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Playlists for external video players

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:51 pm
by Finsternis
I think it's great that MM allows me to use an external video player (VNC) since I need more features that the MM video player does not have. However, this feature does not support playlists. When I start a video playlist, it plays only the first video and then stops. The VLC playlist confirms that it only received one filename. Could you please change it so that it sends the names of all the files in the playlist? I believe most external video players will support receiving multiple files as passed parameters. If not, MM could temporarily create a playlist file and send that. Its not really much of a playlist if it only plays one file at a time. Thanks!

Re: Playlists for external video players

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 2:09 pm
by Finsternis
I just checked an it appears that this behavior also happens with the *internal* player - for video playlists, it just plays one video and stops. It's not just external players. I call that a bug. Playing several files in a row is the very definition of a "playlist".

Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 2:13 pm
by Finsternis
If I make a playlist of videos, MM just plays the first one and stops. Since the very definition of "playlist" is to play multiple files in sequence, this is a bug. MM should play all the media in a playlist in order (or shuffled if requested). This should be true for both the internal player and the default external player.

I am using MM 4 on Windows 10. I don't think anything about my environment is causing this, but if that is not the standard behavior I can get more details.

Thanks.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 2:36 pm
by Lowlander
Which version of MediaMonkey and what file type(s). Are all the files on the Playlist in the Now Playing?

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 7:41 pm
by Finsternis
I am using whatever the most recent version of MM is - I always download the updates. So, version 4.?

The files are MP4 videos.

I don't use the "now playing" window for playing things. I just select whatever I want in the tree in the left pane (group of files, playlist, whatever) and play it from the main (middle) screen with the controls on the bottom. It works fine for music. I never saw what the "now playing" window was for in terms of selecting what to play. I just use it for art and lyrics.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 11:34 am
by Lowlander
The Now Playing is what will be played in the Player. You can use either the Media Tree node or the Now Playing window to check. If the files aren't added to it then they won't be played, thus the question if they're added. This is because play settings are set per Type (Tools > Options > Playback Rules), thus music and video can behave differently.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 7:09 pm
by Finsternis
Thank you. I'm still a little unclear though. I went to the Playback Rules for Video and set them to be the same as Music, "Clear list and play selected and subsequent." It still only plays one video and stops. I tried dragging selected videos to the "Now Playing" pane and get the circle-and-slash cursor. I can drag multiple videos to "Now Playing" list in the media tree, and they get added, so, OK, great - they are all in the Now Playing list. But still MM only plays one video and then stops. I tried selecting some videos and right-clicking "play now" - only one gets sent (in fact I can the others get quickly unselected when I do that).

1) Can you successfully play multiple videos/video playlist in MM? If so, what are your settings?
2) Is there any way to make videos act the same way as music in the main pane? I.e., when one gets clicked it plays that one and then automatically plays the next one in the list by default? That's the ideal behavior.

Thanks.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2019 2:52 pm
by Finsternis
Just bumping this - are you able to play multiple videos in sequence in any way at all? If so, please tell me the steps. Thanks.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2019 6:56 pm
by Peke
Hi,
I have no issues playing Videos in Sync.

I have even went further to use mixed now playing with various Video and Audio files and tried 2V->1A->1V->.... and had no issues. Simply put tracks in Nowplaying and enjoy.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 5:54 pm
by Finsternis
OK, I see where I made a mistake. I can add videos to the Now Playing list and have them play in order (though it should do it automatically when I click on them in the library, as it does with music tracks). BUT it only works with the internal player. When using an external player, it does not play one after the other. This is important because the internal player is VERY limited. It has almost no controls except pause, skip, and shuffle. There is no control to skip to the next chapter, loop a section, change speed, fast forward/rewind, or anything like that. The features are extremely limited. And MM does not even seem to use all the codecs on the system, because I have video files which can play fine in any other player but when MM tries to play them, it says "Cannot find codec for this file."

Please correct MM so that when it uses an external video player, it properly enqueues all the selected files. This would also fix the missing codec issue. I haven't done Windows programming before, but it doesn't seem as if it would be too hard. It may even be as simple as just using a different system call to launch the player. When I'm in Windows Explorer and select multiple video files, I can right click, select "Play with VLC", and it adds all of them to the playlist just fine (though you do have to configure VLC to only launch one instance at a time instead of in separate windows). Can't you use the same system call Explorer does?

