[open] Video Playback Questions

jpopan

Hi,

I have two questions about video playback.

1) I am using the VLC media plugin and at the start of each video, it prints the name of the file at the bottome of the screen. Is there a way to turn that feature off?

2) When I attempt to sample more than one video, I get a warning "WindowsError: exception: access violation writing 0X00000014." This doesn't happen when I play only one video. I want to be able to sample multiple videos to play in random order. To do this, I set up a sequence with one VLC media player item. In the "video file" box, I refered to a variable [video clips] that I created in a "loop." The videos all play in a random order, but at the end of the experiment I get the error. Any idea about what I can do to fix this problem? My script is below.

Jason

lvanderlinden

Hi Jason,

We forwarded your question to the developer of the media_player_vlc plugin.

Best,

Lotje

Daniel

Hi Jason,

Sorry for taking a while to get back to you. As to the answers of your questions:

1) I know about the marquee displayed at the start of the movie and agree it's very annoying. You'd think it would be very easy to switch it off, but sadly the opposite is true. The VLC python API is very nontransparent and badly documented, so I haven't been able to find the right commands to deactivate the marquee. It's high on my priority list though and once I have time to dive into it (I'm currently struggling to get the Mac version of OpenSesame 0.27 working) I will try to fix this.

2) I have noticed this error too. It's inherent to how Python creates and cleans up instances of the vlc player. When an instance of a player in OS has finished playback it is cleaned from memory. However, OpenSesame also has a cleanup function that checks if player instances need to be cleaned from memory if an experiment is broken off (for instance if ESC is pressed somewhere) or at the end of an experiment. Somehow, the vlc plugin crashes if it is asked to clean up player references, but there are none left to be cleaned. This is technically a fault of the vlc module, but I'll see if I can create a workaround for this once I have to time to work on the plugin again. Although this crash is undesirable, it is 'not critical' as it occurs after your experiment has finished and your data has been saved (correct me if I'm wrong!!!). As such, for the moment is more a 'cosmetic flaw' and you should be able to run your experiment without problems.

I hope I've answered your questions with this. If you have any more feedback on the vlc plugin, I'm happy to know.

Daniel