Protocol/path to assign various players to different video f

Help & Support
1

I have a variety of different video file formats, such as MOV, AVI, FLV, WMV, etc..

Can I assign different appropriate players for the viewer pane, based on the file types involved?

If so, what is the proper procedure to do this?

I presently have a varety of players on my machine, including

VLC player
Windows Media Player
Adobe Flash player
Media Player Classic

And, these players cover just about everything I would want to play, which are mostly video tutorials of various types..

I don't use Apple's Quicktime player, as it is a real PITA, and Apple is always "sneaking" in things without permission. And, the free Quicktime player will not save an MOV file after it has been fully loaded - only the paid version will.

Thanks for your help.

Ron Hirsch

2

Windows Media Player and Adobe Flash player both exist as ActiveX controls so you can use both of them in Opus via the ActiveX plugin.

I would recommend using Opus's own Movie plugin instead of Windows Media Player, though, as the WMP ActiveX control is not very good, IMO, and has issues with scaling/resizing in particular. Opus's Movie plugin will use the same codecs that WMP uses and the main difference is the user interface.

You can tell the ActiveX plugin which extensions it should handle, and it should be set to handle WMP and Flash by default. If you really want to use WMP rather than the Movie plugin then you may need to disable the Movie plugin.

VLC also has an ActiveX control but it doesn't register itself to handle things automatically so the ActiveX plugin in Opus does not know to use it. A plugin which uses VLC explicitly is on my to-do list, as it would be rather useful, but I don't know when that will happen.

Media Player Classic is a standalone application and doesn't provide any way for other programs to integrate its playback/user-interface into their own code. However, all of the useful parts of MPC, such as the decoders for MKV format, are available as DirectShow filters which will work with Opus. See the FAQ on movie playback for a guide to how to use them and get MKV, QuickTime/MOV, FLV, etc. playing within Opus's Movie plugin (and Windows Media Player, Media Center, etc.).

3

Leo,

Thanks for your reply.

I actually was not aware of the FAQ page. It certainly does contain lots of good info. And I've bookmarked it to go back and spend lots of time reading through all the good info there.

Ron Hirsch

4

I did some playing around with the view options. But it seems like the result was not successful, and putting the focus on various of the movie format files in Opus ended up causing the program to hiccup, and shut down.

And strangely, when this happened, it would not reload, except by shutting down XP, and rebooting. I played with restoring prevously saved settings, but that did not help.

Is there a simple way to restore defaults to all these settings, without totally uninstalling Opus and starting over?

As things now stand, when the focus is put on various video files, the viewer pane goes black, and the program gets into trouble.

Ron Hirsch

5

Sounds like you have some bad video codecs on your system.

Which viewer or plugin settings did you change? How you reset them depends on where the changes were made.

Each Preferences page can be reset to defaults via the File menu. The preferences for some plugins can be reset by the Defaults button in their config windows or, failing that, by deleting the plugin's configuration file under /dopusdata/ConfigFiles/Plugins and restarting Opus.

6

I'm afraid I'm not getting anywhere in this whole video viewer scheme of things. I don't believe that any of my video codecs are "bad". All the various movie types I have play just fine in one or more of my video player programs, which are

Windows Media Player
Media Player Classic
VLC Media Player
Adobe Media Player

I also have tried going back to a saved setting file from 6 months ago, but that did not restore things to where they were then - Opus 9 did play a good number of formats in the Viewer pane back then, but only wmv seem to play now.

You mentioned "Each Preferences page can be reset to defaults via the File menu." I could not locate any "Default" buttons anywhere in the plug-in windows. I guess I must be looking in the wrong place(s). What is the exact path to this? Is it not in the Plug-ins?

I wonder if uninstalling and reinstalling Opus 9 might be the best way to go, Can I just run the uninstall, and reinstall? Or, are there various Registry entries around that will still impact this situation and give me problems?

I have no problem editing the Registry if that would help things. I'd just have to know what and where the keys involved are located. Or, does a *.reg file exist from you which will do that job?

I currently have no problems with viewers for text, PDF, jpeg, Powerpoint, wmv, and the like. It just seems to be the video formats such as MOV, AVI, and FLV that are giving me all the problems.

And unfortunately, if I have the Viewer pane "on", and I have the focus on one of these file types, strange things happen - such as the viewer pane going black, the Opus icon in the right hand portion of the task bar disappearing, and Opus 9 closing - and it will not reload when its desktop icon is double clicked - a reboot is necessary.

Sorry to be such a pest -

Ron Hirsch

7

If you uninstall Opus it should delete your current configuration, so reinstalling it will get the defaults back for everything. It's worth creating a backup of your config first in case you decide to go back to it or need to work out what was different in it.

Not all the plugins have Defaults buttons which is why I said it depends on the plugin and you might have to manually delete their config files in some cases.

8

Hi Leo,

First, Happy Holidays- There sure are a bunch of them in a 5 week period here in the states.

Thanks again for all your ongoing help

I checked the latest version on the Opus site, and it appears to be 9.1.1.6, which is newer than my 9.1.1.5.322. But when I check in my version for updates, it reports that mine is the latest. That does seem a bit strange.

I plan on uninstalling my current version, and starting over with the newest version. And yes, I do regularly save of all my settings, so I will have what is in place now, should I want to invoke it.

A few questions -

  1. I will use XP's Add/Remove programs, as I do not see an uninstaller utility in the Opus programs folder. Or have I missed it? You have stated that reinstalling this way will set all settings to default, correct? So I will then check out the video situation, which will hopefully be in better shape than it is now, after which I will manually set up all my preferences et al.

  2. Usually I download updates, which appear to be the full program, not just the update. Am I correct in assuming that if I download the latest version of Opus 9, and then install it, it will then accept my registration ID et al, and all will be well?

  3. There are check boxes in the restore settings window. Which of those settings choices includes the video "stuff" that I've been having problems with? If they are limited to just one of the groups, I could then restore all settings, except for that group, which would save me some time in recreating all my customizations.

Finally, as I have stated in the past to Greg, I have always used a 3rd party "file manager" ever since my DOS days. Opus 9 is in its own class, - nothing else has ever come close to it.

Ron

9

You too!

See the FAQ: Why doesn't the auto-updater detect the latest version?

Add/Remove Programs is where the uninstaller is found. (Putting Uninstallers in the Start Menu as well as, or instead of, Add/Remove Programs is against Microsoft's guidelines, although plenty of programs do it.)

Yup.

Yup. There are no update installers, only standalone, full installers which you can install over an old version or on to a fresh machine.

So long as your licence is valid for version 9.x it will work with all 9.x installers.

It sounds like you've changed things in a few different places so there probably isn't a single checkbox which covers just the video-related preferences.

If you do want to reset just some preferences then you can do what I said earlier in the thread: For Opus's own Preferences each page can be reset using the File menu. For plugin Preferences you can either use the Defaults button in the plugin's config window (e.g. in the case of the ActiveX plugin) or delete the plugin's config file from /dopusdata/ConfigFiles/Plugins and restart Opus (e.g. in the case of the Movie plugin which doesn't have a Defaults button).