disable auto-play function

[kostuj]

Hi,

For the apparently most common Chrome browser in particular, to date I have not been able to achieve needed frame-by-frame playback capability directly in my web application under development (though we can get the needed functionality with other browsers like Firefox and Edge). So although it would be more inconvenient to implement, I have been looking for standalone players that can supplement the application.

SMPlayer is one of the better possibilities I have found, and it appears to work quite well for frame-by-frame playback and analysis that is needed. However, I need to be able to disable the auto-play function and have not been able to locate how to do that. There are some very short video snippets that need to be analyzed (one second or less in duration), and I cannot get to the pause button in time after selecting the video file so the player just closes.

I did look around for documentation and such a setting in the player first and have not been able to find anything yet, so any advice would be appreciated. Thank you very much in advance. I really appreciate it.

[rvm]

Go to Preferences -> Advanced, in the field that says "run the following actions every time a file is opened", type: pause

Edit: this can also be done this way: in Preferences -> Advanced -> MPlayer/mpv, in the Options field type: --pause

[kostuj]

That worked perfectly. Thank you so much.

And with that working well now there is only one more item that might prevent me from making terrific use of the SMPlayer in conjunction with my application, which occurs at the end of a file playback.

When getting into an analysis, I will frequently be deeply into analyzing video frames to the extent of being unaware of where the exact end of the file occurs. And when that happens, all of a sudden boom, the file is gone and I need to retrieve it and start all over again. Is there some sort of function that can automatically pause a video file when it reaches its end without totally closing it at that point?

Again, thank you so much for your reply to my inquiry. I really appreciate it.

[kostuj]

To add one more thing here, I seemed to be directed to this forum for MPVPlayer support also as the two players appear to have some common roots, and I apologize if this is incorrect.

I love the simplicity of the user interface of MPV and it basically works equally well as SMPlayer for my specific purpose, yet I have the same issues with that player from a usability standpoint.

I need the equivalent of both a pause upon opening a file in the player so it does not automatically start playing and a pause at the end of a file playing so the file does not automatically close at that point, the same as the items described above. But for the MPVPlayer there does not even seem to be any readily available preferences options to achieve the above functionality. So any help in this area would also be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much again.

[rvm]

[rvm]

[kostuj]

Thank you very much for your additional reply.

Unfortunately I am unable to get your suggestion to work. Maybe my syntax is incorrect and/or my command(s) is in the wrong place. I am using the commands -pause -keep-open=yes.

There are two different areas to place actions or options in the Advanced section of Preferences. One is in the Advanced tab labeled "Run the following actions every time a file is opened" (which is where I initially placed the -pause command and that worked).

The other is in the MPlayer/mpv tab and labeled "Here you can pass options and filters to MPlayer/mpv." Every time I have entered anything there I end up getting an error message at the end of a file playing. Unless these are actually them, I do not know where the command line is or how to access it unless you are referring to a command prompt.

When the above failed, I did find a different command named -no-close-at-end, but that did not seem to work either no matter where I tried to put it. To clarify, please keep in mind that the player itself is staying open for me at the end of playing a file, with the played file completely disappearing and closing and just a black screen of the player remaining. What I need is the actual played file remaining open and paused at or near its end so that the file cannot close unless and until I manually do so. This is kind of a no-brainer feature for any kind of serious analysis application.

So any other questions, comments, and/or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Even if no solution is found, thank you very much again for your replies and help. I really appreciate it.

[rvm]

[kostuj]

Outstanding! Thank you so much and it does work.

In some very early testing I found just one little oddity. When a file is initially opened and automatically paused on frame number 0 (frame numbers are pre-embedded into the video), trying the forward frame advance key first will not get the video moving at all. I first need to hit play for just a moment and then pause, and from there I can work the frame advance keys superbly all day long, even when going all the way back to frame 0 at any time. This is a very minor thing that can easily be lived with, but maybe there is a different setting of some sort that you know about and that might be able to adjust for this.

Anyway, thank you very much for the clarification regarding the two dashes, which I wondered about and did try earlier but obviously had the commands in the wrong place. While I admit I did not read through the entire manual, various commands that I found listed within some the (SM) player dialog boxes had either one dash preceding them or even none depending on where I found them.

If I recommend the use of the SM/MPV standalone player as an excellent supplement for my application in the application's instructions, it would probably be best if I listed the specific commands and exactly where to put them that you were kind enough to provide me with, because I certainly could not find them on my own. To that end, is there a page somewhere that lists all of these various commands in case I need to try to reference anything else on my own in the future (unless they are all supposed to be in the manual[s])?

And last but not least, largely due to its very simplistic interface I might still prefer to recommend just MPV over SM. In that event, would you please consider letting me know how to directly access the command line for MPV if it is not complex? I did read through parts of the manual before asking this and initially that has just confused me even more. Based on that maybe I should just go with SM, which is very nice indeed but more glamorous than what is needed. I am on a Windows computer and just placed the downloaded MPV folder on my desktop and installed it from there.

Even if nothing else can be offered here, I am extremely grateful to you for your help with the commands and where to put them for getting the SMPlayer to function just as it needs to for my particular application. Thank you very, very much. I really appreciate it.

[rvm]