Anyone know of a good video/media player with scheduling?

[Kit Hannah]

Hey all,

I am looking for a good media player that has time scheduling. I use a program currently called Deltatrax (www.deltatrax.nl (http://www.deltatrax.nl)). It is exactly what I am looking for, but I am having a problem with flickering during the first few seconds when it changes to the next video and this is unacceptable for me. It very well may be the codecs I have on both of my computers, but I am going to try it on my laptop over the weekend.

So, basically I am looking for a scheduled media player that can play HD files full screen without flickering. Ideally, I would like it to produce a log (similar to TV automation software) so that I can go back and make sure that it played. But I need to schedule things on a daily basis.

If you know of anything, PLEASE let me know. I'm not going to spend tes of thousands on real TV automation software, but if you know of anything cheap or free, that would be great.
Thanks
Kit

[mikkowilson]

Hmm, you honestly are getting into the realm of Playout Automation with demands like this.


One thing to reduce skipping, is to make sure all your material is encoded with the same codec at the same bitrate.

What's your hardware platform for output?


- Mikko

[Kit Hannah]

Everything IS encoded to the same codec, same size, same settings, everything. Hardware is fully capable - Dual core Intel w. 3 gigs of ram, 256mb Nvidia 8600, etc. I don't think it's a hardware issue as we are very computer knowledgeable. What I am thinking though is that it may in fact be a codec issue. We have some 3rd party codecs installed for our file playing, so I am going to run it on another system to see how it works out. I just thought that it may potentially be a software issue with this particular software, so I am looking for a suitable replacement.

Honestly, Windows Media Player would work great, but it doesn't have any scheduling built in. That's the requirement - scheduling. I was looking into a ton of different things, including Winamp with a plugin, etc, but have not been able to come up with anything.

So, if anyone knows of a program that will do this....

Thanks,
Kit

[mikkowilson]

You could try experimenting with .wmx files, they do playlists - but I'm not sure if they will do scheduling.

Another option is to build custom playout software with something like Visual Basic and it's WMP plugins.

- Mikko