New Features/Improvements to BS.Player

[NikLok]

I dream have 3 or 5 buttons, that will be associated with own playlist.
We playing the films and music by 4 variuos human on one computer.
I think it will be very useful click one button and hit to the my ordinary media space?!

[BSPeter]

I don't think those four people are using the PC all at the same time, or..?
Then, as far as I know, what you ask is already standard facilitated by Windows itself, provided that you have Windows set up for several different users. Each user then gets its own Windows "environment".
When installing BS.Player, you select "Create Start Menu and Desktop Icons for all users" and "Save settings in user home folder".

(Of course, another possibility is to create and save several playlists, which can then be loaded whenever a user wants so.)

[NikLok]

In reality other member of my family not PC user. Children 5 and 7 years. My wife hate computers, but look film on PC. All operation for memebers my famely realised by my hand. May be it's very specifid situation, but it is true!!!

[BSPeter]

So most probably with respect to Windows there is only one user, also administator, installed on your PC and you, your kids and your wife use the PC as one account=one user.
Then, also in that situation, still there is the option of making and saving "own" playlists for each individual member of your family. By loading such "own" playlist(s) each member of your family then has its own list(s) of media. I don't think that solution is - in practice (considering what you still have to do yourselves) - so different from what you suggest as a new feature.

[itooriziu]

hey.
is it possible to add a option of switching between subs frames?
I mean, sometimes there are subtitles which doesnt fit to the movie, and
the time correction doesnt help because the movie frames and the subs frames
aren't the same.

thanks.

[BSPeter]

If it concerns picture-based subtitles, my best suggestion for you is to find another subtitle-file which runs at the correct frame-rate.
(Second best and considerably more time consuming is ripping the subs e.g. using one of the utilities mentioned in the last paragraph of this post and then adjust them).
However, if it concerns text-based subtitles: BS.Player Pro version has a subtitle editor which can do that (amongst other things). See the option in the middle at the bottom of this picture (frame rate conversion):


BS.Player-FREE doesn't have a subtitle editor, so you'll have to use another one. In this connection I refer to item (9) of my Help2Help-post:

Originally Posted by BSPeter, who already quite some time ago wrote in item (9) of his Help2Help-post

If your subtitles are "out of sync" you can use keyboard shortcuts to "time-shift" subtitles:
Ctrl+Left/Right-arrow:
. Subtitles time correction -/+ (VobSub subtitles dec/inc delay)
Shift+Left/Right-arrow:
. Subtitles time correction -/+ (small steps) (VobSub subtitles dec/inc speed)
(Also some skins have buttons just to do that.)
If you have BSPlayer Pro, you can also use its in-built subtitle-editor to change (text) subtitle-files permanently.
If you're using BSPlayer's Free version and still wish to permanently "time-shift" or "time-stretch" or "time-shrink" subtitles: there are several (free) subtitle-utilities available which can assist you at that. I personally always use Vladimir's subsync which is a very simple and basic utility, which does the job it is supposed to do perfectly for only three (text-based) types of subtitlefiles, i.e. SAMI, SubRib and MicroDVD or .smi, .srt and .sub. (For some indication on its use perhaps see this post).
Other subtitle utilities are (i.a.) Subtitle Workshop, Subtitles Translator or Winsubtitler (which is the successor of SubMax, the development of which is discontinued).

[Womanizer]

When are we going to see that feature on BSPlayer PRO? Is BSP capable of playing ISOs or folders?

ISO or files (Blu-ray "projects"):
If you're running PowerDVD, you have no choice anyway, because it will not play folders, you'll need a mounted ISO on VirtualCloneDrive.

Using Total Media Theatre, you have the choice (it can play folders). It was also reported that an old version from PDVD was capable of playing Blu-rays from folders, but that option was removed. A decrypted Blu-ray have two folders: BDMV and (sometimes): CERTIFICATE.

And what about closed caption subtitles from DVD "projects"? I can only display them using PowerDVD (haven't tested on BSP Pro, but I know a title that can be used for it: Fright Night II which only have english CCs).

Finally: Embedded subtitles from m2ts files (from the BD projects?). I don't know why BSP Pro can't display any subtitle in this case, since I am using VMR9 renderless, which can recognize them in MPC-HC (VMR9 is required to display subtitles from VOBs/DVDs).

