Playback

Playback

Press OK on an entry to watch it. The programme is played with MovieCockpit's player, so it behaves like a recording: pause, skip, resume, audio and subtitle selection. This page explains how it works and what to expect.

What happens when you press OK

1. A temporary download of the programme is started in the background. It is an ordinary download job (see Downloads) with the same file name and the same companion files, but in a separate job list (TMP) so that it does not show up as one of your downloads.
2. The player starts at once, in one of two ways, decided once at that moment:

Mode	When	Plays
File	The video is a progressive MP4 (its index is at the start of the file) and the file is already readable	The partly downloaded file
Stream	Anything else, including every playlist (.m3u8) video	The stream address directly

3. In stream mode the player gets the length from the programme data. The recording-style position display uses the progress of the temporary download.
4. When you stop (STOP, EXIT or POWER), the temporary download is aborted, all files with the same name stem are deleted (video, .meta, .txt, .jpg), the entry is removed from MovieCockpit's cache if it had been added, and the channel you were watching before is tuned again.

If the video address is missing or no stream can be found, you get "No valid stream detected." or "Unsupported video format or no valid stream detected." for four seconds.

The temporary file is written to your download directory (see Settings) and is named like a download. If that directory is one of MovieCockpit's bookmarks, the file can show up in its list while you watch. It disappears again, from the disk and from the list, when you stop.

Player settings

The player reads these settings (see Settings):

Setting	Default	Effect
Resume at last position	off	Offer to resume where you stopped
Movie start position	beginning	beginning, first mark or event start
Stop movie behaviour	Do nothing	With Ask user, STOP / EXIT / POWER and the end of the programme open a menu: Quit, Restart from the beginning, Continue playing. The temporary download is only cleaned up when you really quit

The temporary files are deleted when you stop, so there is nothing to resume from next time. For a long programme you want to continue later, download it and play it from MovieCockpit.

Smart jump

CHANNEL+ and CHANNEL- skip with steps that shrink as you home in: 5 minutes first, then 1 minute, then 30 and 15 seconds when you change direction. After 5 seconds without a key it starts over. See Keys and Buttons.

What can go wrong

Symptom	Likely cause
Picture starts, then stalls	Slow connection or a busy server. The player has only what the stream delivers; try the Medium or Low quality (see Settings)
"No valid stream detected"	The entry has no usable video address (press 5 to see the three addresses), or the download directory in the settings does not exist