How to UNPROTECT the mp3 files?

daniel70

Hey Matthiask,

Do you know off-hand if Vlc will play an mp3 off the command line?

matthiask

yes. do you also need to surpress the interface?

then it's

vlc -I dummy song_to_play.mp3

daniel70

yeah, I want to make a system call from a .net app, and hook an event to the end of the playing. Anki uses MPlayer to do something like this, but it eventually failed me, don't exactly remember how - I think it was only able to play half the files. Currently I use lame to decode to wav (in a temp directory) and used the .net PlaySound function to play the wav file. That has been the most reliable, but it took me hours and hours of mucking around with MPlayer, Windows Media Player, etc., before I finally settled on that solution. I guess the critical points are to play the file from .net and get a signal when the file is done, with no external gui. As I write this, I realize that vlc probably won't do this ... it's not really what it was designed to do.

tiaopidepi

@daniel70: Why don't you just play the file directly from .NET? I'm playing audio files in BingXiangTie without much work at all. I just created a MediaElement and played...I think you can hook to an event at the end of the playback.

daniel70

Matthiask, thanks for the command line. I'll have to try it out the next time I mucking about with that code.

daniel70

Andrew, it never occurred to me to look in the WPF libraries. I was using winforms and went straight for Windows Media Player ... ha ha ha, boy, I pretty well got what I deserved for that. I'll try to see if I can use that WPF API from winforms when I'm back in the source code. Thank you for the tip.

tiaopidepi

Here's the code I was using:

try

{

mediaElement.LoadedBehavior = MediaState.Manual;

mediaElement.Source = new Uri(Sentence.mp3File);

mediaElement.Play();

}

catch (WebException) { }

I actually had to create the Media Element in the XAML, but I made it invisible. And there's a MediaEnded event you can register for. Note I'm using v4 and I don't know what's changed from v3.5.

Piece of advice: use WPF, and more strictly, use the Silverlight-compatible subset of WPF. You'll be much happier in the long run.

daniel70

Thanks for that. I probably should have done it in wpf. Maybe I'll split off a subset and port it to WPF. I can't really say that the Winform program I've written is very pretty, either from the point of view of the gui or the code.

daniel70

Perhaps you guys are talking about different files. I believe Eupnea is talking about the Wlcp spliced files.

tiaopidepi

In fact we were. I've never actually used WLCP...I've just played with it to see how it does what it does.

eupnea63355

a1pi2, sorry for the long delay. First, I have to tell you that, believe it or not, yes, in the USA, year 2010, I have slower-than-dialup internet that is often down, and there is no hope for improvement. I've been on the net since the days of Arpa, mostly on copper wires here until we managed to connect to a cell tower. But that cell tower is some kind of a switching station and is our only connection now. It's very expensive ($80 per month, Verizon) and often very slow and spotty. So, not much good for playing mp3's from the net on cue. ;)

OK, in regards to your question about specific files that do not play, I finally found some files I did not delete in frustration. These were probably in the last attempt to DL with WCLP. This is the name of one of many files from the Intermediate Visiting a Friend at the Hospital that would not play. Not that the name would help, but here it is anyway:

chinesepod_3878_dialogue_27472_prototype_1534_1821_9658_24596_16289.mp3.

This is one of many files in that lesson that 1. do not play 2. are protected (so I can't delete them) When I right click on them I have very few options listed, and none of them "work." I actually had to type in that name, as the "rename" function is not available to copy/paste. Strange.

Now, it's silly to pursue the issue at this point, but it was just one more thing added to the frustration of using CP (at least for me, as I do not have reliable internet connection and quite frankly have to format these materials to suit my learning style.) I did want to respond to your question, at the least. Thanks for asking, but I'll use Freecorder for now.

daniel70

Hey Eupnea, I don't know what os you're using, but maybe the path is too long, for example

c:\documents and settings\users\eupnea\documents\Chinese\We Love Chinese Pod\Upper Intermediate Lessons\a really really long name for an audio file which was a recent change at chinesepod.mp3

sometimes the computer can get a little confused about this. try copying the file to c:\ and see if you get better results.

eupnea63355

Thanks for your reply...thing is, I can't do anything with those files, LOL. They are stuck. Years ago I knew how to manage permissions from the command line. When I have time perhaps I'll play with that. They certainly are long filenames! Windows XP, BTW. An old discarded laptop that I adopted. I need to buy my own computer, that's for sure.

update: you were right. The long pathname plus the long filename must have been too much for the OS. It just so happened that my backup disc had just finished backing up the system. I accessed that disc, destroyed the files, then backed that folder up to my laptop. Success! Thanks. It's good to be rid of unnecessary, useless files.