Responding to keypress events while a video is playing

[Ommina]

So! Two questions. First the easy one (I hope).

Is it possible to get key event notifications while a video is playing?

GBPVR.Public.IMenuTask.OnKeyDown does not seem to fire once the video starts. (Maybe because there is no way to differentiate which plugin to send the keypress to?)

I do note, though, that there is an IVideoPlayer that can be retrieved via getActiveVideoPlayer, and it has an onKeyDown. Can I use this to... somehow... respond to keypresses while a video is running?

Or any other hints?

(The other question can wait...)

[sub]

Is it possible to get key event notifications while a video is playing?

Sorry, no its not. Plugins do not receive notifications of key presses while video is playing.

GBPVR.Public.IMenuTask.OnKeyDown does not seem to fire once the video starts. (Maybe because there is no way to differentiate which plugin to send the keypress to?)

Key presses are only set to the active plugin. The plugin is not active when video is playing. Instead an internal component is the active player.

I do note, though, that there is an IVideoPlayer that can be retrieved via getActiveVideoPlayer, and it has an onKeyDown. Can I use this to... somehow... respond to keypresses while a video is running?

That interface is used by the internal player, and the onKeyDown() method is the mechanism the app uses to pass keystrokes to the player.

[Ommina]

Sorry, no its not. Plugins do not receive notifications of key presses while video is playing.

I was worried this might be the case. My dreams of subtitle switching crushed once again!

At any rate, thank you, as always, for the quick reply. I'll stop wasting my time trying to make it go. I can still achieve what I want by indicating which streams to play before starting playback, but switching during playback would have had a nice feel to it.

Thanks again!

[reven]

sub are videoplugins available in pvrx2 (plugins that can run when videos are playing back, they were in gbpvr.exe)?

if so ommina you could write one of those, that in the activated method of the plugin automatically switch the subtitle track (this might be tricky but if you could manipulate vobsub or something to switch subtitles, its possible).

i really hope this is possible, because it would be nice to switch audio/subtitles tracks from within gbpvr (i have lots of mkvs with lots of subtitles/audio tracks and no way to change these in gbpvr atm)

[sub]

sub are videoplugins available in pvrx2 (plugins that can run when videos are playing back, they were in gbpvr.exe)?

No they're not. Quite a bit of work went into getting them working in gbpvr.exe, and they werent really used, so given all the other stuff there was to do, it was hard to just redoing it with pvrx2.exe.

[reven]

ok then it comes down to whats easier, adding video overlay plugins, or making the ability to switch audio/subtitle/video streams available natively from within gbpvr?

of course its entirely up to you, and you probably have to much on your plate as is to do either (but would be nice to see the switching of streams in gbpvr)

[Snarky]

I and others built a pretty elaborate "social television" system using the video plugin feature of GBPVR. It eventually allowed people to see their buddy list and what each buddy was watching, to text chat, use smileys, send each other recommendations, and even have VOIP conference calls through the TV. The work got published at several conferences, and most recently in a book. (You can see slides from one presentation at Slideshare.net, though that version of the system didn't have the complete set of features.)

We decided to develop this research prototype in GBPVR because it was the only media center software with powerful enough video plugin functionality. It'd be a real shame if this unique advantage wasn't carried forward.

(With video plugin support restored, it wouldn't be particularly difficult for anyone to build an integrated IM client that shared what you were viewing as part of your presence.)

[sub]

Sorry, but as I said above, a lot of effort went in to developing this the first time around in GBPVR.exe, and it was never a popular, and very few people ever used it. With so many other things to do, there is just no way I can justify the time to redo that effort in PVRX2.exe with the expectation that is probably not going to be used.