[VStan]

There's a problem with navigation in files greater than 2Gb:
In options I selected 'Seek by keyframes (AVI and MKV) files'.
Video file is avi, size is more than 2Gb.

At the end of the movie when I press Right button, it jumps some seconds forward - it's ok.
But when I press Left button, it jumps 30-50 minutes backward. I think to the last frame in 2Gb boundary.

I think it will be better to seek not by key frames after 2Gb in avi files.

[bstoth]

Hi I have a big video file that has multiple episodes of a cartoon series. Any way in bsplayer to create shortcut files to the individual episodes within the movie? Example let's say there is a t_and_j_cartoons.avi file with 20 episodes of T and J (or whatever). I would like to create 20 files so that when I click a file it will play only that specific episode form the big file, say from 15:35 to 28:45. Also it should be possible to add these files to a playlist.
Any such feature out there already?
Thanks

[BSPeter]

Originally Posted by bstoth

Hi I have a big video file that has multiple episodes of a cartoon series. Any way in bsplayer to create shortcut files to the individual episodes within the movie? Example let's say there is a t_and_j_cartoons.avi file with 20 episodes of T and J (or whatever). I would like to create 20 files so that when I click a file it will play only that specific episode form the big file, say from 15:35 to 28:45. Also it should be possible to add these files to a playlist.
Any such feature out there already?
Thanks

No such feature is not there. BS.Player (surprisingly?) is a player. Not an editor. There are plenty (free) editors out there to do the job as indicated by you.
However, that being said, as a player, BS.Player has the feature of adding (and editing) bookmarks. Once bookmarks are created ([Alt]/[i]), you can jump directly to such bookmark at any time you want (rightclick > Bookmarks ... then select the number/time of your bookmark).
The function "Edit bookmarks" also gives you the possibility to add descriptions and to "[Export as chapters]". When you've done that, you can henceforth use Chapters function: rightclick > Chapters > viewer. In viewer automatically thumbnails are created. Clicking on a thumbnail will start playback at that chapter. Maybe play a bit with these possibilities.

[bstoth]

Originally Posted by BSPeter

No such feature is not there. BS.Player (surprisingly?) is a player. Not an editor. There are plenty (free) editors out there to do the job as indicated by you.
However, that being said, as a player, BS.Player has the feature of adding (and editing) bookmarks. Once bookmarks are created ([Alt]/[i]), you can jump directly to such bookmark at any time you want (rightclick > Bookmarks ... then select the number/time of your bookmark).
The function "Edit bookmarks" also gives you the possibility to add descriptions and to "[Export as chapters]". When you've done that, you can henceforth use Chapters function: rightclick > Chapters > viewer. In viewer automatically thumbnails are created. Clicking on a thumbnail will start playback at that chapter. Maybe play a bit with these possibilities.

Hi Peter,
Thanks for the answer. I tried the chapter feature and it's nice, but not exactly useful for my purposes. I let my kids watch a few episodes of different cartoons before bedtime, but some of these episodes are part of one large file so if I add them to the play list all episodes would be played before moving on to the next item in the play list.
My intention is not to split the video into several pieces, but to be able to play certain chapters/episodes from them through the BSplayer playlist. I would like to save a "bookmark" text file for each episode and drop them in the playlist as needed.
I hope this feature could be added at one point.
Great work so far, I've been a big fan of your player for longer than I can remember. Keep it up.
Thanks again...

[BSPeter]

Just for the record: it most certainly isn't "my" player. I've nothing to do whatsoever with its creation and development. I'm just a user like you.
(O, and I'm also the translator for the Dutch language file since 2002).

[BSPeter]

Maybe read this (old) thread:
Chapter Playlist or Scene Cut

[Bikonja]

I suggest a developers feature that is similar to an already (twice) requested feature - the one to automatically take screenshots at a specified interval.
What I'm suggesting is that BSPlayer should provide a way for other apps to request a screenshot of the video currently playing, as (due to hardware overlays) it's really hard to get a screenshot from an outside app (if I'm mistaken, I'd appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction to how to do it).

An example of usage is for instance, the Amblone (DIY Ambilight) system which lights up the back of your TV/monitor according to what's on the screen. To know what colors to use, it takes screenshots of the screen and calculates the colors accordingly. Ofcourse, this has to be done often, so, performance is crucial. When using hardware overlay, this method does not work ofcourse. If on te other hand, there were some way to get a screenshot from the video, that would be great.
Ofcourse, a solution would be to turn off hardware overlay, but, hardware overlay is here to help so, most people will want to have it turned on.

