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).

[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.

[marcmr3]

Hi, i just realized that some times, the downloaded subtitle is a bit delayed from the actual video track. It would be very usefull that the program checks how the users sync the subtitle track and records that information at the end of the video. Then implement an auto-sync sistem for the subtitles that have already been syncronized by other users before all together with the auto sutitle seeking system.

Thank you by taking this into consideration