You may think "Meh, it's not music-related, no need to fix it." But the player is called "MEDIA Monkey", not "MUSIC Monkey." It's advertised as a full media management solution. It should have the same features and capabilities for each media type. It also needs a full-fledged video player, not treat video as a redheaded stepchild. But I'm not asking you to do that, to spend a lot of time adding all kinds of features to your media player. Just please do the minimum to let it work with a more powerful external player. If you were feeling ambitious, since VLC is open source, you may even be able to embed it as your internal media player as long as you distribute the source code along with MM. But at minimum, please enable MM to queue videos correctly with external players.

Thanks!

Thanks.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 8:44 pm
by Peke
Finsternis wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 5:54 pm It's advertised as a full media management solution.
You said it yourself "full media management solution" not "full media player solution" so even as we try to add playback features it will never be as flexible player as VLC or Daum POTPlayer (I highly respect), but neither of those two have full library management and metadata tagging features like MMW.

Track internal A-B looping can be archived using scripts and plugins in MMW as it is not priority for MM. Chapters are something we plan to more investigate in future versions but it is not high priority as advanced media management is more pressing feature to add.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 1:11 pm
by Finsternis
Well, it seems to me that it would be easier to spend 15 minutes looking up which system call Windows uses to launch multiple media than it would to write extra code to add one small feature (chapter support) to your existing video player. The potential exists to essentially add all the features of a powerful video player with an improvement that may only involve one line of code.

You've obviously made up your mind, but I have to say I'm annoyed that MM treats video media as an afterthought. I may find another player and just use MM for tagging, and think twice in the future about recommending MM to my friends.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:36 pm
by Peke
Hi,
Not sure why are you so harsh on MediaMonkey, Full bookmarking and managing bookmarks as Parts of a library is not as easy as it looks to you.

It is not as simple as add bookmarking playback, what about Audiobooks, Podcasts, Different formats, Tagging/Creating Bookmarks. A whole new application can be created around that only. I created 20 years ago CUESheet editor that works as Bookmark/CUE Point editor for Audio CDs.

eg. It is an audio CD that is one long song spanning across whole CD where CUESheet (CUE = DJ term of Cut point in track) is acting as Bookmarks so that listener can quickly skip to desired part. Be it a Chapter in Audiobook or a new track/song in one long DJ Mix where each CUE Point can have own Information. Imagine that to multiply with thousands of such tracks having tens of CUE Points each and you want to be able to search specific CUE Point of Specific track and continue listening or want to burn/sync only specific chapters of an E-Learning Audio Book so that you can listen on the go.

All is specified in https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=5924

As for Multiple files sent to Default Video player it is hard to implement API of all apps that support playlist queue.

Anyway I created https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=15578 so that this can be investigated further.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2019 8:35 am
by MiPi
Finsternis wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 5:54 pm When I'm in Windows Explorer and select multiple video files, I can right click, select "Play with VLC", and it adds all of them to the playlist just fine (though you do have to configure VLC to only launch one instance at a time instead of in separate windows). Can't you use the same system call Explorer does?
It is not function of Explorer, it is function of VLC, which inserted this "Play with VLC" option to system menu.

Re: Videos do not play in sequence in playlists

Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2019 4:56 pm
by Finsternis
I'm sorry if I sounded harsh. The reason is that I love Media Monkey and want to use it all my media needs. I'm not angry, just disappointed that my favorite music player and my favorite video player can't interoperate. I understand that writing a new video player with all the features of VLC would be absurd (and pointless), I just want to manage and organize and tag the media with MM and play it with VLC, including multiple videos.
Peke wrote: Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:36 pm Full bookmarking and managing bookmarks as Parts of a library is not as easy as it looks to you.
I'm not sure what you mean about "bookmarking" and "CUEs", those are audio file things as far as I know. I'm just talking about playing more than one video file, not those things. Not sure what they have to do with each other. Did you mean to post this to another thread?
Peke wrote: Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:36 pm point in track) is acting as Bookmarks so that listener can quickly skip to desired part. Be it a Chapter in Audiobook or a new track/song in one long DJ Mix where each CUE Point can have own Information.
MP4 video files can have chapter marks, but I am not asking your to change the MM player to support them
Peke wrote: Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:36 pm As for Multiple files sent to Default Video player it is hard to implement API of all apps that support playlist queue. Anyway I created https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=15578 so that this can be investigated further.
Thank you for creating that. It says "Some players do not accept multiple selection tracks" - does that men that MM sends multiple filenames, or that VLC does not accept them? I understand that you can't support every different media player out there, but it might make sense to at least support the most popular freeware one. I don't know how hard it would be to have MM look for the presence of the "Play with VLC" function and use it if present, but that might be one option.