Movie Player
A simple application that uses QMediaPlayer along with QMediaPlaylist and displays in a QVideoWidget. We use this primarily to play all media files in a directory tree. Users open a root directory of choice, and the application loads all media files in the directory tree. The loaded files are played in sequence in a loop until the user closes the application. Unlike VLC, MPlayer etc. which spawn new windows to play the media file, our application keeps it in the same application (in a separate tab). This allows us to keep the application running (usually on a secondary monitor) without grabbing focus and stepping into the users regular work.
The application presents two tab, the first “Files” tab shows the list of media files that have been loaded. User may double click any file to switch to playing that file. Playback occurs in the “Player” tab. User may switch between tabs at any time without disrupting the playback.
Common controls allow the user to quickly switch between files loaded.
- First - Use to start playback from the first file in the list
- Previous - Jump to the previous file in the list and start playing.
- Play/Pause - Use to play/pause the current file. On start, it will play the first file in the list.
- Next - Jump to the next file in the list and start playing.
- Last - Jump to the last file in the list and start playing.
- Location Scroll - Use to scroll to a specific location in the current media file.
Audio controls for audio output are also provided. On exit, the index of the current file being played is saved. If the same directory is re-opened later playback will attempt to pick up at the same index (note that the actual file being played back may differ if the parent directory has been modified via file addition/removal).
Playback Mode
Two modes are supported:
- Repeat - The files in the generated playlist are played back sequentially in a loop.
- Random - The files in the generated playlist are played back in random order. Each file is played back only once per loop.
Filters
It is possible to specify regular expression based filters which are used when the playlist is generated. Files or patterns representing files you do not wish to play may be specified using the Playback->Ignore... menu. Ignore rules/patterns are global and are not specific to any particular directory tree that is loaded in the application.
Limitations
Currently we support only adding one nested directory hierarchy at one time. You can add additional directories, however at the end of the playlist, only the last added directory will be reloaded and then replayed. We reload the playlist at the end of each loop to pick up any newly added files (as well as remove any deleted files, pick up renamed files etc). In a future release we may properly track multiple playlists per loaded directory to avoid this limitation.
We developed this app in a few hours using the easy to use Qt Multimedia module.
Download the movie player application version 1.2.9 for: Mac OS X, Windows 7 (x64
Note
QMediaPlayer does not work well on Mac OS X version 10.14 (High Sierra). In particular video is not scaled to fill the entire player view, not des it properly track the duration and playback for a media file. Due to these issues, we rewrote the application using Swift and AVKit/AVFoundation. The player has a simpler interface than the old player, and also loads files in a background thread without blocking the main UI.
Download the new VideoPlayer application.