Playing "incomplete" MPEG files

Berg · #1 (**permalink**) 23rd September 2003

Hello everyone,

First, let me say that I have been using BSPlayer for two or three days now and I am impressed. I heard about it from the crew at Call for Help or The Screen Savers (not sure which). It could benefit from a little more information on its use, but hey, it is a feature rich program in beta, so I really can't complain.

Now for my feature request -

One of my uses of BSPlayer is to view program recorded using the SnapStream PVS application, a computer based TiVo like software package, that uses a Hauppauge PVR250 tuner hardware MPEG encoding card.

One of the recent features added to SnapStream PVS is the ability to start viewing/playing a file that PVS has started recording but is still in the process of recording. For example when you want to start watching a one-hour show 20 minutes after it started recording.

I don't know too much about MPEG files, but I know that the header info is still no included in the MPEG file. The folks at SnapStream have tricked their player to ignore the playing information and start playing the file even if it not "perfect". I can do the same with the player in the XBox Media Player on my moded XBox.

Unfortunately, BSPlayer is well mannered. It refuses to play the file, giving an error message saying the file is not supported.

Would it be possible to make BSPlayer a little more forgiving ?

Thanks.

trodas · #2 (**permalink**) 24th September 2003

Definitively i vote for yes. Like the Kazaa preview util, to allow playback of even incomplete file...

...at least after the fullscreen bug get fixed and so the silent center speaker problem on 5.1 set

Not before! :lol:

Berg · #3 (**permalink**) 30th September 2003

Well since everyone seems to be "screaming" for this ... :D

I thought I would just make a quick post to point to a MPEG player that supports exactly what I was looking for.

VLC Media Player (from the VideoLan folks) supports MPEG files being recorded, playing until it runs out of file.

www.videolan.org/vlc/

Of course I would prefer if BSPlayer supported this, as BSPlayer is an all around full featured player. VLC is a little rough on the edges and lite on features.

(PS) Interestingly, they have a BSplayer skin for VLC to make it look like, but not work like BSplayer. What do they say about immitation ...

simbr · #4 (**permalink**) 1st October 2003

The only player I've used that will play partial mpeg files is the one that comes bundled with the divx codec.