My Conversation With Mirillis Splash AVCHD Player People

I found the beta AVCHD Splash Player and gave it a try. I looks very nice so I emailed them with a question:

I just downloaded your player and I am impressed – it looks good!

I like to shoot a lot of short video clips on my HD camera and I would to view them back to back in one continuous “stream”. For instance selecting a folder of files and playing them all back without any gaps in between files.

Can you are player do that, and if not is it possible in your product?

They quickly replied with:

We are happy that you like our player.

In next Splash BETA releases there will be available playback of all files within a folder.
The gap between files should be around 500ms for AVCHD.

Continuous playback of files in playlist (or folder) with no gaps and with optional video translations will be available later.
Probably we will add this feature after Splash PRO release.

So I replied back with:

Thanks for replying so quickly.

Do you know of any hardware solution to “Continuous playback of files in playlist (or folder) with no gaps”?

I have owned an AVCHD camera for almost two years and I can’t believe the only place I can play my files back to back without gaps is on my camera hooked up to my TV. I can’t understand why someone can’t take that chip within the camera and put it in a black box that I can stream from my network.

I have tried the Popcorn Hour, Xbox360 and the Western Digital WD devices but none of them will play my files seamlessly.

Looking forward to when you have this issue resolved from a software perspective.

They Replied:

We are sorry but we do not know any h/w or s/w solution to play AVC video with no gaps.
It’s tricky to develop, and probably not much desired by users – otherwise it would be available in software on the market.

We are going to develop this feature after we release Splash PRO version.
However Splash beta will feature playlist playback mode without black screens between files (last frame will be displayed for a while instead of black screen).

Best Regards
Mirillis Team

[7/21/09] Then I replied after I downloaded version Beta 4:

I just downloaded version beta 4. I was wondering if there is a way to play multiple files yet from a folder or is that coming in a later release?

They Replied:

At the moment you can browse through video files within current folder by “previous” and “next” buttons (or by keyboard: PageUp/PageDown).
Automatic playback of next video file in a folder should be available in Splash BETA 5.

Then I replied:

I just downloaded your player and I am impressed – it looks good! I like to shoot a lot of short video clips on my HD camera and I would to view them back to back in one continuous “stream”. For instance selecting a folder of files and playing them all back without any gaps in between files. Can you are player do that, and if not is it possible in your product?

Mirillis Replied:

We would like to inform you that released Splash BETA 5 supports automatic playback of next files.
The gap between files should be quite short, especially on Windows Vista and 7.
This is probably the shortest gap available in software players and shortest gap that we can achieve at the moment. We will work on more advanced solutions, it will be available probably next year.

I replied:

Wow, you are so close to having that working. I have not timed it accurately yet but I am thinking there is about a 500ms gap between files. Basically what I see is last frame of the clip freezes for 500ms before the next clip in the folder begins. Very very impressive, you are so close to having this work. By the way I am on Vista, I will try it on my Windows 7 machine soon. I can’t wait to see what you have planned for next year.