VideoLAN. Finally a player works for me.

[Jay]

http://www.videolan.org/ (free. mappable hotkeys)

On the prerelease, I've been unable to play most DVDs or ripped ones reliably on the Media Player. Even WMP throws an occasional RUNDLL error when I hit a video file.
I'm not the brightest star in the sky when it comes to video.

Anyway. I installed VideoLAN and I can't find a DVD or ripped one that won't play. I'm wondering if anyone here has incorporated this player into XL?

I use copies on other machines to play videos locally, from the server, accross my network.

"All" that's missing is the XL interface.

Take a look

[sharp_1]

I've used this program in the past but not within xLobby...let me know if you figure out the command line application within xLobby.

It is a very nice reliable player thats for sure!!!

[Jay]

Haven't played much with Windows command lines. Could we use sendkeys?
http://www.videolan.org/doc/play-howto/ ... l#id289944

[jji666]

Jay-

I would love to get a copy of the parameters you use and any sendkeys implementation to control VLC, when you get this working. I primarily use ZP for my video except PowerDVD for HD-DVD, but certain video files are just very tough to play, and it would be great to put a "Play in VLC" button on the movie-viewer overlay to allow for quick access to a backup player program. So if it doesn't launch well in ZP I am not back to shutting down XL and using the mouse, etc.

Thanks!

Jim

[Jay]

Hopefully, XL3 will make this unnecessary but I'll give it a shot. Launching VLC should be trivial. But, I have no idea how to focus a selected movie on a player other than the internal one in XL.

I'll crawl thru events and see if I can come up with anything tomorrow. Then, I'm away until next Tuesday.

[cmhardwick]

use the plain "Play Movie" event to launch movie in external player. "Play movie new" uses the internal one.

[Jay]

Like - add a button for that event to the movieviewer overlay, for example?
Where do you define the path for an external media player? Audio is simple. Perhaps add an OS execute for VLC ahead of Event movies, execute category movies. I haven't tried ZP or theatertrek so I have no experience here.

Better yet. Could we ask for a quick step-by-step for this?

TIA!

[cmhardwick]

Yes, add a button for say "PLAY IN VLC" or something and associate it with the "SKIN:MOVIES:PLAY MOVIE" event. Leave the other button assigned to "SKIN:MOVIES:PLAY MOVIE NEW"

define external video players under FILE TYPES. you'll need to get the command line parameters for VLC.

F2 (enter setup)
Click on FILE TYPES on the left
under DETAILS, click BROWSE beside program and browse to the VLC executable and click OPEN
Under EXTENSIONS, include what extentions you want to be used by this player (IFO and VIDEO_TS for dvd rips, avi, etc. NO PERIOD IS NEEDED, just the extension, separated by commas. for example ifo,video_ts,avi)
under COMMAND LINE SWITCHES, enter the command line switches needed to launch a movie in VLC from the DOS prompt or the RUN command (for example, in TheaterTek I use "%parameter%" /AP 2 /nosplash (Quotes are required around the parameter variable to handle file names/paths with spaces) %parameter% is from the database, it's the path to the movie file. The other ones won't apply to your situation, they are specific to TT

You can also enter MOVIES into the category if you want (or whatever your category is), but it's not necessary.
Then click ADD
The new program and information should now be in the list above, highlighted in YELLOW (this means it's disabled). put a CHECKMARK by enable to allow it to work.

Hope this helps

[Jay]

Thanks so much! Hope I get to try this today.

[Jay]

Got it.
Extensions added: avi, iso, img, video_ts, vob, ifo
Command line switches: "%parameter%" "%path%" "%file%"

It still launches in a separate window but at least I can use XL to choose and play my movies now.

When you guys use ZP or TT, do they launch separately or have you integrated either into the player object? So you can control volume from XL, for example.

Thanks so much CMH.

[sharp_1]

Jay:

What are you using in the parameter field to launch the vlc player. I'm having a hard time trying to get the file types to execute correctly.

Thanks - sharp_1

[Jay]

Just "%parameter%" which focuses on the movies database. I had a lot of errors with %path% and %file% before I enclosed them in quotes.

I assume you're getting error messages? If so, go to View> Messages in VLC.

I also added movies to the category box, although CMH said it was unnecessary.

This help?

[cmhardwick]

If you use "%parameter%" that should be all you need (if this auto-launches/plays) The parameter variable should contain the entire path to the movie.

And yes, external players launch in a seperate window (in my case, on the TV which is my "monitor 2")

[sharp_1]

Well I know I'm close but still not able to get it to work. No error messages so I know the new FILE TYPE I created must not be working at all.

Here is what I have so far:

Made sure my offline movie checkbox was unchecked in the setup>database>movies


Then created my FILE TYPE:


Still nothing is working for me except for when I manually send a argument thru xl to the vlc.exe that looks like this: -f vlc dvdsimple: "file_location" and also had created an online movie event where I ran a .bat file to play a movie..but that stopped working.

[Marbles_00]

You can have external players play within a window of xlobby by using the xmovewindow plugin. You just need to get window class name of the viewer. Xmovewindow has a great tutorial in setting it up. Could be just what you need.