This version of this document is no longer maintained. For the latest documentation, see http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs.

`phplay`

Media player for Photon

This utility is available only in the Multimedia Technology Development Kit (TDK).

Syntax:

phplay [options] [url]

Options:

-p plugin

Load the shared object for the given plugin. The plugins include:

audiocd.so -- default audio CD plugin
audiocdda.so -- audio CD plugin with antiskip buffering. This media plugin reads the raw cdda data from an audio CD, buffers it, and feeds it to the audio driver.
The CDDA_MILLISECONDS environment variable controls the buffer size:
- Default: 3 seconds (529200 bytes)
- Minimum: 300 milliseconds (58800 bytes)
- Maximum: 1 minute (10584 kilobytes)

-r

Remove the file after playing it.

-Si|m|n

The initial state of the main window (iconified, maximized, or normal).

-s server_name

The name of the Photon server:

If server_name is:	This server is used:
node_path	node_path`/dev/photon`
fullpath	fullpath
relative_path	`/dev/`relative_path

-u

Unique; allow only one instance of phplay to be active at a time.

-x position[%][r]

The x coordinate of the upper-left corner of the window, in pixels, or as a percentage of screen width if % is specified. If r is specified, the coordinate is relative to the current console.

-y position[%][r]

The y coordinate of the upper-left corner of the window, in pixels, or as a percentage of screen height if % is specified. If r is specified, the coordinate is relative to the current console.

url

The filename of the sound file, or a URL in the form file://fullpath.

Description:

The phplay command starts the media player:

Media player

The hotkeys include:

+, -: Increase/decrease the volume.
a: Toggle on or off replay (again).
b: Go back to the previous track.
d: Toggle on or off Direct Digital Audio.
e: Eject/load (stops playback).
f: Seek forward.
h: Toggle on or off Home Entertainment Mode.
m: Toggle on or off muting.
n: Go to the next track.
p: Play/pause.
r: Seek backward (rewind).
s: Stop.

If the video window has focus, the following hotkeys are also defined:

Arrow keys: Navigate the DVD menus.
Enter: Select.
Home: Go to the DVD menu.
a: Angle.
l: Change the language (audio track).
t: Toggle the subtitles.

The audio drivers support multichannel mixing. You have subchannel control through phplay's volume sliders. This means you can open up to 8 concurrent instances of phplay using software mixing. The number of hardware mixers depends on the hardware.

For hardware reasons, you can have only one video overlay open at a time, but you can have many mp3s mixing together.

The setup window lets you configure the audio card/device. There's a button for restoring the defaults if you edit the file and need to get to a stable set of settings. These settings are stored in ${HOME}/.ph/mpsettings. It's easy to use a text editor to modify this file, but you can also edit it through phplay. Things you might want to do include bypassing software mixing for performance reasons. To do this on an audiopci card, change PCM(A) Playback from card 1 to card 0.

When you start phplay, the application queries the registry file, /etc/config/media/mpregistry, to determine which audio CD plugin to load.

In order to load the audiocdda plugin, you must:

Edit the registry file and replace all occurrences of audiocd.so by audiocdda.so
Or:
Start phplay, specifying the plugin:
```
phplay -p audiocdda.so
    
```

Examples:

Run using the Photon server on node my_node:

phplay -s my_node

Run at initial position 10,10 with initial dimension of 200x300:

phplay -x10 -y10

Run, loading the audio CD shared object immediately:

phplay -p audiocd.so

Run, loading the soundfile.so shared object and playing revenge.wav:

phplay file:///var/media/revenge.wav

Files:

/etc/config/media/mpregistry: A registry file that phplay queries to determine which audio CD plugin to load.
${HOME}/.ph/mpsettings: Settings for the audio card/device.

Caveats:

You need hardware with an FPU for MPEG decoding because floating-point emulation is too slow. We don't currently support a fixed-point MPEG audio decoder.