Help needed with trailer

[electr0n]

I'm not able to get my home theater intro to play before starting a movie. I've followed the instructions in this link:

http://xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=19152#19152

but it seems to ignore my htlogo.avi file (which is the name of my custom intro) and it just plays the movie. So I'm sure I've got something set incorrectly. Could you please double check my work and let me know what you think. Here's what I've done:

I have the following directory structure (following recommendations in the forum):

C:\media\movies
C:\media\music
C:\media\pictures
C:\media\trailers\logo
C:\media\trailers\theater
C:\media\trailers\demo

I have the intro I want to play (htlogo.avi) in the C:\media\trailers\logo directory. It is the only trailer I have at the moment. I just want to play this intro before every movie which should be pretty simple...

I went into the trailer paths in the first page of the Xlobby preferences and set the trailer directory to C:\media\trailers. Then I clicked import.

I went to the event manager and created a new event. I called it trailers. To it I added the following:
video playlist > new playlist
video playlist > play trailer, "C:\media\trailers\logo\htlogo.avi"
video playlist > play video

Then I went to file types and selected WinDVD which is my movie player and added a start event - trailer.

But when I go play a movie through Xlobby it does not play the trailer before - only the movie. Did I miss some steps? I can play the htlogo.avi directly with WinDVD so I know that it can play an avi without a problem.

Any help would be appreciated - I'm sure that I'm missing something obvious.

[electr0n]

A little more info - when I go to the general tab and enter the path to trailers and hit "import" it never shows any files - always 0.

Also when I go to database > trailers there isn't anything there (even after I choose refresh). Is there something that I need to do manually in the trailer database?

Please help!

[rembetis]

A little more info - when I go to the general tab and enter the path to trailers and hit "import" it never shows any files - always 0.

Also when I go to database > trailers there isn't anything there (even after I choose refresh). Is there something that I need to do manually in the trailer database?

Please help!

I don't use trailers myself, so I can't offer you any definitive help, but I just did a quick double-check on the default trailer import, and it did not have .avi as an extension. You might want to try adding that (Setup > Databases > Import, select Trailers from the dropdown menu, and add "avi" after a comma).

Hope that helps.

[electr0n]

Actually that did help, although I still can't get it to work. When I added the avi and imported again I saw it import one file. Then I went to the trailers database and my file was there! So we're definitely making progress.

It seems that none of my video playlist functions are working. I've basically tried them all includng
video playlist > play trailer, "C:\media\trailers\logo\htlogo.avi"
and adding that to the start event on my WinDVD - still nothing. Well the movie starts fine but no intro.
I even just added a button on the movie page with an event to call the trailer (video playlist > play trailer, "C:\media\trailers\logo\htlogo.avi")
and it still won't play. Shouldn't this work? If so why would my video playlist function not be working?

I can get the file to play by making an OS event to "execute" the file and putting that event on a button. So I can make it run from that, but I still can't get the intro and movie together.

This can't be that hard can it? I wish there was a step by step example on this. Please help!

[vicom]

I don't know if the trailer feature only works with TT and Zoomplayer. I've implemented this (using the same steps on Steven's www guide) and have been using it for more than a year, it works. I've implemented it using TT and Zoomplayer, I haven't tried it with other players. Maybe Steven can shed some light on this

[electr0n]

Thanks for the reply, if that's the case then I would switch to zoomplayer. It's just that WinDVD 5 came with my motherboard so it's free and it works great. Also I've programmed all the hotkeys into HIP already so I'd like to make it work. Does anyone else use WinDVD and trailers?

I guess the generic question that anyone can answer is if I make an event and assign it video playlist > play trailer, "C:\media\trailers\logo\htlogo.avi" and then I call that event from a button press - shouldn't that work? I figure that's a good way to tell if the play trailer function works at all. And it doesn't in my case. But either I've set up something incorrectly or it doesn't like WinDVD. Which is strange to me because WinDVD can play the trailer and it can play the movie -it's just chaining them together I need!

I didn't mention it but I don't have anything in my trailers filter. I assume that is ok. I only have one trailer at this point anyway and I want it to always play with every movie as my intro. I didn't think this was going to be tricky!

[electr0n]

It's not WinDVD - I loaded up zoomplayer and my trailers won't play with it either. What am I missing?

[electr0n]

I never did get this to work corretly but I found out that zoomplayer handles trailers itself. I modded the default.trailers file to point to my trailer. Then in Xlobby I added the path to that trailers file in the file types additional arguments and it works great. So I have a workaround anyway.