Preview function
 

Is it possible to add the function to preview an .avi file from inside a multiple RAR archive ?
For now, I can see mpeg files (even in cue/bin format) inside an multiple archive by dragging one of the files onto BSPlayer. It plays OK the part of the file wich is inside this part of the archive. Can this be done for avi files too ?
Thx.

(Sorry adicoto, couldn't resist showing you this: http://forum.bsplayer.org/viewtopic.php?p=7774#7774 )
:)
(OK, I know, you're asking for a possibility to preview, which is a bit different topic, but nevertheless)

Thank you BSPeter for reminding that now I know much more things about video files, codecs, BSPlayer, containers, archives and many more things than two and a half years ago. :oops:

At that moment, BSPlayer didn't have RAR support. And at that time I didn't know about the 15 MB volumes. :) And of course, even RAR itself isn't the same. Now you don't need all the archives to play the file inside As you may see, I've replyed only about archieving problem at that time.

But the problem is elswhere. Even if you see the file inside the archive, playing it is harder. Not same thing like playing an incomplete file (wich function doesn't work in BSPlayer even it should be), but worst, because you don't have any information on the piece of file you have, let's say into 15th archive. So you must search for a key frame and start decoding from there. But you will also need a movi block file...and things get really complicated.

But, hey, one may wish :D

I'm able to play incomplete avi files without problems with BSplayer, and also ogm and mkv files :?

But are you saying that you are able to play mpeg files from archives and not avi? :shock:
Never tried to play files from archives :roll:

Yes Tizio, I can play MPEG files who in fact are cue/bin files from inside a multi-volume archive. I can drop the 25th (or any Xth file) archive onto BSPlayer and it plays the file OK. But I can't play XviD incomplete files.

I have to try this, if I'll find some files it would be interesting to try them :)

If you don't believe me: :)

Yes yes, I belive you, it only would be interest for me to try for myself :P

BTW have you tried to copy the part file in an isolated folder and see if BSplayer is still able to play it? (maybe if you have all the part files together when you try to extract one file, WinRAR automatically extracts the other parts from the other segmented archives)

That's the whole ideea. If I have all the archives together, why should I need the preview function ? I can extract the file and play it. :wink:

But when you played the mpeg file have you got all the parts or only few of them?

You didn't get it, don't you ? Let's say that I download a file from the internet. It is splitted into 150 archives. It contains a video file. Should I download all 150 archives (2.25 GB) ? Or should I download just one file (15 MB), see it's content and decide that is what I want or not.

Or, let's put it like that: I am a subtitle creator. I want to be the first in the world to make a subtitle for a movie. First archive (from 150) is on my hard drive. I can start to do the subtitle if I can watch the file inside.

Want more explanation ? About why I am interested into such a function ?

As I've said, I can drop any of the volume onto BSPlayer. That means I don't need to have all, just one. BSplayer don't deceompress all the file (nor RAR). I am sure you can notice when a 700-800 MB file is extracted onto your computer.

And is not an MPEG file, it's the image of a (S)VCD disk.

Yes, I understand why you want that feature, I only wanted to know if it was able to play only one part with svcd files :oops:

(I wrote mpeg since you wrote "...I can see mpeg files (even in cue/bin format) inside an multiple archive..." in your first post)

Just wanted to highlight that BSPlayer can play also from inside a cue/bin file (VCD image) who is inside a multi-volume archive. Nice job.

MPEG1 and MPEG2 containers together with their audio and video formats can be played from anywhere in the middle and cut/joined in almost any combination.

Unfortunately this can't easily be done with modern containers, which have a header, an index block, etc. Old MPEGs didn't have a file header. Each frame was completely isolated (with possible references to other frames).

MPEG (1, 2, 4 and so) compresion means that you have a key frame and all the frames after are not isolated but are calculated related to the key frame (basically, in reality there are some small diferences but the simple ideea is this one) and the information is just about the pixels that are changed from the previous frame. If you have independent frames an 352x288@29,97 video file of about 1h20min will have around 16 GB (more or less). In fact it's just a VCD (around 750 MB)

The keyframes themselves are also compressed like individual JPEG images BTW. What I was trying to say that it is normal that any piece of data containing a sequence of MPEG or MPEG2 frames can be played back.

Examples: Uncompressed DVD disc images, MPEG2 in Matroska (even if Matroska splitter is not installed), MPEG in (unprotected) Advanced Streaming Format, MPEG music in Darkstone videogame datafile music.mtf, MPEG speech in Septerra Core videogame datafiles speech.db, etc.

How would the player know that it's, for example, a MPEG4 ASP video interleaved with custom Windows Media Audio and some unrecognized container overhead bytes if you don't provide the file header?

Aren't both the same?

Are you kidding us with this question?
:wink:

Same thing I've said in my earlier post.

Yes, I think he is joking. :)

What is the format of your SVCD if it's not MPEG? :?

VCDs are MPEG1, SVCDs are MPEG2. But we are talking about a virtual VCD. It became a VCD only after mounting into a virtual drive.

For MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 it's not important whether you have a metadata tag such as ID3v2, RIFF header or a disc's filesystem at the beginning. Uncompressed (S)VCD's are still MPEG files.

That's an advantage of MPEG and MPEG-2 over OGG and MP4.