Let VLC skip empty video parts

[sucker_pvn]

Hi all,

I use vlc mostly for checking out partial bittorrent/emule video downloads. Some earlier version of VLC skipped parts of video files which were empty, which I really liked. (Don't remember the version number though.) But since I upgraded some time ago to a newer release (must have been in the 0.7.X time) the player does not skip empty parts anymore but holds the last rendered frame for the period without data until it comes at a fragment again. This is really annoying, considering the way it worked before.

Is there a setting for this behavior? Or perhaps I can make a feature request about it... (At the moment I use v0.8.2)

PS. Don't know if this old version I talk about would be able to do it better, but it seems that VLC nowadays needs the availability of the first data of a movie file. Otherwise it would just start playing as if it was an audio file (with only the marker moving over that thin black line). Sometimes it just won't start. This is also quite annoying...

[dionoea]

the emule part file preview plugin is NOT (i repeat NOT) coded/mantained by the VideoLAN project. Please contact the emule people for help/remarks about it.

[Droppen]

the emule part file preview plugin is NOT (i repeat NOT) coded/mantained by the VideoLAN project. Please contact the emule people for help/remarks about it.

dude, the this is not about a plugin to view files made by other programs, its about playing a file that doesnt have all parts in it yet. dumbass..

I use vlc mostly for checking out pa..

I totaly agree with this, it'll make my life easyer too

[dionoea]

"dumbass" is usally not a word a forum moderator likes to hear. (and he definitively won't try to help you once you've said it)

(and FYI : http://www.emule-project.net/home/perl/ ... m=download )

[sucker_pvn]

the emule part file preview plugin is NOT (i repeat NOT) coded/mantained by the VideoLAN project. Please contact the emule people for help/remarks about it.

As the previous poster already stated, I do not use the part preview function of emule, but get to the actual downloaded file. With emule these are mostly .part or .part.met files, with torrents they are mostly plain avi/mpeg/ogg/mov/'whatever' files.

I just wonder how come it used to work the way it did, and nowadays it doesn't anymore. If you think about it, it's only natural a video player would skip parts which are completely empty (and not just scrambled or corrupt).

(and FYI : http://www.emule-project.net/home/perl/ ... m=download )

That's very nice to see, but that won't help me with bittorrent downloads. I just want the old VLC behavior back.

PS. People tend to get emotional about things or just write what they think instead of taking a moment before saying rude stuff. So try to ignore such insults, unless they are relevant.

[Droppen]

"dumbass" is usally not a word a forum moderator likes to hear. (and he definitively won't try to help you once you've said it)

(and FYI : http://www.emule-project.net/home/perl/ ... m=download )

well sry bout the "dumbass" i was just kidding..

[dionoea]

i might be mistaken but :

its not natural if you consider VLC's orgins (which are : a network video client which basically means that VLC has no understanding of "frames"). Given the fact that the stream contains time information, VLC will not display a frame before it was supposed to be displayed but wait for the appropriate date. That way, if some packets comming over the network were lost, it will still be able to continue and display the right video/audio at the right time.

[sucker_pvn]

its not natural if you consider VLC's orgins

Indeed, I know it's origins. (I'm actually a big linux user, with VLC installed on my pc, but I am downloading this on my brother's pc, so that's why I am on Windows anyway. I even went to FOSDEM 2 years ago and there was a videolan stand with a movie playing on a windows & linux machine as wel as a mac!:))
Could it be that the only reason that VLC then skipped the frames was because I previously installed that plugin from emule? It makes some sense. I'll try it right away...

EDIT: It seems it would only be able to work inside emule itself, and also needs the correct vlc version for the plugin to work. Bummer.

[dionoea]

Could it be that the only reason that VLC then skipped the frames was because I previously installed that plugin from emule? It makes some sense. I'll try it right away...

i beleive so ...

[vlc me]

well sorry if im missing out somethig but :
even viewing corrpt files with vlc was available at ver 0.6.2 now when i open the file it shows the slider, but doesn't always advance the movie to location i dragged the marker.
moreover when sometime it does, it has to typical behaviours , one which it just shows black even if you jump back to a place with valid frames, the other - closes the vid.
so it not all part file support but IMO something that dev changed in the player.
thanks.

[zcot]

so what are you getting at?

I'm not understanding the post.

you want support for part files?

[Guest]

you want support for part files?

Not exactly, I wanted vlc to be able to skip the empty parts of a movie file, so you only see actual video data instead of vlc playing the movie completely, and giving black screens/no sound during the pieces where no data has been downloaded yet.

The kazaa download system uses a pretty stupid technology which starts downloading files from the beginning and gradually moves to the end of the file. I downloaded the avi preview tool for it then, and was able to keep track of how much kazaa downloaded. (Also good for verification of the actual file.)

When I used emule like a year ago there was a plugin for emule so it was able to understand .part files (made by eMule), that plugin was for v0.7.2. After I installed that plugin I could start vlc itself and point it to a random (movie) .part file and it would only play the already downloaded parts. It's not a terribly great experience, as the move is (at that stage) not complete, but it was usefull.

Now after a new Win XP install, I use emule and bittorrent, which download files in randomly selected pieces (I forgot to state this earlier), so the behavior I was used with vlc would come in handy). So I wondered how come vlc did not play partially downloaded movies like it used to, but after the conversation in this topic I realised the plugin (and the plugin only) was responsible for the behavior it had. The plugin seems to have sticked to version 0.7.2, so until further notice I won't be able to do what I want with the latest vlc.

I can live with it though, it's just a inconvenience that it playes the file completely, and not in the parts I want to see.

Topic closed, if it depended on me...

[buggie]

you can find the the part previewer for vlc 8.2 here, has just released

http://forum.emule-project.net/index.ph ... ia+preview

[vclerk]

I've found another strange behaviour of VideoLAN when previewing incompleted files from eMule.
Sometimes the empty parts of a video are filled in a quite creative way with random previewsly played videos
I've notice sometimes even with videos that aren't yet in the hard disk or were played from another device.
Is this happened to any other
Are the videos cached anyway after being played

[aXis3]

About vlc not skipping the blanks:
It seems that this happens most when the option "show stream line" is on (the slider that walks along the movie!) It's a boring choice, as without it we're forced to let the preview run, and cannot skip towards the end directly (for verification), but on the other hand with the cursor we get an image still, or even a shutdown, unless we're lucky and point it to a valid chunk...
That joins an old question I never asked: why do vlc gives a choice between showing strem lines for each format (avi, mpeg...)? It seemed to me that a decent player would have one, but now I think that it's good to have the choice...

[fbc]

I'm having the same issue with some video files. VLC stops playing when it hits an empty frame or whatever it is you call it. It used keep playing until it got to parts of the video that were playable again. Is there nothing we can change in the preferences that will bring back this behavior?

[riccardo]

Sorry if i write after some years but i'm looking for this awesome function... nobody found a solution?