Author Topic: Option to treat video files like MKV as audio files.  (Read 1638 times)

waste

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Earlier I posted a question about playing MKV files as audio only(https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=29545.0), while the solutions that were given were alright and there already seems to be built in support for playing the contained audio it would be more convenient to have an option to force MusicBee to play just the audio portion rather than opening it in a video player. Renaming the file/extracting the audio manually/converting the entire file is much more cumbersome and can take up unnecessary space if I only want to listen to the audio.

Thank you for your time and for all your work on the best music player.

hiccup

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To me this seems an interesting new idea that does make some sense.
But, I do have some doubts how this would benefit a larger amount of MusicBee users.

How often, and in what circumstances would you run into an MKV file, and only want to listen to the audio of it?

This might be a likely candidate for a new plugin.
But I am not so sure about having it as an integrated feature in MusicBee by default?

waste

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I see your point, its not very useful to many people. Would something like this even be possible as a plugin? Can a plugin step in before MusicBee attempts to open the file with a video player and change the action? If it is I might attempt it myself.

hiccup

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Would something like this even be possible as a plugin? Can a plugin step in before MusicBee attempts to open the file with a video player and change the action? If it is I might attempt it myself.

I have no coding talents whatsoever, maybe some other forum member can say if this would be technically possible?
(my senses tell me it could be)

NigWills

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I see your point, its not very useful to many people. Would something like this even be possible as a plugin? Can a plugin step in before MusicBee attempts to open the file with a video player and change the action? If it is I might attempt it myself.


Hi,
 

If you don't mind changing the location of the video file you wanted to "play just the audio"; manually move said video file to another folder in your computer's music library. (— assuming you have a source music folder structure on your PC i.e. my "folder structure" consisted of 7 primary genre's (incidentally with over 34'000 thousand media files (subsequently scanned to MusicBee library)). After a year or so, I wondered why a video file ('MP4', but any video file has the same effect) stopped playing video externally (I use VLC player.),—by only playing audio, internally,—it was because I had unintentionally moved said video file to another location in my previously mentioned source folder on my PC. Having put the video file back in it's original location (manually on my PC) MusicBee played the video again perfectly.

 
...So, my abovementioned problem; video files playing audio internally not externally, might your solution!,—simply move the video file manually (on your PC) to another folder location in a previously scanned/mature MB library! Play the file in MusicBee and it plays internally.

 
NB: Please be mindful that moving files in this way is not recommended, I assume this, and I've seen this advised on this forum; the risk appears to be a potential to lose metadata/tags of the original file; so, backup (or copy) said file before you move it, as you might lose important tag data. I was fortunate, I didn't.

 

(Alternatively, if you simply change the video file name, in the source folder on your PC, by one or more characters', the same effect will work when you then play the file from MusicBee library; meaning you do not need to move the source file, as above, as a trade-off for manually changing the file name at source.).