ActiveX -How to get --Start-Time 100 --End-time 600 to work

[sam63]

I'm a 5th grade teacher that is trying to get my VBnet 2005 program for my students to start and end a video at certain times. If I use a desktop shortcut this will work but what do I have to do using ActiveX to accomplish the same thing? "F:\Vlc\Vlc.exe" "F:\TQD\StreamMM\LangArts\BasicP2.mp4" --start-time 100 --stop-time 175

Thanks for your help as I have spent hours trying everything,
Sam

[thannoy]

You have to use the JS API (same API as mozilla-plugin, see link1) and play with vlc.playlist.add() like this:

Code: Select all

vlcNode.playlist.add(URL, foonamename, options);

where option is a string like ":start-time=50 :end-time=200" (you can give an Array of string too).

Security checks have been added since VLC 0.9.9, which are still to be accurately configured. Default is to disallow options except if they are known to be safe so it is possible that those options have not yet been tagged as safe. If you have this problem, you will have a security message in logs for each rejected options.
1- you can check the logs using JS API, you can also try to use my mess-test page (link2). I will try to check if it is allowed and propose a patch if it is missing (during the week).
2- you can try VLC 0.9.8a, which is not advised for security reasons (probably bugfixes are corrected since it)


link1: http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation: ... d_above.29

link2: http://athebird.free.fr/utest_vlc_js/un ... lugin.html : use the bottom line, bottom-left is the URL and bottom-right are options. Maybe blank options field is unsupported (will lead to "" instead of null). This page print logs.

[thannoy]

FYI, start-time, run-time and end-time options appears to already be tagged as safe.

[sam63]

Thannoy, thank you so much for helping this classroom project. I would like not to use Java on the student's computers. Any ideas on the following:
If the ADDTARGET, which is suppose to accept most of the command line arguments , doesn’t work with Start and Stop then what about using the following activex commands to achieve the same thing as start and stop. I guess it depends on the answer to these quesitons:

Do you know if VB.Net can poll the playing movie to get the elapsed TIME or POSITION?

If so, will Set POSITION allow VB.Net to change the movie position while it is playing? Since SHUTTLE can move the playback positon around, can we use that?

LENGTH – returns the length of the movie - Get
SHUTTLE to moves the playback position x seconds forward or back
TIME gives time in seconds elapsed – Get/Set Question –
POSITION – Playback position – Get/Set - This gets the current position of the playback, I guess in seconds?
STOP – stops the movie
FULLSCREEN – toggles to full and back

One other question, on a different subject: My teacher's computer streams clips to my 32 student ten year old laptops in a peer to peer lan. They have 8.5 version and I use 8.5 to stream since 9.9 plays the audio but gives a black screen on their computer I get the same, if I install 9.9 on their system and use 9.9 on mine. I would like to use 9.9 but since 8,5 works (openGL) , I stay with it. Any ideas?

[thannoy]

I don't think "addTarget" is a good idea. It belongs to the deprecated API (playlist.add(url[, name[, options]]) should be used instead.
If an option is disallowed in one side, it would be in, the other side, but those ones are not I think.

You can use the ActiveX in a Windows program I think, and use its API (describe in the link I gave you earlier) to pull its playback position from times to times. All your requests should be doable using the ActiveX and its API.


For the 0.9.9 problem no idea, you can try to remove the preferences folder ("%APPDATA/VLC" or "./config/vlc"), or try another 0.9.x maybe (see download.videolan.org/pub). You can also open another topic with the -vvv output of the problem to try to have it fixed.

[sam63]

Thank you, I will try those things - you have been very helpful