This confuses my player as it doesn't expect a filter with two video format pins that will only allow a connection on one of the pins.
If the filter doesn't detect a subtitle stream, why is it exposing a subtitle pin on the filter?

Subtitle pin will be always exposed since it reduces the graph rebuilding needs on live tv - subtitle filter will be always connected.

MPEG2_Transport is not a video type, but a general stream type for transport stream. Subtitle pin outputs 188 TS packets (and currently it will only accept the DVBsub2.ax as subtitle decoder filter - and that will require specific interface to be implemented on player side to work). Leaving subtitle pin unconnected wont have any side effects - othen than the player will be unable to render DVB subtitles (bitmap or teletext).

I tried testing the filter with M2TS files from a decrypted BlyRay disc and it failed to work.
Does the filter supports this type of content?

M2TS is not supported, it is not DVB sourced material. There will be something quite near future that will be able to play .m2ts (and even a bit more ).

As you can see the TsReader is designed to work quite closely with the MediaPortal. You need to either fork the source code or adapt the player code to be able to use it like a reqular filter. And do ot try to load anything else than DVB sourced TS files

If there would be some free developer resources it would be possible to extend TsReader to be more generic source for DVB playback - but since it wont help MediaPortal itself it is quite low priority improvement and might not happen ever (unless some 3rd party patches are received).

 

[ZPBlight]

Hi,
I'm referring to the TsReader.
The problem I'm facing is that the subtitle output pin uses a video GUID sub-type, which confuses my graph building code.
I'll try to write a work-around, but can you explain the reason why the subtitle pin exposes this sub-type?