Playback Position Revisited

[Ommina]

First - a thank you to both whurlston and sub on the data store. I'll create my own.

So onwards to today's question!

There are several past messages posted concerning the retrieval of the current playback position via the API. Best I'm able to tell, the reply has been universally "not presently", but they are fairly old as well, so I'll ask again in case things have changed.

Specifically, is there any way to retrieve the playing position of the video when it stopped? Ideally, I would like to determine if a file was 'watched' (as opposed to 'played'). The hope was the compare the last playing position with the file's total length, and, if the former was within n% of the end, call it 'watched'. This is to differentiate it from the user playing a file, and hitting stop ten seconds later - played, yes, but by no means watched.

I can probably use the playback_position position table, but would like to avoid it, since that takes me right back to relying on a data structure that may very well change, instead of a more stable API.

Searching through the public interface in the object browser doesn't show anything that looks promising, but I figured I would throw it out there anyway in case I missed something. Wouldn't be the first time.

Thanks once again!

[sub]

Sorry, there is no API for you to get this internal information. As you've already noted, the closest you can get is looking in the playback_position table.

[Ommina]

Sorry for returning to a six-week-old thread, but it was better than creating a new one saying the same thing.

I'm putting the playback_position table to work now, and I'd like to ensure that I understand its behaviour.

If a file completely playing by reaching the end, no record is created in the table - presumably on the grounds that you're not going to restart playback from the last second. That seems fair, I can work with that.

Is there, though, a minimum time value for inclusion in the table? Or will there always be a record created if a file is played and does not reach the end on its own?

That is, is it safe for me to conclude that, if there is no matching record, the file played to the end?

Thanks!

[sub]

It'll create a record in this table if the user starts playback, then stops after <StoreResumeStartExclusion> seconds into the show, unless it is within <StoreResumeEndExclusion> seconds of the end of the show. These values are defaulted to '0' seconds, but are tweakable in config.xml.

[Ommina]

Eggsalad! Thank you sub!