CURRENT STATUS OF 2 CD MOVIES?

[Smarties]

OK guys, I have done some extensive tests today and want to post my results here.
I HOPE that people will chime in if they experienced different results!

The Holy Grail:
Play movies that are split in 2 or more CDs on a "virgin" PC, without ANY codecs present and BSPlayer NOT installed.
It should also be possible to "jump" from a chapter on one CD to a chapter on another CD and vice-versa.

Million-Dollar-Question: Has Anybody Managed To Do This Yet? And If So, How?

So far, what I found is the following:

1. Standalone movies on 1 CD with BSPlayer are possible!
Add the appropriate codecs in a /filter folder and setup bspfilters.dat accordingly. The following files MUST be in the root directory of the CD:

bsplayer.exe
bspfilters.dat
bsplayer.exe.manifest
bsrendv2.dll[/b]

- codec-related files (xvid.dll, divx.dll etc...) depending on codec of the movie
- if so desired, bplay.exe resp. bsplay.exe (the only purpose of these files is to maintain compatibility with older versions of BSPlayer)
- BSPlayer.xml (contains all the user-defined settings; if not present, BSPlayer will load the default settings.


2. Switching between multi-CD movies works but ONLY if a copy of BSPlayer is installed on the hard disk
(regardless of the value of RunHD= in the ini/bsi file and regardless of whether the codecs are also installed.)
Refer to the documentation and posts to write your ini/bsi file properly.


3. Switching between multi-CD movies with BSPlayer NOT installed on the hard disk DOES NOT WORK.
Can ANYBODY contradict this statement? If so, PLEASE reply and post all relevant files!!

Am I correct that this is the current status of BSPlayer as far as standalone movie CDs go?

Questions:
- What is the FNameX= parameter for? The documentation says "reserved".
I tried to use this instead of FName= to make multi-CDs but couldn't tell any difference.

- What is the purpose of the file bsplayer.exe.manifest? It seems to be necessary but I don't understand why.

[ZanderZ]

Can't answer your questions as I don't use standalone and/or multi-cd movies myself, except for this one: "What is the purpose of the file bsplayer.exe.manifest?"
As far as I know, this file is used by Windows XP for skinning. Without it, you can't use the blue/silver theme. However, because BSPlayer has native skinning, I'm not sure why this file is required...

[Smarties]

ZanderZ
Thanks for the input - yeah, makes sense that that file is related to WindowsXP because now that I think of it, I never needed it while I was
still running Windows 2000...

How about the 2 CD issue?
Doesn't anybody have something more to say about it?
I really doubt that I am the only one making DivX spanning 2 CDs!

[Tizio]

Originally Posted by Smarties

- What is the purpose of the file bsplayer.exe.manifest? It seems to be necessary but I don't understand why.

AFAIK it's not necessary for the Silver theme skin, but only to show buttons, textboxes, checkboxes and so on with the XPstyle theme.

Without that file, the window (for example the Property window) will looks in WindowsXP style, but all those objects (buttons, textboxes...) will look as in Windows 9.x/ME.

Bye

[bluedan]

So far I have done a lot of DVD backups spanning 2 or sometimes 3 (Lord of the Rings) CDs with MPEG2 -> MPEG4 transformation, mostly XVid.

For I don't really see the purpose for a test environment without bsplayer installed, I can't tell if 2CD playback succeeds in that case.
Frankly, I rather doubt it.
To make a player aware of sequencial parts of a movie on different volumes a meta data file such as the .ini is essential.
Even if you use matroska container where segments of the entire movie can be linked to each other.

Currently, I am switching to storage on DVD. A single layer DVD can easily hold 3 movies with 2 hours running time each with similar bitrate compared to 2CD.
Also AVC is becoming my favorite video codec now. :D
No need for splitting up anymore, these DVD discs cost less than 50 Euro cents.
My movies were never intended to run on a standalone. Concerning accepted formats and playback options they are much less flexible than playback on a PC.
Anyway, my TV screen is much smaller than my TFT....

[ZanderZ]

Originally Posted by Tizio

AFAIK it's not necessary for the Silver theme skin, but only to show buttons, textboxes, checkboxes and so on with the XPstyle theme.

Without that file, the window (for example the Property window) will looks in WindowsXP style, but all those objects (buttons, textboxes...) will look as in Windows 9.x/ME.

Yes, you are right, I was wrong :(

[Tizio]

Don't be sad of this, now you (and many other users) know what it's used for :)

[Smarties]

Thanks everybody for the answers re: bsplayer.manifest file, it sure answered a question that's been puzzling me for a while.

However, when I started this thread, this was just a side-question to maybe coax somebody into replying (wink, wink!)
What I am mainly interested in is the standalone 2CD movie question!

After about 60 views and 6 replies, doesn't anybody have any more thoughts about this? I am hoping to generate some momentum towards addressing this problem...
I know it's not strictly speaking a bug, rather an inherent limitation of our favorite player.

It seems to me that BSPlayer has to refer to a present value on the computer (in the registry?) to enable the CD change.
Stupid question, is this absolutely necessary?

Wouldn't it be possible to include that registry key on the CDs and somehow get BSplayer to register it from there, play the movie,
and upon exit unregister the value again? Sorry if it sounds stupid but I'm not a programmer... ;-)

Any thoughts? Any bright ideas on how to get this feature to work?

[Tizio]

I'm sorry, but I had never created stand alone CDs...
I replied only to manifest topic because that was the only thing I could clarify to you, sorry.

I hope that someone else will be able to find a solution to your problem, or at least to share their result with you :)

Bye