Seemingly simple media player request

[Wayne Bertram]

I'm new posting so I hope I'm doing the right thing here.

I need a simple media player that will player a variety of video formats (MP4, M2ts, MKV, WMV, Mpg say) at various resolutions up to full HD but must play in full screen and on a second monitor.

The playlist can be simple drag and drop from explorer to keep things simple.

The tricky bit is to also be able to play a still (Tif, JPeg .....) after a video for either a fixed time or be triggered manually to then play the next video in the playlist which will then go to a still again and so on.  And have a keypress to go to black if required.

It's actually for a kids film making competition to present all the films seamlessly with a still in between each movie.

Is this a simple thing to do or can anyone point me to something that will do this. I have not been able to find anything to do it as most media players are for too complex and capable than is required and I can't fing one that diaplays stills.

Thank you for any help.

Wayne Bertram

[MilesAhead]

While waiting for additional responses here I recommend you also post on this forum:
http://forum.videohe.../13-Software-Playing

If there's a Windows software player that does it someone there may know the particulars.

[skwire]

Media Player Classic will do most of what you want:

1) Play video files in full screen on second monitor.
2) Display JPEG files.  TIFFs won't display but you convert them to JPEG beforehand, no?
3) Won't auto-advance after a JPEG -- just use hotkeys.

Just build your playlist like this:

Seemingly simple media player request

[Renegade]

The tricky bit is to also be able to play a still (Tif, JPeg .....) after a video for either a fixed time or be triggered manually to then play the next video in the playlist which will then go to a still again and so on. 

-Wayne Bertram (September 09, 2014, 06:39 AM)

I think you'll be best off creating a motion JPEG or short video clip with the stills.

And have a keypress to go to black if required.

-Wayne Bertram (September 09, 2014, 06:39 AM)

That seems like a bit much to ask of a video player. Why would anyone ever need that?

My favourite video player is ALShow (used on my 3rd monitor mostly). It has a similar function for that (press ESC), but it minimizes itself to the taskbar notification area (system tray).

I think you need to rethink how the presentation will work. Most likely you will need human interaction there, especially for the stills.

[mouser]

I can definitely see the value of a tool like you are requesting.
You might be able to do what you want using a presentation tool (Powerpoint?).

The other alternative is to actually combine the movies and stills into one new video, using one of the free "movie maker" tools; that would give you a final avi/mpg file to just play as one big movie.

[mouser]

There are video players that have playlists and that handle stills (so that would handle most of what you want).
I expect the difficulty you might have is finding one that will let you pause for a specific time on the stills.

Another alternative would be to have someone make a simple tool that could send commands to a separate video player, and thus queue up the stills and videos and tell the video player to play them.
This would have the advantage of letting you have a nice playlist on one screen while the video player ran full screen on another monitor, and being able to set times for the image stills, etc.
A tricky part of coding that would be finding a video player that could report when a video was done playing, etc..

[Wayne Bertram]

Thanks to all that have replied.  I will look at a couple of those suggestions.  No problem converting the still(s) to short videos if required. 

I don't think Powerpoint is good enough with it's video support and scaling. I tried a movie in it and was very unimpressed. 

One problem I have as far as simply compiling it all on a timeline is a bunch of different frame rates and I don't want to get into framerate conversions when a player will not care when files are played individually. 

I'm happy to have interaction for the stills to go to the next movie.   I will look at ALShow as suggested since I've not heard of that one.  I also didn't realise that Media Player Classic would display stills so I'll have a look at that as long as I can play out to a secondary monitor. I prefer to see playlists rather than fly blind once I've started.

Re Mouser's reply, the alternative of a simple tool to send commands to a seperate player etc sounds pretty much like it would do the trick.

The key going to black is simply for presentation as the films need to be shown in front of an audience and by being able to go to black you can just finish off nice withour dropping back to Windows or if something goes wrong you can blank out and fix it.

I will mess around a bit more with some of these and also post the request to the other forum as suggested.

Again, thanks to all for your very quick replies. Just thought I'd check before going to bed (In Australia) but only posted the question a couple of hours ago.

Cheers

Wayne