Playing a media file

[GKusnick]

I think the stock STV defaults it to true when you play a music file from the database. Could be wrong about that though; maybe Andy has better info.

[Opus4]

That property is not used in the STV at all. It has long been normal for SageTV to continue on to the next song in the database when playing music outside of playlists. That is a core feature the default STV uses for the "Play All Songs" playlist -- it plays a single song & when that one is done, the next song plays automatically. I haven't tried it, but if you change the above-mentioned property, this may no longer work.

If you start changing that property & add it to an import, I may need to update the default STV to reset it when Play All Songs is chosen in order to prevent tech support issues... and/or, you should reset it when done.

- Andy

[michaeldjcox]

Originally Posted by Opus4

You would have to use SageTV's file download API and perhaps add it as a media file before playing it to get updated info as the file downloads, or else SaegTV doesn't have a way to tell that the file is not complete. This is done for online media playback in the default STV.

- Andy

Two things here:

1. Where can I find details of the Download API?

2. I managed to get Sage to think it had a media file of a longer duration, and this appeared in the media player even though the actual downloaded content was much shorter. However, it still terminated after the initial size of the file available when play started. I guess I haven't yet cracked how to tell it to expect more of the file

[Opus4]

All the API info is in the API Specification. You can check out StartFileDownload() and search for its use in the default STV.

- Andy

[cncb]

Ok, a few more issues:

1) I can't seem to play a DVD file (.ifo) that is not in the database with Watch() or WatchLocal(). I know when it is in the database that you can get the MediaFile by using just the path minus the filename in GetMediaFileForFilePath(). However, if I pass in just the path to Watch() it doesn't even try to play it. If I pass in the path with the filename (VIDEO_TS.ifo) I get a playback exception ("There was a problem rendering the video portion of the file for playback.")? This is on the HD-100 so it is not a setup issue.

2) There seems to be a subtle "clicking/popping" between tracks with successive calls to Watch() with music when I am managing the playlist playback. This is with the HD-100 and I certainly didn't notice anything like this before when Sage was managing the playlist internally. Is there maybe something special the core does between tracks to avoid this?

Thanks.

[cncb]

I'm not sure about #2 now. It may be an issue with the HD-100 and my receiver that I never noticed before because I get the popping noise when I pause a playing music track as well.

However, any idea how to play a DVD from the hard disc with Watch()?

[cncb]

Any help with this or am I out of luck? Is there another way to play an .IFO file from the hard drive?