I've researched quite a bit on how to capture the hardware overlay from another app, but as far as I can tell, it would be a lot of hacking and hard work, if even possible at all. Ofcourse, this feature is the domain of Amblone and other projects that use video screenshots, but, I think that it would be useful for BSPlayer to have this feature, which would allow people to easily do this type of projects and focus on the "cool stuff" and bless us with more cool features for bsplayer :)

[BSPeter]

For screenshots at intervals you could perhaps use ffdshow's "Grab"-feature.
(Grab every ... frame).
To check whether ffdshow-video decoder is used (and to access ffdshow's features):
rightclick (with moviefile loaded) > Options > Filters > Advanced
Concerning ambilight: did you find this old post by RafkeP re. Movie Mood Light or MoMoLight (thread dating back to mid-2006, i.e. about the time that the very first build of BS.Player version 2 was launched)?

[Bikonja]

Ffdshow does not HAVE to be used, so, it would be better if I could somehow get a screenshot/framegrab of the video regardless of ffdshow. However, I *think* that ffdshow is used in most cases. If I'm right in that assumption, then it would be ok to use ffdshow, yes.
But, if so, I could only find a .NET sample to interact with ffdshow. Since I'm already here, is anyone familiar with how to use ffdshows grab option from c++?

I did not see that post and I've already ordered my Arduino and led lights for the Amblone project, plus, Amblone is open source which allowed me to tweak it already (even though I haven't actually built it yet) to show my caps, scroll and num lock indicators with the lights, so, I would rather stick with Amblone, even though that's also an impressive project and it can grab overlay frames.

Also, I've dug around the BsPlayer plugin SDK and I've seen that I can call the frame grab action, but, it just does the frame grab feature with it's output to a file and notification on OSD. Would it be possible to grab a frame to memory?

[Tizio]

Hi Bikonja, what I wanted to suggest you was to use the BSplayer SDK to create a plugin, but you already found it yourself.

What you can do, to take a screenshot into memory, is to emulate a PRINT keyboard button keypress. This way, the selected frame will be saved into memory and you'll be able to handle it at your wish, for postprocessing or whatever you want.
Beware that the PRINT event could be renderer dependent, I doubt it will work if you choose a renderer which renders to Overlay, but you can do your own tests.

To create a plugin will be useful for you to correctly manage the actual playback time etc.

If you create a plugin, please, share it with us

[Bikonja]

Thank you for your suggestion, however, print screen does not, as you said, get the frame from overlay, which means it's better to just grab a screenshot "the normal way" then sending an emulated keypress for Print screen.

If you need a plugin that grabs a screenshot this way, I think I could whip something up quickly, but if it get's messy, I won't have time to do it. Let me know if you need it and I'll see if I can whip it up quickly.

[Tizio]

I don't actually need it, but it would be interesting for the others who requested that feature

I tried to take some PRINT screenshots with an Overlay renderer active, and the image is correctly available in memory. I'm under Windows 7, and probably it handles the Overlay layer in a different way than Windows XP and previous OSes did.

Anyway, 5 years ago, a former active BSplayer plugin maker (RafkeP), developed an Ambilight filter to be used with BSplayer. He also arranged an hardware project to emulate the Ambilight function.
Here the link to the discussion on this forum, and here the home of his project, with full tutorial and download links.

I hope to find the time to come back to my programming sessions... Maybe with a .Net language and not in VB6

[Bikonja]

I'm not sure how you're getting the image out of print screen, maybe Aero is running which uses overlay or something else is running that is using overlay so bsplayer defaults to playing without overlay, but for me, print screen does not get the image from video (and also, a weird thing happens, when I paste the print screen to paint, the rectangle where the video should be is actually a "window" to the overlay (if the location of the rectangle in paint coincides with the video playing in the background, it actually shows the video). But, when saving the file, even if video was visible in paint at the time of save, the saved image does not contain the video image.

BSPeter already pointed me to Rafke's project, but, as I said, I prefer Amblone (for reasons read my original post).
However, I'm intrigued by the idea of using a filter. I did google it before, but couldn't find anything, however, I did find some resources on making a filter so I'll try it out, maybe I manage to make a filter for frame grab.

.NET is real easy to use, Microsoft has really made and effort to make programming as easy as possible without losing too much control.