Play DVD Button

[andyt]

I have already asked a similar question before on another forum but did not get an answer. I am hoping that somebody on this forum can tell me how to do the following or if it is even possible.

When I click on movies I would like to be taken to a sub menu where I am given two options:
1. Play from DVD
2. Play from Hard Drive.

If I chose the first option I would like it to play the DVD that is in the DVD Drive. (It would be even better if I could see a promt telling me to insert the DVD if the drive was empty.)

If I chose the second option I would like to be taken to the second screen.

I would greatly appreciate any help anyone could give me.

Thanks

[Colby]

I dont think that is too hard, I do a similar thing in my skin. Except I dont have the dvd online, I do however have trailers online for all my movies and dvd is offline. Notice the 2 buttons, play movie and view trailer. If I pick view trailer the dvd trailer plays, if I choose play movie I get the insert dvd prompt screen and the dvd tray opens.

Is this similar to what you mean?

[Naylia]

andyt,

Xlobby is set up so that it differentiates between offline and online movies. If the movie you want to watch is online it will automatically play it, if it is offline you get the screen colby showed you prompting to put in the disk. At least that is how I set mine up. I'd be happy to walk you through it if you want.

EDIT: At least help you out within my limited sphere of knowledge, I'm pretty new to xlobby.

[andyt]

Thanks for the advice.

I have been using Colby's skin so I was aware of these offline settings. This is not however, exactly what I want to do. As far as I am aware the only time this screen pops up, is if you select a DVD title from your movie profile. (Please correct me if I am wrong).

I would like to abe able to play what ever is in the DVD drive by pressing a button on a menu page.

Thanks Again.

[dalanik]

Thanks for the advice.

I would like to abe able to play what ever is in the DVD drive by pressing a button on a menu page.

Thanks Again.

Well, that should be pretty straightforward; just execute the player with the command to play whatever is in your drive!

For Zoom, i believe something like this:

c:\program files\zoom player\zplayer.exe /PLAY /F /DVD /Q /opendrive:F /MOUSEOFF /RAND:0 /AR:3

D.

[andyt]

Thanks for the advise dalanik. Can you please tell me wher I should enter this text. I have tried adding it as an event (I even tried changing the F to D incase this was the drive name) but nothing seemed to happen.

Thanks

[edgley]

Hi Andy,

Go in the Event Manager under F2

Create a new group, and then an event within that group
Then in the top right window find the commands > execute file option.

Fill in the boxes that will appear bottom right (file, arguements etc)
Close that all down.

Then put a new button on the menu that you require it on, and attach the event to the button.

[andyt]

I'm sorry for being so naive but could somebody explain what text exactly I put into arguments.

When I type in the following Zoom player opens up and plays the first movie in my Movie database on the hard drive.

File: c:\program files\zoom player\zplayer.exe

Argument: /PLAY /F /DVD /Q /opendrive:F /MOUSEOFF /RAND:0 /AR:3

When I change opendrive:F to opendrive:D (As I thought this might relate to my DVD drive) Zoom player opens blank.

In both cases the following site automatically opens along with many advertisements.


http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/pro/

[Naylia]

In both cases the following site automatically opens along with many advertisements.


http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/pro/

Thats odd. I just registered my trial yesterday and it never opend their website on my.

Just want to check that you're creating an event and not using the File Type tab?

Under File Type I have the following as my parameters for ZP:
/PLAY /F /DVD /Q %playlist%

When I created an event for use with a button I used the followinig instead:
/PLAY /F /DVD /Q /opendrive:D


Aside: Hey guys wouldn't a /F and a /AR:3 be redundant?

[andyt]

Thanks for all the help every body, I think I am starting to get somewhere.

I have found that the majority of my problems are being caused by Zoom player itself.

When I open Zoomplayer outside XL it still connects to the Internet. Presumably there is a setting somewhere that I have to disable.

When I then try and play a DVD it gets to the first screen and freezes. The fact that this is one step further than through XL probably means I have not set up the file extensions correctly.

What does everyone think?

I will be moving to TheaterTek soon for DVD's. Will this work better and would could I use the same arguments?

Sorry for all of the questions. I really do apreciate it.

[edgley]

I had tremendous ZP problems when I first started to use it.
Wait until you try to use it with ffdshow to scale the DVD to HD.
Man, that was tough.

And the best of it? What was a problem one day, just started to work the next.

ZP is very good. start off making sure that it behaves as it should outside of XL.
Once this is the case, let us know, or if you need more help with it let us know what is wrong.

Simon.

[Naylia]

I would take a look at what codecs you are using and the other dvd settings first. Try verifying the codecs and using differnet combonations. Also start simple. Don't enable post processors right off the bat, just get it to play a dvd first. By the way what are you using for codecs?

[dalanik]

Thanks for the advise dalanik. Can you please tell me wher I should enter this text. I have tried adding it as an event (I even tried changing the F to D incase this was the drive name) but nothing seemed to happen.

Thanks

Yes, F is my DVD drive, change it to whatever yours is.

[dalanik]

Aside: Hey guys wouldn't a /F and a /AR:3 be redundant?

Yes, most probably yes. I have 16:9 TV and I like to set aspect ratio to disabled, since the movies are 16:9 anyway, so TV makes it 16:9 automatically by squising the 4:3 picture

/F is for full screen. If you don't have this setup in options... can't hurt

D.

[andyt]

Thank you all very much for your help.

I have now got Theatertek and the text you gave me for arguments works perfectly with it.

Can you please tell me where I can find a list of these codes and what each of them do.

Thanks again.